Goldsmiths ends Queer History MA, to xomplaints

[Treaclewell]

I picked this up from an annoying little feed on my laptop so can't link, but the lead tutor (Bengry) been made redundant and is not best pleased.
Weren't Goldsmiths' students very active in shutting down women's groups in the area back a few years?
They are alsp ending their Black History MA.
The story was first in the Independent but I can't find it on their site.

Yes, and when I was at university it was actually hard to get accepted onto any postgraduate course whereas now, provided the qualification is useless, (i.e., you are not studying so you can operate on people or engineer bridges) if you stump up the money you can do it. Hence the proliferation of badly-educated activist-academics who have basically paid for their credentials. And, of course, faddy research and flashy conferences are what attract funding to departments so these are the people who get promoted.

The massive expansion in people getting first degrees seems to have opened up a lucrative market for the universities, as having a Master's is touted as being one way to stand out from the crowd. In reality it must favour the same demographic as used to dominate first degrees, viz, young people from affluent, confident families who were sent to good schools and supported in all sorts of ways to achieve the grades to get to university. An extra year or two to get a Master's is not an overwhelming barrier if you're not on the breadline.

And this is also the reason the rising number of qualifications such as Queer History, as the uselessness of what is being studied in practical terms is also a way of setting oneself apart from the wider population. These are qualifications in luxury beliefs and, through this, are designed to show that those who have studied them have intellectual refinement which sets them apart from the masses. It's the equivalent of upper class schooling in the Victorian period having a curriculum based entirely around the study of Latin and Greek.

I note that Goldsmiths proudly points to DEI jobs as the next step for many of its graduates.

A market which may be facing significant shrinkage as the grift is exposed.

And let’s face it, if a candidate rocks up to an interview proudly waving their degree in Queer Theory or Transgender Archaeology (I just don’t have enough eye rolls for that one), they might as well be waving a red flag that says “I’m going to be a nightmare employee”.

Agreed!