I took on a range of roles to support my studies at all levels, an interesting piece on work to support a PhD:
James, formerly a PhD student at a Russell Group university in the North of England, also approached his institution for help to find a job while he completed his studies.
While carrying out a number of administrative roles, he said, he experienced a “deeply ingrained negative attitude towards postgraduate students working in non-academic roles”.
Read full story.
When I last taught history in HE, which must be about 3 years ago now – we had to do this … in many ways I think it’s useful to determine ‘transferable skills’, but also important to note that it’s taking away from other potential teaching time:
First-year history students at my university take a course titled Making History that teaches them about historical research and writing.
It comprises 20 twice-weekly lectures, given by various colleagues, on broad topics such as historiography, periodisation, causation, primary sources and reading critically, and 10 weekly seminars applying those topics to particular historical subjects – the American Revolution in my case.
This year, though, one seminar required students to “prepare three things: a CV; a paragraph identifying its weaknesses; an action plan for how you are going to address these weaknesses”.
Seeing these instructions, it struck me how far the “employability agenda” has progressed – to the point that it is now claiming time on syllabi at the expense of academic subjects and inculcating market values at the expense of free and critical thinking.
Read full piece.
Once again, media studies is in the firing line! When done well, it’s an excellent course, with excellent transferable skills (as well as the intrinsic skills):
Media self-hatred is fuelling the attacks on media studies, says Sally Feldman
So media studies is in the firing line again. This time, the renewal of hostilities was prompted by the appointment of Les Ebdon as head of the Office for Fair Access. He has incurred the wrath of critics not merely for his trenchant views on widening access, but also for his championing of non- traditional subjects such as media studies.
This has put him at odds with the MPs who make up the Conservative Fair Access to University Group, who dismiss media studies as one of the “soft” subjects – an assertion that has only been tepidly opposed by David Willetts, the universities and science minister. Willetts may have recently acknowledged that these “are often really valuable vocational courses”, but that faint support hasn’t stopped him from removing the teaching grant that has until now made them viable.
But by far the most vituperative attacks on media studies have come from the media itself. On Ebdon’s appointment, for example, the Daily Mail called him a “champion of Mickey Mouse degrees” – foremost among which was, of course, media studies.
“I have always found it curious that those in the media do not take themselves seriously enough to think of the media itself as an object of academic study,” commented Martin McQuillan, dean of arts and social sciences at Kingston University, in these pages (“Weapon of Mass Education”, 1 March). “I can only put it down to some form of transferential self-loathing.
Read full story.
Will Silicon Valley be calling in the long run? My humanities PhD is leading me in all kinds of interesting directions!
Those worried about the value of studying the arts and humanities, particularly at the postgraduate level, take heart: Google wants you.In a boldly titled talk at a conference at Stanford University last week, Damon Horowitz, director of engineering – and in-house philosopher – at Google, discussed the question of “Why you should quit your technology job and get a humanities PhD”.
Dr Horowitz was one of several Silicon Valley executives exploring the theme at the BiblioTech conference, an event that united academics with entrepreneurs and senior managers from some of the world’s leading high-tech companies.
For Marissa Mayer, who was the 20th employee taken on by Google and is now its vice-president of consumer products, the situation was clear: “We are going through a period of unbelievable growth and will be hiring about 6,000 people this year – and probably 4,000-5,000 from the humanities or liberal arts.”
Companies such as Google were looking for “people who are smart and get things done” from every possible background, she said, yet the humanities had a particular relevance.
Developing user interfaces, for example, was at least as much about knowing how to observe and understand people as about pure technological skill, she added.
Read full story in the Times Higher… and another bit I particularly love:
Others speakers developed similar themes. For June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, anyone who had studied for a PhD, however seemingly irrelevant the topic, had “learned stamina and focus and how to listen” – and those skills would always be valuable to employers.
As long as PhDs were regarded as essentially academic qualifications, commented another speaker, many people were likely to feel like failures because there were never going to be enough academic jobs, particularly tenure-track ones at elite universities, to go around. Yet the reality was that PhDs offered transferable skills, that many people with doctorates went into business, and that universities needed to acknowledge and celebrate this.
Degrees in media/communications studies cover a broad range of subjects from the highly practical to the theoretical. You can develop a variety of skills that are extremely useful in many employment areas. These skills include:
All courses focus on the communication of information across a variety of mediums. Graduates with the ability to communicate information clearly and effectively will be beneficial to any organisation
Taken from Prospects Careers. See also QAA Subject Benchmarks.