Dr Bex Lewis posted an extract from A Times Educational Supplement article about Media Degrees and I have posted the following as a comment...
Don't get me started on Media degrees. well you have, I do't have a problem with a Media Studies degree "as an object of academic study" as long as graduates don't consider, or get sold the idea, this will prepare them for a career in the media industry because it won't.
The industry is fed up of people leaving uni with a media degree and expecting to enter the industry at a higher level or even at an entry level, at which point you have to ask what was the point of a 3 year degree course especially from next year! My experience as an industry practitioner and sometime involved in training at both apprenticeship and degree levels, as well as talking to key staff involved in finding new talent, is that very few media degrees actually prepare students to work in the industry without significant additional training.
The industry has got so fed up, it has put its money where its mouth is and set up a range of apprenticeship schemes so it can train and prepare students with the skills needed.
You talk about transferable skills and the skills you list are transferable IF they were delivered and developed properly in university, but experience leads me to believe they rarely are.
We find these practical skills are rarely delivered in a real world and current way, rather they are dealt with in a generalised unrealistic way and students believe they are being prepared for a career in the media industry and I am afraid a lot of universities are letting their students down badly.
For example, I delivered a Media Induction Course for a dozen cohorts and the first 8 or 9 cohorts were largely graduates with a variety of media degrees and I have lost count of the number of times they would tell me that they learnt more in that 9 day course about working in the media industry than they did throughout their 3 year degree course.
A Media Degree shouldn't be a soft option. To prepare students for the relatively small number of opportunities in the media industry, it should be a tough course learning a range of practical skills in the first and second years and specialising into a specific area in the 3rd year. Media is a very practical and hands on industry. This needs universities to employ a broad range of associate lecturers who remain active practitioners in the industry so they can deliver current and future practice. The industry is changing so fast that someone who has left the industry even 3 years ago will be out of date.
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