Mickey mouse degrees

[drumbeats]

I was pondering as one does and it occurred to me that what was once considered a solid degree might now actually be pretty useless. Abreast we're considered MM degrees actually have some merit.

Classics. Useless. Not as useful for politics or economics or anything much short of perhaps museum work as history or even archeology

English. Creative writing might be valuable if that is a chosen route. Pretty much everything else gained from an English degree is either purely fuelling an interest or can be gained doing a subject with more technical merit like economics or a science.

Geography. Weirdly thought of as a duffers subject. With climate change and population migration incredibly important subject.

Sociology. Incredibly useful. We live in a world with such changing social dynamics, conflicts, sensitivities. Disparity in wealth and the consequences. Political positions, social work, education, Human Resources.

Media studies. The power and influence of the media, social media and online information and misinformation is shaping minds. The manipulation of people's thinking and understanding through media is profound and potentially very dangerous.

I don't think you've taken the American liberal arts degree into account there.

The liberal arts degree involves four years of a fairly broad range of subjects across a lot of disciplines - mfl, mathematics, lab science, humanities of various stripes, and English/ writing - with a major chosen as you go along and not at age 17. You can add a minor or a second major too. You could graduate with a degree in history or English and be ready to hit the job market with courses in calculus, statistics, psychology, economics, pol sci, German, etc. under your belt...

@MaggieFS "Eh? I'm confused. Are you saying you think Classics, English and Geography are Mickey Mouse degrees?

Not IME. It was History of Art and Land Economy."

How dare you I did art history and had 4 actually hours of lectures a week I'll have you know !!

But to add I agree with PP that doing any degree taught me critical thinking and research skills no matter what it was
The job I'm now in which is reasonably high powered really only requires a skill set such as critical thinking , self motivation and organization all of which are skills that i think doing any degree helped me develop

I can here Ross Geller in your voice.

Media studies has never been considered a solid degree

Agree! The concept of mm degrees is stupid anyway

A GOOD media degree is much more useful than a history degree in my honest opinion.

It has massive elements of critical thinking, understanding target audiences and huge elements of marketing. Many include options to include elements of history anyway.

I think these days you either take a degree which you need for your chosen career such as nursing, engineering, architecture.

Or you take a less vocational degree such as English, history because you enjoy the subject and hope it will lead to general graduate schemes. My brother did history and then got a job on the civil service grad scheme so while he didn't need a history degree as such he certainly needed a degree. Someone else I know did geography and has got a job with the EA.

With that second option then the university will matter more I guess.

Though one issue these days is "qualification creep". Where I work people will not get an interview for a basic admin job unless they have a degree. In the past we would only have looked for A levels as a measure of someone's general intelligence. So if you don't have any degree then you are going to struggle getting any sort of job in some establishments, we're probably the largest employer in the locality as well.

This is true in my experience working at many big financial institutions.

I lived in the US for a few years and there are many project managers that come with a military background and without a relevant financial degree but they make great project managers because of all the skills and discipline learnt in the military.

I did a degree I've never used - sciences and I went into office type roles/project management etc.

As I've progressed many applications have listed 'degree' as a requirement. It's that level of learning. If I was looking to hire an assistant and they had a degree in Classics or English I would think that this signified they had a good grasp of language and could pick up info quickly etc etc.

Saying that with the current cost of degrees etc I would probably only encourage my DS to follow a vocational path at the moment.

I don't think any of those are MM's. MM's in my mind are subjects like -

The Robin Hood Studies at Nottingham Uni.
Bsc Surf science & Technology degree
MA in Magic & Occult sciences at Exeter
BA in Horology at Birmingham City - The study of time, as in clocks and watches.
BA in Pizza - at Man Met -to be fair it's a degree apprenticeship through Pizza Hut but still...a bit narrow isn't it? imagine PH goes bottoms up and you're trying to apply for a new job with that on your CV.

MM degrees apart, there's a big chasm between what people regard as a rigorous (good) degree i.e History, Classics etc and degrees that degrees actually lead to good employment. I think the snobbery element doesn't really care whether it leads to great job opportunities, what they care about is is it dinner table discussion worthy e.g 'My ds studies 'the Classics'. A lot of people scoff at business degrees which i find puzzling as Business degrees are one of the top earnersfro graduates because of the array of skills developed - data analysis, essay writing, research skills, stats, presentation skills, makes them very employable.

Great story. Nice one DS!

Honestly - physics ... unless you want to study further and be an academic. All the technical type roles that say they accept physics have then stated in feedback that they decided to only take engineering graduates

A lot of graduate schemes are subject agnostic. A degree in Classics may not seem like the obvious preparation for working for a Big 4 (for example) the skills you’ll have learnt will still be useful and having the degree will help you onto the ladder.

As a graduate recruiter, a lot of the time the institution is more interesting to me than the subject.

@Oganesson118 Ah! so you're NOT institution blind? this topic comes up time & time again on MN and people argue till they're blue in the face that employers are all institution blind, so uni doesn't matter, just the subject.
I believe all lot of employers are not but the idea is taking on.

No, we’re not. I can’t speak for every company. It’s not a major major factor but it can be a differentiator when we have to make a call. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I cannot see how someone who got into a lower ranked uni with 3 Cs can leave at the same level as someone who did the same subject but needed two A Star and and A to get their place.

Some of this is just snobbery in my humble, uneducated opinion. I did however hear of one young man who, after completing his 3 year electonic gaming degree, reported that the course tutor admitted there were hardly any jobs in the actual gaming field, and that the skills they had learned weren't particularly transferable. That degree, with living expenses, had cost him about £60k.

They would have learnt coding. That's hugely transferable as is creative design.

I did what I now know was considered a MM degree (Marketing) late 90s but also from a former Poly, with not a great reputation. I so remember when I got my first "proper" job within marketing that everyone in the Marketing department had degrees such as Eng Lit, Zoology, American Studies, Biology etc. I thought it was weird then but as other people have said, if I hadn't gone to Uni, I would never have had the critical thinking, writing skills and those transferable skills that it gives you, so will never regret it! (still work in a marketing related field, although not very highly paid ;-) )

I am not from the UK and where I am from we start Uni (and school) later and it's not so much pressure in deciding what you want to do at GCCE level, although I am not sure what is preferable as I used to have friends that were still in Uni at 28-30. And I always thought they were cruising but then again it was free so why not

Very interesting thread, thanks OP

Well my eldest daughter did an English degree, she’s now an editor at a well know children’s publishing house. I’m sure she’d say it proved to be quite a useful degree.
What a narrow point of view you have.

I cannot see how someone who got into a lower ranked uni with 3 Cs can leave at the same level as someone who did the same subject but needed two A Star and and A to get their place.

Why do you think what someone got in A levels at 18 tells you anything about their ability 3-4 years later? All the pedagogic research indicates that DCs have peaks and troughs in educational achievement and those who do best at 11 aren't necessarily going to do the best at 16, or 18, or 21.

Maybe students who peak later prefer they type of teaching and learning that suit university. Maybe they thrive when they can concentrate on the one subject that they really really enjoyed rather than 3 or 4. Maybe they went to a terrible school. Maybe they had a shitty home life. Maybe at university they studied a completely different subject and found they were good at it. Maybe they were more motivated. Maybe the teaching was better (teaching at, say, Bristol isn't de facto 'better' than teaching at, say UWE in the same way that teaching at a grammar school isn't de facto better then teaching at a secondary modern). Maybe the student who did better at A level got lazy, or bored or lost interest.

Honestly there are a myriad reasons why this could happen. Can you really not see any of these?!

Academic can mean ‘not of practical relevance; of only theoretical interest’, so of course some degrees aren’t vocational.

@Oganesson118

No, we’re not. I can’t speak for every company. It’s not a major major factor but it can be a differentiator when we have to make a call. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I cannot see how someone who got into a lower ranked uni with 3 Cs can leave at the same level as someone who did the same subject but needed two A Star and and A to get their place.

It means the one who got three Cs didn't do as well in their A-level exams as the one who got A stars. That's literally all it means. It has very little bearing on who would be better in most jobs as very few jobs are based on studying a topic and producing a good exam result on it.

Geography. Weirdly thought of as a duffers subject. With climate change and population migration incredibly important subject.

I work for a government body whose (very large) workforce is about 50% geographers. It's a broad skill set with many specialisms. We have geographers working in flood risk management, nature based countryside management/flood risk management, upland management, catchment management, hydrological modelling, asset management, GIS, databases, habitat creation, partnership funding, infrastructure economics, project management, contract management, vegetation control, planning, sustainable development, flood forecasting, flood modelling, flood warning, community engagement, reservoir safety, asset management, operational safety .... and that's just my side of the office. Sustainable business. Regulated industry. Permitting.

Geographers have useful skills and are an essential part of the workforce. Always have been.

And no, I’m not one.

I agree, there may be myriad reasons why one person got 3 C's while another got 3 A's but we could also include the person who got 3E's in that argument or no A'Levels at all.
For each vacancy there are usually hundreds applying, with more than enough straight A candidates to choose from this is usually within the context of a first shortlist or to assist in choosing between final candidates. Grades are not the only criteria used to select, there are several other variables most employers use various in-house tests in addition to the the 1st stage to include things like - Experience, interests assessment tests, interviews etc. The bar has to be set somehow

University rankings also play into this although they are usually rubbished here, I think they help with shortlisting universities that meet the needs of a particular sector's criteria ( i don't imagine individual employer's sit with a shortlist of universities) I think from experience each industry just knows which universities have the students that fit their need and stick to it. So if I wanted to study Oceanography I would look at the top universities that have the best outcome for that subject i.e the highest ranking uni for that subject. This will feed into the grade requirements for the subject at that uni. driven by the demand for it. Its all cyclical. Otherwise how else should employers determine academic ability? Unless we completely disregard educational achievement on the grounds that any education is a privilege therefore remove this variable & flatten the playing field completely.