Stop doing terrible degrees!

Thanks for the words of encouragement . Recently I've been thinking about life after my degree and it's hard to keep a positive outlook on it when people are constantly telling you that you should do a more vocational degree. What are you doing now??

Hi,

I know my making this post is going to raise a lot of anger, especially among the new-age mob who say passion and determination are the only factors levying success, but sadly I have seen a lot of posts giving students terrible advice regarding their academic future by telling them a degree in a non-vocational and non-traditional subject will have little impact on their future job prospects. Put simply, it is morally indefensible to advice young people that a degree in some bizarre liberal arts discipline is a good use of their one-off student loan; employers nowadays have an abundance of graduates whom to choose from and being disadvantaged in one aspect of your personal profile because you were fed misinformation by your peers will lead many young graduates fighting it out for low-paid employment.

Of course there will be people who will tell you how they've become a millionaire with their English degree from London Met, but we also need to have a sense of perspective. Do not go to university if you are not sure what you want to do with the rest of your life. University is expensive. And is £50,000 of student debt a burden you want to carry when you don't even have an end-plan in mind? There are a lot of graduate opportunities available for students who graduate from any university with a 2:1, but if you don't possess much added-experience alongside your academic qualifications, then the subject discipline holds a lot relevance. My Area Manager, who is a young graduate, told me that he was informed during his application process that students with "weak degrees in weak subjects" are ignored during selection. He said the degree that you choose to study at university says a lot about you as a person and the level of work ethic you acquire as well. Spending time in industry and developing proper work experience is a much better and more efficient use of time for those who don't know what they want to do than going to university, as work experience is paramount for employers and the on-the-work pay is an added bonus as well.

Here's an excellent video I'd advice you all to watch:

[video="youtube;CVEuPmVAb8o"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVEuPmVAb8o[/video]

Good
- Engineering
- Medicine
- Dentistry
- Veterinary Science
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Economics
- Accounting
- Nursing
- Computer Science
- Law

Bad
- English
- History
- Gender Studies
- Media Studies
- Cultural Studies
- Biology
- Sociology
- Psychology
- Languages
- Theology
- Sport Science
- Business
- Design

Lmfaoooo
Yeah I did double check that
I personally know teachers that have moved to Australia, New Zealand and Dubai
There's a need everywhere

Banter? I take it by your ad hominem attacks that you have studied nothing worthy of a university degree, much less any degree that stresses reasoning.

I am still waiting on someone to tell me what is studied in a WMST degree and to offer any clear reasons for the label it has received.

I'm starting to wonder if no one has because no one has a clue

My point is that it seems that the same people stressing rigour in education are the same people operating from received "wisdom,", ignorance, and prejudice rather than thinking any reasoned thoughts of their own.

And I'm speaking not only in defense of WMST, but in defense of most, if not all, of the degrees listed under "MM degrees." I have no reason to take this personally; my law degree is listed under the "approved" courses by GroupThink, after all.

So I am not allowed to mess around and joke without somebody going "Muh ad hominem" or responding by going "muh orthonographical error you got it wrong"?

Besides, I am doing computer science at uni (within 6 weeks), something I have studied and read at GCSE and A level, as well as having read far more complicated aspects since I was 12 (for instance, I wrote a floppy disk booting operating system when I was 15). Now, if you're learned you will know that computer science has a large component of formal logic, and hence reasoning and problem solving.

Alright, allow me to explain why there is an issue with a lot of WS degrees. Go and look at the reading lists (you don't even need to study it), look at the authors and you will realise that in a lot of these courses don't provide contradicting arguments to a lot of these concepts like patriarchy, which is a sign of a propaganda degree over a good academic one in the humanities, which would have different viewpoints.

Having studied History and WMST as a double major, I think I'm in a position to comment on the humanities and WMST.

Let me state up front that I will not be defending all aspects of a WMST degree. There are certain elements of which I disapprove. Ultimately, however, I think that the degree should be reformed, not abolished.

But some points:

There is no WMST degree, no reading list

My WMST was interdisciplinary. That means I was able to take any course from a department approved list. I ended up choosing lots of courses in Philosophy and History (to fulfill credit requirements for my History degree). I also studied other courses, like English and Political Science During the course of my degree, I studied epistemology and philosophy of science, jurisprudence, psychoanalytic theory, critiques if economic theory, and ethics. There were very few core courses, maybe 5. Other WMST students chose other subjects. All of that to say...a WMST degree IS a humanities degree, but it is the humanities through the lens of the political, ideological, philosophical, economic, semantic and ither structures that exclude marginalized people. Sometimes these,people are women; other times they are disabled, poor, black, etc.

Utility
- This is extremely useful for policy analysis - my first job out of uni - and for campaigning and activism (such as when I wrote a pressure group's submission to the Human Rights Commission in support of an end to legalized discrimination against homosexuals.

Propaganda
- Following from that, the reading lists are different from class to class.
- I agree that the degree would have been better with more exposure to radically different thinkers. This is not unique to WMST, but it is a reform I'd like to see.

Rigour
- What made WMST so challenging because of the need to adapt to different conventions in different disciplines, often entering at 3rd or 4th year. It taught me to develop agile thinking, to analyze a discipline, get to its crux and identify its habits, and adapt to various ways of thinking. It was harder than my major.
- I truly learned to question. And that habit of questioning is also pointed at my education as a WMST students, both its failures and successes.

There are other, deeper reasons why I am grateful to have fallen into that degree. It taught me so much compassion and empathy, and it gave me a framework to explain the confounding social phenomena that had troubled me way before I got there. That was most valuable. But I think those points suffice for now.

So you don't read books or study for WMST? Other courses I have seen have a reading list for each course under the degree they take.

I wrote a whole post for you. Read it

I know that I am just asking about saying there is no reading list. I have yet to see a WMST course, let alone a humanities course with no reading list, so I have no idea where you have studied but I doubt that statement.

There's a mahoosive demand for teachers in China, HK, South Korea and Japan. I looked up English teaching jobs in HK, Japan and China, some of the schools were offering to pay for the flights, the first few months of the accomo and discounts on department stores just for an English teacher.

LOOL
Wow
That's cool

I'd go Japan personally.

Tokyo looks nice

Look into the JET programme, pretty solid option post-uni

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And this is comes from a History student...

And this is comes from a History student...

An Oxford history student, yes. Interest is a matter of perception - though it'd require some critical faculty in order to reach that conclusion.

That's soooooo cool!!!
Do you sign up for it?