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Media studies doesn't deserve its bad reputation as a 'mickey mouse' subject, says a student blogger. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Features
Media studies doesn't deserve its bad reputation as a 'mickey mouse' subject, says a student blogger. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Features

Media studies: it's not a 'mickey mouse' degree

This article is more than 10 years old
A university degree in media studies isn't a waste of time, writes a student blogger who is used to the bad reputation

Compulsory industry placements, late night editing, 14 hours of lectures a week and endless study tasks and assignments – not the workload typically associated with a media studies degree. But this is the reality of today's media student.

As a media studies student I have battled with the stigma attached to media and communications degrees. Media studies is often seen as a "mickey mouse" subject and a media student is perceived to be the degree equivalent of the couch potato. But I think few people actually know what media studies means, or what it's like to study it at uni.

Professor James Curran, director of the Goldsmith's media research centre and author of Defending Media Studies, says: "I think that if people knew how demanding media studies is and how it requires the ability to write really well, a skill that most people don't have but makes a lot of media students highly employable, they would think differently."

According to the Office of National Statistics 2013 report, people with a degree in media have the second highest employment rate in the UK. So how come the subject is still so ridiculed, and why have ministers previously protested for it to be taken off the national curriculum when it provides so much for the economy?

The media is a powerful entity which plays a significant role within society. Professor Philip Thickett, head of Birmingham City University's school of media says: "It gives the people a voice or the skill to actually change people's views or lives and I think that's incredibly powerful. That is why media matters."

Media studies isn't about watching films and reading newspapers, it's about actively engaging with media practice, theory and production. It's about working within the industry and requires skills like good project management and critical thinking.

Many have argued that the course is non-academic but on my course I found the complexities of the social and cultural theory was enough to leave your mind boggled. The fact that aspects of media are also taught at some of the leading universities, including Harvard and Stanford at postgraduate level, demonstrates why it is worthy of a degree. As Professor Curran notes, "it's only Britain that has a problem with it."

Thickett says: "The course is very challenging: we want students to be intellectually stimulated and to understand and experience pressures that they will encounter when they take up jobs within the media. This is possibly one of the unspoken skills in that it is a pressurised course and it is no different from what people face in the industry."

Media studies may be regarded as a "soft" subject, but it's a ruthless industry and we are taught how to work within it. As Thickett says: "You don't live in a 'mickey mouse' world and media studies is certainly no 'mickey mouse' degree."

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