9 January 2009

More stupid undergraduate degrees from our universities

| johnboy
Join the conversation
55

The Canberra Times has a piece on moves by ANU and UC to offer ever more specialised “degrees” to students fresh out of year 12.

ANU’s proudly touting a “Bachelor of Genetics” for future paternity testers to spend three years working towards. Meanwhile UC is promising a “Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning” as well as “Bachelor of Cultural Heritage”.

Because what 18 year olds need is to be pigeon-holed.

Join the conversation

55
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

(hint, it’s not ec or acc)

is it ick? ock? ahh, *uck!

i’d rekkun it’s arts – polsci (as opposed to the non-dfat required ‘polski’) though the ubiquitous ‘international relations’ would go close. what do they really study under this nebulous description?? can anyone help a poor un-knowing astro? and if so many people around the globe study it, why are the state of international relations so f***ing parlous???

I have a BA in Geography with an AOS in world cultures and Geographic Information Systems from a descent uni in the US and I am about to begin a masters in Urban planning. I chose Geography so I wouldn’t pigeon-hole myself and due to a required course I found GIS, loved it, and now work in the field. I would assume GIS is a major component in a planning degree and the GIS field is awesome with plenty of job opportunities in many different industries, so I wouldn’t consider it completely pigeon holing yourself. A degree in urban and regional planning almost seems more like a graduate degree program to me though, since the title is so specific. Also, my wife has a BS in Biology with a minor in Chemistry, loves the genetic stuff, and thinks both genetics and forensics should both be graduate degrees to weed out anyone looking for a career made popular by movies or TV. I still dont consider any of these degrees stupid.

I hate to tell you what’s the favoured degree at DFAT… (hint, it’s not ec or acc).

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy11:59 pm 09 Jan 09

Sorry, couldn’t help but resurrect the old inter faculty rivaly from uni days…

aww, vy – that was supposed to be the end of the discussion! tch!

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy10:40 pm 09 Jan 09

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Beserk Keyboard Warrior10:39 pm 09 Jan 09

The only real degree is an Arts degree.

End of discussion.

JB, re post #31, I don’t disagree. I challenged the current senior roads planner to stand on the street corner and actually observe the traffic movements with me, counting how many went where. he refused, saying that his engineering degree from an Indian university told him everything he needed to know (true story!).

What we need is locally trained planners who appreciate the best this city has to offer.

One of the most significant problems with ACTPLA at the moment is the CEO (Neil Savery) comes from SA and has never really understood what Canberra is all about (and in my view, has never taken the effort to find out).

PantsMan said :

Know which one I prefered!

I’m guessing the one that actually taught you something, “popular” or not?

When I was at Melbourne Uni they brought in a wounderful idea of providing the units that students wanted. Therefore, every lecturer tried to think of wakky names for things. My worst memory was “History and the Media” which was neither about the representation of history in the media, nor the role of the media in history. It was just junk. A weekly feature was watching the 400 of the 500 students enroled in the unit walk out through the two hour lecture; much to the disgust of the lecturer (his failing to have any sylibis didn’t appear to temper his outrage).

At ANU, they just stood in front of you with disgust that they had to teach undergraduate students, and then just told you that this is what you needed to know. Like it sunshine.

Know which one I prefered!

I don’t get what the problem is??? I think its good that the universities are offering more for the people of this city. Especially with Urban and Regional Planning as their is a massive shortage with Town planners, Urban designers etc all over Australia, its not as if Canberra made the course up, it is also done at Newcastle and Melbourne that I’m certain of and probably a few others. You don’t need to look very far in Canberra to see it has been planned very poorly in the passed, this is a good oppurtunity to create more highly trained professionals in the planning and construction of Canberra.

nyssa76 said :

Thumper, I thought about archaeology too :P~

On the other hand, I wouldn’t be far from the Uni Bar either 🙂

A guy who was in my class at school is now an archeologist. Make no bones about it, he really digs . That’s His-story and he’s sticking to it!

But seriously he is. He spend all his time looking at proposed road works to make sure they wont disturb indiginious artifacts.

I’m thinking off either starting another Master’s this year or waiting another year or two and start a PhD. I was looking at retraining and becoming a teacher but my wife say’s w probably can’t afford it just now.

ogrex said :

FYI: it’s not even necessary to go to the library to get the “taped lectures” these days as they’re available to download on the same day the lecture is given (within a few hours in my experience). Download, play off the computer or upload to your Ipod for easy learning.

I swear, I wouldn’t have gone to any lectures as an undergrad with this setup.

It is also why I went to probably 5 total lectures in my last year of law (note that I did 8 subjects in that period).

FYI: it’s not even necessary to go to the library to get the “taped lectures” these days as they’re available to download on the same day the lecture is given (within a few hours in my experience). Download, play off the computer or upload to your Ipod for easy learning.

I swear, I wouldn’t have gone to any lectures as an undergrad with this setup.

maybe i should consider going to uni, I feel very under qualified right about now.

Two post nutbag… now I’m doing it. 8 hours a WEEK, that’s more like it. 2 lectures and one tute per subject per week was about it, and I often got my lectures on tape in teh Chifley.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

As an Engineering undergrad, my Arts friends didn’t seem to be learning to think. Unless of course you call having to turn up for 8 hours per week and do perhaps 4 hours per week of study as learning to think …

If they were turning up for 8 hours a day, that’s a weird arts degree. When I did mine, contact hours were few and far between. You were left to your own devices pretty much, and expected to produce slabs of research on a regular basis which were then torn to bits by ruthless lecturers. Sloppy thinking and sloppy writing and sloppy research were not tolerated, but I did my degree before Dawkins wrecked everything.

Thumper, I thought about archaeology too :P~

On the other hand, I wouldn’t be far from the Uni Bar either 🙂

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy3:16 pm 09 Jan 09

To mangle a phrase, it would be a boring world if we all did Engineering degrees.

Agreed. But what if we all did interesting degrees that didn’t have a job at the end of them? Of course, some lucky people get both…

All this talk makes me want to go back to Uni….

johnboy said :

There’s actually a lot of demand for klingon speakers in psychiatric institutions.

They can make sense of their fellow klingon speakers.

True story.

LOL.

There’s actually a lot of demand for klingon speakers in psychiatric institutions.

They can make sense of their fellow klingon speakers.

True story.

BerraBoy68 said :

At least we’re not as bad as the good ‘ol US of A just yet.

There they have a University of Hambergerology (albeit run by McDonalds).

Apparently, you can also do a degree in Klingon. That’d be money well spent.

Hamburger University is such a great headline that I actually looked it up a year of so ago (thinking what the hell).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcdonald%27s_University

It’s a serious business learning institution. When you have a corporation as large as McDonald’s I guess it makes sense to set up your own specialised institution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_universities

As for Klingon, well all I can say is pIch vighajbe’.

ant said :

Actually Berraboy, I worked with a bloke who had a MA from a US Uni, but when I delved into what he’d done his thesis on, it was some crap aobut the sociological constructs in Star Trek – The Next Generation.

Dear god…

Does wanting to read his thesis make me a super nerd?

ant said :

Actually Berraboy, I worked with a bloke who had a MA from a US Uni, but when I delved into what he’d done his thesis on, it was some crap aobut the sociological constructs in Star Trek – The Next Generation.

The US doesn’t have a monopoly on Star Trek dissertations.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/now-for-star-treks-enterprising-thesis/2006/08/27/1156617211732.html

54-11 said :

I can’t see what’s stupid about a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning. You don’t need to drive very far around Canberra to see examples of absolutely abysmal traffic decisions, made by so-called “planners”. Surely putting a bit of intellectual rigour into some of these decisions has got to be a step in the right direction?

I’d rather place those decisions in the hands of someone with real life experience in the field or some post-graduate excellence rather than a bare pass undergraduate degree.

I can’t see what’s stupid about a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning. You don’t need to drive very far around Canberra to see examples of absolutely abysmal traffic decisions, made by so-called “planners”. Surely putting a bit of intellectual rigour into some of these decisions has got to be a step in the right direction?

Universities are now businesses. So of course they’ll give things titles more likely to catch the eye of prospective customers. And also being businesses, they’ll want to maximise the number of customers they can put through courses that are cheaper to run, per customer (ie a medical customer is costlier to graduate than an ‘urban planning’ customer because the urban planners learn everything from printed materials).
It also matters less if the quality of their teaching is deficient if their customers have only learnt from books, because noone dies from misusing tautologies (even you Overheard) so they can race other universities to the bottom of the barrel.

* original OP * Sigh! We didn’t cover tautologies enough it would appear to seem to be.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

As an Engineering undergrad, my Arts friends didn’t seem to be learning to think. Unless of course you call having to turn up for 8 hours per week and do perhaps 4 hours per week of study as learning to think (and that was full load for some of them). They spent far more time jerking around, drinking, turning up to communist protests and generally being kids.

There are no doubt some good Arts degrees that cover interesting and relevant concepts and material, but also a lot that are pure, distilled bull$hit.

To mangle a phrase, it would be a boring world if we all did Engineering degrees.

I graduated from an Arts degree in 2000, and while I’m the first to acknowledge my workload paled by comparison with others in science-style subjects (my then wife’s included), I take the number one lesson from those many part-time years as the ability to think critically and challenge received wisdom. Among many other related and parallel/peripheral skills.

As a part-timer, I by-passed all the campus activities (including the bar) and just parachuted in for tutorials (and increasinly, from lecture tapes in lieu of the real thing). I was juggling a full-time and full-on job, plus a very young family at the time.

Just one experience. I personally can’t see anything ‘stupid’ in the titles of the degrees mentioned in the original OP.

Overheard, Bachelor of Arts (Communication, spec. Organisational Communication)

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy1:15 pm 09 Jan 09

As an Engineering undergrad, my Arts friends didn’t seem to be learning to think. Unless of course you call having to turn up for 8 hours per week and do perhaps 4 hours per week of study as learning to think (and that was full load for some of them). They spent far more time jerking around, drinking, turning up to communist protests and generally being kids.

There are no doubt some good Arts degrees that cover interesting and relevant concepts and material, but also a lot that are pure, distilled bull$hit.

Actually Berraboy, I worked with a bloke who had a MA from a US Uni, but when I delved into what he’d done his thesis on, it was some crap aobut the sociological constructs in Star Trek – The Next Generation.

Dear god…

At least we’re not as bad as the good ‘ol US of A just yet. There they have a University of Hambergerology (albeit run by McDonalds).

Apparently, you can also do a degree in Klingon. That’d be money well spent.

ogrex said :

It’s just like the trend/boom in forensic science enrollments due to the CSI (and it’s many copies) effect. Many schools and unis that didn’t previously have forensic science programs all of the sudden decided to start one (or rename something they already had).

I was running a careers library when Silence of the Lambs came out, and suddenly every kid was coming in wanted to know about Forensic Psychology. One of my staff went and researchd the occupation, which didn’t really exist in the formal sense. She got a lot of good info around it, but the best stuff came from the FBI themselves, who were kind enough to answer her letter with some good info.

As for frivolous but well-marketed degrees, you can’t beat Southern Cross “uni”, they were on th bandwagon faster than most. I remember their gold-embossed brochure for their qualification in Golf Course Management.

It’s all being driven by the obsession people and their parents have with being qualified for a JOB. Not educated… I don’t know if that concept even survived the Dawkins destruction of our higher education system. No, they want something that will qualify them for that Good Job.

The attitude is everywhere, the sneers at BA degrees, because you’re not qualified for anything. Except being able to think, perhaps.

Genetics is more about research into diseases like cancer or malaria than it is about paternity testing. I think both these are valid degree courses.

Oh, and do recall that most job advertisements simply ask for a relevant tertiary qualification or simply any tertiary qualification. Any competent student should be able to parlay their B.Cult Her as meeting general criteria for anything other than specialist jobs. Adequately presented, it should present no disadvantage over a generic B. Arts and in the right field demonstrate a keen and long standing interest.

‘deficient’, of course, not ‘defieicent’, unlike my capacity to review what i’ve done wrote… : )

we have skills shortages in particular fields in australia, so a university – now pretty well a commercial enterprise – needs to create oppportunities to allow those holes to be plugged…

and the oecd, in its environmental reveiew of australia last year, identified periurban development and management as an area in need of some better policy action, so the urban and regional planning qualification seems to be one that neatly solves an identified problem.

similarly, heritage per se has a whole division of a federal gov’t department and even that is – according to my inside sources – defieicent in its capacity to deal with the issues that need handling, so while this may once have been a component of a broader qualification, it doesn’t seem untoward to have this especially dealt with as a dedicated qualification. i don’t see why all undergard courses need to be broad and wait for post-grad quals to specialise.

Because what 18 year olds need is to be pigeon-holed.

because only eighteen year olds go to uni, johnboy? wake up.

Genetics is a large and sufficiently multi-facted area that providing a named degree is by no means an absurd move. The range of analyitic work, from theory to wet lab, in-silico and computational techniques is more than enough to fill 3 years.

When considering this news though, you need to consider the underlying reasons why universities offer new named degrees. It frequently comes back to three reasons:
1) Student demand, particularly from international students.
2) Cheap marketting.
3) Internal politics (and assuring an allocation of resources).

Even if the degree only gets 2 or 3 enrollments over the equivalent generic degree, offering the named degree advertises and ensures the provision of teaching in the area.

It’s also easier for short-attention-span youth to find, rather than wading through the list of courses offered by the faculty of arts or science.

Oh, if no one minds me offering up a tangent:

The hardest programs to get into (nationwide) when I went to uni were 1) veterinary medicine and 2) pharmacy. This was because both programs severely (and intentionally) limited their intake/graduation numbers to ensure high demand for the profession across the country. I had friends graduating from pharmacy that were going to work in small pharmacies (inside grocery stores) and earned $100k USD. Of course that was pretty much the pinnacle of their careers, but they could also retire pretty early at that rate.

B_Man said :

Now a lot of them are working as consultants for various govenrment departments and apparently raking in some big dollars.

I had a similar experience (sort of) when looking around at the 5 people studying Nuclear Engineering when I was at uni. No one wanted to go into Nuclear Engineering because the technology was dated, and no one wanted to work in a Nuclear Facility.

Right out of school those all 5 of those people got snatched up for consultancies to monitor and oversea the recommissioning of the dozens (hundreds?) of nuclear facilities in the US. To put it in other terms: they got job offers of $90-100k USD right out of school, the rest of us got $45k (civil) to $65-70k (chemical, computer). Of course, who knows what they’re doing now.

Having a number of friends who changed degrees completely (I myself went from a Bachelor of Science to Science/Laws which isn’t the same degree of change), I can definitely understand the concern with regard to having such specialised degrees.

However, I don’t think they are necessarily a bad thing. Some people do know what they want to do at age 18, some people don’t go to uni at the age of 18, and somebody simply need to make a mistake.

If you don’t believe in specialised degrees you could advocate for the ‘Melbourne model’ which is a move towards the US system of having a generic undergraduate degree and then going to a postgraduate ‘law school’ etc.

It’s not personally appealing but I value that option in Australia.

I’d say that ‘the market’ will determine whether these courses are valuable however the extremely centrally planned nature of our Higher Education system (which in many respects was made worse by the Howard Government despite their claims of deregulation) makes it extremely difficult for that to actually happen.

When I was at CSU Albury a few years back my fellow business students and would I often ponder over a few beers as to the future of the cultural heritage students and wondered where they would end up. Now a lot of them are working as consultants for various govenrment departments and apparently raking in some big dollars.

In hindsight it would have been good option because history interests me a lot more than anything I studied but I couldn’t see much future in it at the time.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that these courses are offered, or that people elect to take them!

The courses (not necessarily the degrees) should be offered. Cultural heritage should probably be Bachelor of Arts with a focus in “conservation science” or something like that.

As for giving anyone a “leg up” when seeking a job (ref the B. of Genetics)… I don’t buy it. Postgraduate work is where all the real specialization occurs and asking someone to limit themselves so early on is a recipe for 1) disaster or 2) limited choices. Once upon a time postgraduate programs (and jobs) valued broad-minded individuals. When I was doing my first degree (engineering, but with lots of arts thrown in) I was approached (by the school) to go to medical school because they wanted to diversify their incoming students above and beyond the typical “pre-med” (biology, chemistry) folks that they typically got.

Some of the best opportunities I’ve had came to be because of something I did outside a strict curriculum.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy11:25 am 09 Jan 09

I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that these courses are offered, or that people elect to take them!

Apparently the Bachelor of Genetics is actually divided into “medical genetics”, “molecular genetics”, or “computational and statistical genetics” streams.

The “Cultural Heritage” one is basically museum curatorship, isn’t it? I remember someone telling me there was nowhere left you could do that in Australia, so it’s good to have it back.

The whinging about pigeon-holing seems misguided. It could give students a leg up into their chosen field (it’ll certainly be easier to go on to postgraduate genetics research with that degree than with general science), and if not then they’re no worse off than anyone who studied geology, anthropology, musicology or whatever and then went to work in an unrelated job.

It’s still not quite a silly as the UK just yet. I spoke to a rather posh young lass when I was last in Blighty, who informed me that she was studying a degree in “Fashion Purchasing for Retail”. I barely restrained my guffaw.

BTW – I probably would have done the units requried for a B.Genetics. At the time I started uni, I might have even applied to do one. But I agree – pigeonholing students is bad. I’m very glad I diversified out of straight science and did some philosophy and anthropology.

Sorry to be one of those two post nutbags, but I think Edith Cowan University really wins out when it comes to frivolous degrees. Their bachelor of surfing is a real highlight – http://southwest.ecu.edu.au/surf/course.html.

I’m glad to see the Cultural Heritage degree back at UC, though I’m sure it would be preferable if it remained an applied science degree specialising in Cultural Heritage.

I was at UC a few years ago when they shut the original Cultural Heritage course (at a time when the fed government was really pushing for economic rationalisation of university courses). It was quite a big deal. There were only ever a few dozen students taking the degree each year but it was the only such degree in Australia, at least at the time. Graduates were highly sought after and it was a bit of a feather in the cap for UC.

What next – Bachelor of Blogging with Hons in Facebook? Bachelor of eBay? Bachelor of iPod Engineering?

Cool. You’ll be able to have a B.URP after your name.

grunge_hippy9:45 am 09 Jan 09

yeah my friend started a degree in cultural heritage management or something equally inane and lasted about a year…

Universities have really beefed up their marketing departments, and this is the result.

More students = more $$$

“Popular degrees” = more students

—> “Popular degrees” = more $$$

It’s just like the trend/boom in forensic science enrollments due to the CSI (and it’s many copies) effect. Many schools and unis that didn’t previously have forensic science programs all of the sudden decided to start one (or rename something they already had).

I whole-heartedly believe that there should be a wide range of specialized 2-year (associate’s) degrees, TAFE certificates, etc. I think that Bachelors and above should remain in the core disciplines. There’s plenty of room to specialize within a given curriculum and you state/show that on your CV.

wot said fred9:31 am 09 Jan 09

and urban and regional planning also I suspect from my distant days at CCAE doing urban geography as part of a BApSc also

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.