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Unfair, misplaced vitriol
17 September 2009
Media studies is belittled despite graduates' success, says Sally Feldman
Why are so many Irish men devoted to Desperate Housewives? What's bugging Sweden's female bloggers? How far can citizen journalism be trusted? How does television influence political scandals? And how does the media influence audiences in Australia, China, Iran, Japan or Zimbabwe?
These were some of the questions addressed earlier this month at the University of Westminster's second "Transforming Audiences" conference, which, attended by delegates from all over the world, demonstrated just how vital it is to understand how people respond to the media and what it tells us about different communities and cultures.
Or so you would think. But this is a view accepted by neither the University of Cambridge nor the London School of Economics, both of which fail to recognise A-level media studies as a serious academic subject. And, according to the right-leaning think-tank Policy Exchange, their prejudice is shared by more than 30 other leading universities that also downgrade the subject - not to mention the Conservative Party, which has declared its plans to adjust school league tables in order to devalue achievements in so-called "soft subjects".
This baiting of media studies is a seasonal sport. Which is why, yet again this year on the eve of the publication of the A-level results, I was invited to defend the subject on air. This time, it was on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Media Show, where Anna Fazackerley, the head of education, arts and culture at Policy Exchange, explained that the top private schools avoid offering media studies because they want to propel their pupils to the best universities - the very ones that turn up their noses at the subject. All that this proves, of course, is that the schools are aping the prejudices of the universities. It says nothing at all about the value of the subject.
That was left to the third guest that day, London Evening Standard executive editor and columnist Anne McElvoy. Media studies, she opined, is not a proper subject - it's just a weak, in-between kind of thing that students of real subjects such as English literature can do in their spare time. A "real" academic subject, apparently, is one that cultivates rigour and analysis, supported by the kind of theoretical inquiry deplorably absent from media studies.
This seemed an arbitrary judgment on a subject that has stimulated such a plethora of critical texts, journals, fresh approaches and methodologies over the 50 years since the publication of the work that ignited this new discipline: Richard Hoggart's magnificent The Uses of Literacy.
I was bound to bristle at such ignorant dismissal of media scholarship, especially as my own university came top in the country for communications and media in the recent research assessment exercise - way ahead of the traditional "research-led" universities. But even that wasn't as hard to take as McElvoy's next assertion, which was that media studies does not lead to employment since students don't acquire proper training. Her evidence? "Just ask any editor or broadcaster."
Rather harder evidence, coming from the Government's own analysis of graduate destinations via the Higher Education Statistics Agency, shows that at the last count, more than 70 per cent of media graduates enter employment, compared with 56 per cent of graduates in English and 53 per cent in history. And the majority of these jobs are at the graduate level, too.
One of the reasons surely is that the new subjects are better than the traditional ones at preparing students for the world of work. Rather than following the standard pattern of lectures, seminars and tutorials, our courses instil practical skills, requiring students to work in groups, to give and take briefs, to produce programmes as well as analyse content and reflect on its impact.
But this won't appease the more determined detractors, such as, for example, the ones I encountered recently. I found myself at a party hosted by a Tory candidate (I know, don't ask) to celebrate the publication by his irresistibly affable friend Jeremy Black, professor of history at the University of Exeter, of the ominous-sounding Ideas for the Universities: The Case for Independence.
Someone made a speech denouncing the Government's stranglehold on higher education and recommending instead that the middle classes should support the "good" universities through endowments. Heartfelt cheers and guffaws greeted his declaration that he had no time at all for "vocational" courses, pronounced as if he was spitting out nasty shards from a sub-standard cigar.
So media studies attracts opprobrium for not getting students jobs and for being too vocational; for not being sufficiently theoretical or for being too much that way. And while I may deplore the arrogance, indeed the wilful ignorance, that prompts such views, I still fail to understand why there is quite so much vitriol poured on the study of the world's most pervasive and influential cultural phenomenon. Indeed, as Jenni Murray pointed out last month in The Observer, it's never been more needed.
"Young people are bombarded with messages from the media and it seems to me crucial that we teach them to analyse critically what they read, see and hear. We whinge endlessly at the 'over-sexualisation of young girls' or 'the laddishness' of the magazines consumed by boys and young men. How are they supposed to look at these images critically and make their own intelligent choices about how to behave if we give them the idea that it's good to understand Shakespeare or Dickens, but not to worry about Nuts, Cosmopolitan or Top Gear?"
Sally Feldman is dean of the School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster.
Readers' comments
It's quite simple, really. The majority of the UK press is conservative and right-wing, and creates scapegoats on a regular basis (immigrants; feral youths) that fail to address issues of structural power in society that enable the friends of said media proprietors to escape such nuisances as paying their tax dues and so forth. Woe-be-tide anything that might train significant numbers of people to penetrate this fug. Hence, the media scorn against media studies.
So the Dean at a University that has lots of media studies students thinks media studies gets a bad press ? gosh, what next, turkeys vote against Christmas ? If it isn't completely obvious to people that studying Big Brother is a a tad less intellectually demanding than maths, physics, computer science then there isn't much point discussing the subject. This is just another example of dressing up dumbed down non-subjects so the statistics make it look like education is improving. Next they'll be equating Diplomas with A levels...
As a Cambridge media studies person I'm always slightly amused by all those confident assertions that "Cambridge doesn't do media studies". There may not be a specialised degree program or department, but that doesn't mean we don't exist. Anyway, Mike, interesting argument. Do you have any evidence that studying BB is intellectually less demanding? Is it ok to write "it's obvious" in maths, physics or computer science? Also, do the sciences encourage arguments that attack the opponent's background rather than, you know, their arguments? In that case, could I point out that a scientist (I'm assuming, of course) writing about how great and intellectually demanding science is, has a slightly similar feel to it? Turkeys, Christmas, etc. Making assertions without evidence, attacking the person rather than the argument, while at the same time leaving yourself open to exactly the same criticism... if that's the famous rigorousness I hear so much about, I'm not sure it's such a good thing.
Where from the Cambridge woodwork you emerge? Did you do UG and doctoral work in media studies in Cambridge or you did it elsewhere in some form and went to Cambridge? What exactly was your postdoc work at Cambridge and waht is your department called? Without these details hard to believe what you say.
The people who knock media studies do it for a mixture fo reasons, part ideology, part received "wisdom". The same tired old prejudices used to be trotted out for PPE which is a similar synthesis of social philosophy and other disciplines. Do you really think that the sociology of the media (i.e. media studies!) is not taught at Oxbridge, because if you do you clearly haven't a clue what you are talking about. By the way to the ignorant poster above Cambridge runs courses in Screen Media and Cultures (i.e. media studies!) and a number of research groups dedicated to it e.g http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/ http://www.ppsis.cam.ac.uk/cmrg/mrgweb/html/mulvey_conf.html Other research intensive universities such as SOAS do too.
PPSIS: Cambridge Media Research Group (CMRG) The CMRG was the first media research initiative in the University of Cambridge; it encompasses research on television, publishing, music, new media, and politics and the media. Its focus is the contribution of the social sciences to interdisciplinary media research, while contributing to the integration of perspectives from the social sciences, humanities and arts in this burgeoning area of intellectual enquiry. It has links to other initiatives in Cambridge including the Screen Media and Cultures Group, Cambridge Film Seminar and Intermedia Research Seminar.
In My experience in working as i) a manager in job centres ii) a university careers officer iii) a large recruitment company's recruitment manager, we had graduates, post graduates and PhDs in media studies contacting us almost every day for job vacancies. It is one thing to work in the "exciting" areas " knackered academic" proudly presents but another thing to get a job in the related industry as the vacancies tend to be in small numbers and the industry is sceptical of those with these degrees. These graduates et al were on dole for years, first refusing to be retrained but eventually felt the heat and retrained reluctantly. On the other hand, our vacancies in areas which required graduates with skills that companies (industries) needed were not completely filled ( the universities could only supply some of them after all the graduates they produced were recruited) and the companies took to work permits route to get additional graduates, to fill the rest of vacancies,a lot of them. It is the case even today. I have heard the response from the academics working in these areas. Well, let them argue while the dole queue length increases for these graduates. But I am an ignorant poster.
Who cares about media studies, when the dole queue is inviting?!!!
To "To Cambridge postdoc": I'm not quite sure what my background has to do with anything, but if this is supposed to be an argument from incredulity, follow some of the links provided by knackered academic. I'm certainly no lone oddball here. As it happens I have a UG degree in physics with which I spent about a year on the dole, but like most arguments here that is pure anecdote. The HESA statistics that the author cites show that media studies holds up well at least against other humanities and social sciences, so if you have some good reasons why we shouldn't believe these figures, let's have them.
As an American who is being fully funded to do a PhD at Cambridge, I must admit that I have been watching this comment thread (and one associated with a near-identical piece in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago) develop with a mixture of fascination and horror. The seemingly ritualized denigration of "media studies" in the UK media itself has no counterpart in the United States, so I would never have imagined that anyone would see anything amiss with researching a topic that could fall into a number of disciplines, including media studies, at Cambridge. (Neither do any other American scholars I know, for that matter.) In fact, I even used the dreaded "media studies" phrase in my funding application--silly me!
@OhD student: What is your PhD topic? Some aspects of Star Wars or Jaws? Obviously you love media studies a "soft subject". It is not my description but a Cambridge tutor said to our A level students. Do you know, Cambridge U does not consider grade A in Media Studies in A levels as part of a good entry qualification suite for applicants for UG degrees? Many of our students were told that they have to have grade As in in atleast 3 other "hard" subjects in A2 level if they had taken Media Studies. BTW, what "full funding " you receive? Just curious.
I heartily recommend that anyone who might not believe there to be adept postgraduate researchers studying various aspects of the media at Cambridge try exploring the list of present and past Gates Cambridge Scholars, available publicly online. (I do not imply by this that I am one of them, by the way.)
If your subject area is not "media studies" why comment in favour of it? I gave example of what Cambridge U does if an A level student with media studies as one the 3 subjects at A2 level applies to Cambridge. In case you do not know what A2 level is, it is the highest standard at secondary school level before entry to an University. The minimum number of subjects required at A2 level is 3 and if "media studies" is one of them Cambridge U does not accept it and expects students to have taken 4 subjects with 3 "hard subjects". That is the situation and that was what the Cambridge U has been saying to our students. It is strange that having not recognised media studies at secondary school level, it recognises it at postgraduate research level! It does not mean much any way. But you have not answered my questions.
To the disgruntled secondary school educator: What exactly are you trying to prove here by combatively questioning anybody who tries to defend media studies? Just because Cambridge doesn't accept A-level media studies doesn't mean that there shouldn't be people in the university studying various aspects of the media. The media is a pervasive aspect of modern life. You know, when I was in college in the US, two Advanced Placement (AP) lab science tests (e.g. biology + chemistry), but not two AP math tests (e.g. calculus + statistics), fulfilled the math/science graduation requirement. Was this some sort of comment upon the intrinsic and/or practical value of math vs. science? Doubtful. It was probably a reflection of the perceived rigor of the particular tests...or maybe it didn't mean anything at all, since the rules changed a few years later. In any case, perhaps you should stop trying to pick this particular bone with PhD students and postdocs on anonymous comment threads and go directly to the relevant authorities instead. Perhaps A-level media studies *should* count, but I'm certainly not in a position to make that transformative call. All I can say is that a master's degree in media studies *does* fulfill the entry requirement to a Cambridge PhD program, and it is possible to receive full funding from various sources to study media-related topics. I'm not the only one who is proof of that, either. (By the way, I have no interest in being any more specific than I already have been about my biography, so stop asking. The curious may, as I suggested earlier, interrogate the Internet on their own time.)
That people judge the secondary school education of a subject to be taught badly doesn't mean that the subject itself is not rigorous or leads to life on the dole. As far as I know business studies and law are also on the list of "soft A levels", yet nobody complains about them as academic subjects. Why pick on media studies? It's indeed unfortunate that the A level in media studies has been judged as not good preparation for university, but that tells us nothing about the worth of the discipline itself. I don't know whether this judgement was made out of evidence or prejudice, I don't get to make these kind of decisions.
You should do some homework before comment. It is much too soon for you to comment on matters of education in this country. Your ignorance shows.
a little too harsh possibly? Your defensiveness shows as well.
To "To PhD Student" - when all else fails, resort to agressive ad hominem arguments; it does not reflect well on you or your position.
The attacks on the CU PhD student are completely unwarranted. It may be true that Cambridge has a view on how media studies is taught at A-level. However, this doesn't mean the view is correct. What is clear is that media studies is regularly scoffed at by right-wing types (usually in the media!) to console themselves that the only legitimate educational qualifications are those they have gained. This is usually accompanied by a concerned feeling that standards in school tests are slipping and a conviction that 'new' universities offer degrees which are worthless. Let's not kid ourselves. This is a coded attack on the widening participation agenda that encourages students from the lower social groups and BME to enter university. This is what the right-wing are REALLY worried about.
We are into the UCU language of "right wing " and "left wing". If anything in my experience the left wingers are vicious and and intolerant.
At last! Thank you Sally for saying this. I'm so bored of media studies being attacked. Most of what we know is communicated through media, ergo it's vital that we understand and study it.
May I make two points. 1. Media or at least Communication Studies should probably be elevated to one of the most important academic subjects, given the incredible power of television and the internet in people's lives. Today's winners of political debates are those best able to manipulate the media - witness New Labour, Hamas, the BBC. So PPE at Oxford should become MPPE. 2. Just because the over-rated "world of work" doesn't value Media Studies doesn't make it any less valuable. Quite a lot of wonderful people have no job, so for them it is not a valid criterion. Such a perception would be indicative only of a totally materialistic society. Where has that society got us? What matters to man is self-knowledge, spiritual growth and helping his fellow-man. So no tears for the business which cannot find enough trained automatons to slave in its factories and offices. Vive les Etudes des Medias! (Just for the record I'm a chartered accountant with a degree in Humanities).
To: "To[whoever]" -I notice, right across various threads, that you seem to confuse arguments with aggression - it may just be your personal style, but you offer relatively little that can be logically argued over, and spend a deal of effort nobbling anyone who does. Is it all of academia that you hate, or does it go wider than that? to quote Monty Python's..: M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. (short pause) A: No it isn't
@Don Quixote. So you are working evenings and week ends to read the blog threads and quote Monty Python. What an intellectual like you doing here posting these verbose outpourings which you call arguments? Best if you stick to your academic pursuits which do not involve posting these lengthy meaniggless platitudes. You assume that all these two "To" are same individual! What a fallacy! That tells a lot about you!!
whoops! there you go again! - at least it's not OT
Tell me, one thing I have always wondered about: am I wrong in assuming that anyone who knew how to be successful in the type of exciting, intellectually stimulating and rewarding career graduates aim for, they would naturally pursue such a career and not work as a “university careers officer”? One skill I would have assumed someone in that profession to have though, is an awareness of data regarding employment records in which Media Studies graduates fare much better than those graduating in disciplines such as English Literature or History.
Thank you Ian Digby.
Being a student who studies a degree in media I find these negative responses rather amusing. The media is vital and it's something that both controls and defines our very culture. If certain people believe this detailed examination to be a weak study point, then I think this view is to their own disadvantage, and only serves to highlight their ignorance and undeserved snobbish superiority.