What's wrong with a Twitter degree? "It's not another Mickey Mouse course," insists tutor Jon Hickman, of Birmingham City University, talking about his new MA degree course in "social media". The £4,400 course starts in September. "People are going to think we're doing an MA in blogging or Lolcats." So what's it about, then? "It's about the culture of things," …
UCE (Or BCU as it is now known) was a clown college back then and its clearly still a clown college.
The Birmingham college of food, tourism and industry (AKA the College of Cakes in Birmingham) has recently renamed itself to UCB (University of central Birmingham (University of Cakes in Birmingham).
People need to go to a proper university and get a proper degree - also why is it an MA rather than an MSc?
Really, this just sounds like some of the more stupid crap that comes out of the social sciences.
The sad thing is, there is quite a lot of the social sciences that are academically rigourous, well thought out, and backed up by evidence and study.
Then there is this kind of self rationalising crud. Far too much of the social sciences is dominated by liberal doctrine (and I say that as a committed liberal), and not enough questioning of preconceptions.
It's a shame really, because you only really hear about the "well duh!' kinds of studies, or this kind of shallow intellectual masturbation.
On the other hand, if you are prepared to spend £4k on it then go knock yourself out. At least if keeps you away from anyone with a brain for a year.
"Birmingham's" MA course. This may lead people to believe that it's associated with a real university rather than a technical college with delusions of adequacy.
My local one offers an MA in "International Football Management" (sadly, I'm not making this up). Loads of job opportunities there, then.
Birmingham City University is not the University of Birmingham, which as we all know is the best uni in Birmingham. *awaits crows of Aston uni alumini to attack*
Coincidently, Birmingham City Uni was formally UCE (University of Central England) which as the cross-Birmingham joke goes, were the grades you needed at A-Level to get in...
anon 'cos I've probably pissed off two thirds of the students in Birmingham!
""Muslim feminists" are OK - climate skeptics, probably not."
That's because the former actually have a sensible cause, whilst the latter are fucking idiots. Of course a blogger isn't going to get heard if they don't have anything insightful to say.
I'm glad you grew the balls to enabled comments on one of your articles at last though I mean there, that wasn't so hard now was it?
Sounds like you could do with enrolling at Birmingham City University.
You can has corses in lolspeak (or a OMGWTFBBQSc), blogging (all coursework based, although no-one actually ever reads it) and online gaming (a PwnHD). It is almost definitely one of top 20 universities in Birmingham. Probably.
I graduated from UCE as it was back then and I am doing ok for myself.
I believe it's an MA because it is looking at Media (which for some bizarre reason is classed as an Art) and not the computing aspect of it.
£4k is a lot of money for something that should probably be included in a Marketing MA.
Yeah, those guys who know more aboutthe sub ject than you (or I) know fuck all...
Oh, and those Japanese researchers -- they've no idea either.
I put it to you that I know the back of your hand better than yhou, because the papers said so.
"That's because the former actually have a sensible cause, whilst the latter are fucking idiots"
Well, while I might agree that "climate skeptics" (what's that, people who don't believe climate exists?) are usually not very sensible, I think that this is irrelevant and you just simply missed the point.
In my opinion, the point was that people like the course organizer have a (very human) tendency of thinking that freedom of expression and all the Web 2.0 communication or whatever thing are fabulous, but only when applied to expressing views with which they already agree. They are probably not as exultant when it is "the other side" who is rallying their bases by using said technologies.
Or maybe not.
>Birmingham's MA course has drawn plenty of criticism today - not least from prospective students, who have questioned why they need to pay over £4,000 to "learn" something they can figure out by themselves in five minutes.
That's education. You don't pay for the learning. You pay for the piece of paper, which is to prove more that you can tolerate the education process long enough to finish it (useful in employment) more than that you learned something (which is the easy bit). The real question is whether this particular certificate is going to be worth anything. I'm guessing no.
Ummm, yet only a few days ago there was some stuff on here suggesting that the melting of ice caps isn't caused by increased levels of CO2, but rather decreased levels of dust in the atmosphere...
so perhaps it's the people like you who are blindly assuming all that you're told is correct that are in fact the "fucking idiots".
I thought the article was good and to the point. This fat, rancid elephant's been in the room for a long time now and people try very hard to not see it. The Web 2.0 hive mind social networking mantra IS creepy. For a start, someone pays for it, whether it be advertisers or venture capitalists. They want to get something back, so they are ultimately in control of how this 'new medium' evolves. The dreamy vision is that the users are in control of it - the new anarchy! We don't need no hierarchy! No? Just shut up, buy that latest app, read that advertisment and give us your god damn money.
This course will be pushing an agenda, not exploring psychology or technology. There are some interesting areas in social science and psychology, but there are far more many dull opinions dressed up as fact. They are so vague that they cannot be questioned, and anyone who tries will be told that they don't get social science. How well they have taught their 'emergent knowledge' minions then. It's not science at all, it's religion. Twitter, Facebook and the like are the clerics banging on about how their way is the True Way.
Too many 'social networks' are expensive answers desperately looking for problems. And then I wonder - this "hive mind". Supposedly the sum of all knowledge, emerging like the perfect market. But in fact it's the sum of most human ego and politics, emerging so tediously yet again in another form.
In exchange for this, we stop questioning what we read, because it's on Wikipedia, and we stop seeing people for real because we speak to them on Facebook, lost souls amongst countless fake friends, collected to validate our self-importance. Thanks to social science and social networks we are becoming less social.
The fucking irony.
Universities are funded through cranking out graduates and the returns are better on media studies courses than engineering etc.
If is far easier to provide degrees in media studies etc than engineering etc.
Media studies don't require much specialized knowledge beyond understanding how to operate a remote. No need to understand Laplace transforms or NP complete or any of that old fuddy-duddy stuff.
No need to buy complex lab equipment like oscilloscopes etc which cost loads, get broken/obsolete.
These degrees appeal to yoof too. Tonight's homework: watch some TV. Extra credits if you submit your report via twitter or as a rap on youtube.
I recently lost a large amount of paperwork due to a crawlspace (a sort of under-house attic) flood, amongst which were my degree and other certificates.
The process of getting these replaced seems like more work than a lolcat degree. Therefore I'm applying.
It also seems to me that you wouldn't actually need to attend the university to pass such a degree, just send in some random mindless blithering via myspace or twitter and a few doctored images of cats. Unlearning how to spell the small amount of language I can correctly jot down is probably another requirement, perhaps some sort of leapfrog device altering words to their phonetic equivalents is in order, maybe with a leet-speeke letter re-organisation addon.
Of course anyone who regularly plays the time sink World of Warcraft would have a pretty good head start on language.
'My shammy pwned ur rouge.. u fail at pvp dude.. give up now an re-roll ally'
I can't wait to see the advantage that gives me when I quit my job and apply to Nasa.
In his wonderfully bleak and depressing novel 'Titan' Stephen Baxter describes the rise of a new class of society - the high educated unemployable person.
For memory, the person described was only able to be employed as a household assistant, and not a very good one at that. He lived in the garage and spent his spare time making statues of himself, self-felating himself, out of his own lipsuctioned fat and his own feces. I'm not making this up.
If you are considering a degree like this, you would do well to read 'Titan' (don't get mixed up with Ben Bova's 'Titan' - it's rubbish) and see what lies ahead of you.
I love Baxter's work - in almost every book he kills off at least 90% of the human race, and 'Titan' is probably the best - he kills off not just every human, but ALL life on Earth by about 2037. He then goes on to describe Voyager 2 falling apart before it even gets more than 1 or 2 light years from where Earth was, so no-one finds it. Justice for a planet-load of B-Arkers!
I can get this degree, and put it alongside my other useless qualifications
MY short CV:
- Graduated Alta Vista high school
- Undergraduate degree in Ask Jeeves
- Masters degree in Myspace
- PhD in cloud facebook twitterology 2.0 (this will be relevant for at least another week)
More confirmation of the content-free toss nexus, or whatever we're calling Web No.2 this morning. I'm doing a degree, a proper one with essays, exams and modafinil deathmarch revision. It will give me a sense of real achievement if I pass and real failure if I don't.
As regards Arsebook, Sadspace and Belmo, I use them specifically to track people outside the local area, in my interest groups. Those people are not my "friends". Being quite traditional, I don't regard an introduction as having occurred until the handshake/third pint/exchange of fluids.
In 2009, social media are integrated on many levels in entertainment, marketing, and e-commerce. There's much to discuss and learn beyond merely dismissing it as a "lolcat degree." There are several such programs in the states, such as the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at USC, who are part of reputable institutions and have no trouble placing students in managerial and higher roles. It's about time we consider the creation and cultivation of online communities as an enterprise unto itself, and not just recreation for youth. It's part of the professional world we live in.
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