Tuesday, 28 April 2009
What future for Combined Studies?
As we all know the acadeic structure working party is continuing to review the existing structures in the university - calendar, terms, etc. But one quite likely consequence which may be confirmed before the end of the year is a radical pruning of combined options and a switch to particular 'named' degree combinations which become in effect single honours pathways e.g. film and english to be treated as if it was a s/h programme. We may well be asked to nominate our preferred combinations before the endof the year. What do we think of this development. there are some very good 'rational' reasons for doing this and, indeed, most of the sector has already embarked on this approach. But before I left DMU in 2004 numerous s/h programmes folded through the 'unintended consequence' of this. Not that history always repeats itself!
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I know Paul that you are keen on a wide range of combinations but the reality from my small corner is that it clusters around journalism and media; journalism and english and journalism and performance. The rest is pretty much ones and twos.
ReplyDeleteFor journalism that is probably true but for some programmes - possibly including media studies and film studies - the situation is more complex. These programmes typically recruit around 70% of their joints from four or five predictable combinations but there is another 30% that come from quite literally dozens of combinations. The loss of these 30% could be crucial. I guess what will happen is probably inevitable but it is frustrating that this university is now doing what the rest of the sector did about 6 years ago and just when there is probably a gap in the market for a traditional pick and mix combined programme because so few other places now offer them.
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