The thing about these “Mickey Mouse Degrees” is that they never really go away. People always talk about them. What are these “Mickey Mouse Degrees” anyway? They are the kinds of degrees that people think are not very useful.
The “Mickey Mouse Degrees” have been around for a time. Some people think that having a “Mickey Mouse Degree” is a thing.. Others do not think so. They think that all kinds of degrees can be useful.
People will always have opinions, about “Mickey Mouse Degrees”. That is the way it is. The “Mickey Mouse Degrees” will always be a topic of conversation.
The argument about university courses comes up every years. It might be a politician who says something or a think tank or a headline in the news. Some people call university courses “Mickey Mouse” courses. They do this to make it seem like these courses are not serious. They are saying that these courses are not really about learning. This is not a thing to say. It makes people wonder if these courses are really worth anything. It makes them think about what the point of education is. Is education really for everyone or is it just, for some people? The phrase “Mickey Mouse” might sound funny. It is actually pretty hurtful.
What is interesting is how old this argument is. One of the recorded uses of this argument goes back, to the 1960s in Oregon, when a state legislator said a medical technology degree was a Mickey Mouse qualification. The state legislator was not worried that the students were not learning anything. His concern was that the institution did not look good enough and the course did not fit his idea of what a proper university education should be. The state legislator later took back what he said. The medical technology graduates were already working at that time.
That pattern still feels familiar, to me. I have seen that pattern before. It still looks really familiar. That pattern is something that I just cannot forget it is that pattern that keeps coming to my mind.
Today people are talking about this debate a lot more. It is getting really loud and fast. The internet and money issues and disagreements about what’s right and wrong are making it even bigger. There are lists going around online that say hundreds of courses are not worth taking. The reason for this is pretty simple. If a subject seems specific or about art or politics or is just not well known people think it is not serious. If it does not clearly lead to a job that pays a lot of money people think it is a waste of time. The debate is about courses like these and people are being very loud, about it.
When you are actually there, on the ground the situation looks really messy. The ground is where the real problems are and things are not very organized. On the ground things are a lot more complicated.
When you talk to students who are actually taking these courses you get an idea of what is going on. You meet a media studies student who is trying to balance doing freelance work with learning about how stories can affect what people think. Then there is the games design student who is learning how to work with others and get really good at the side of things in an industry that is actually bigger than the movie business. You also have the fashion student who is trying to figure out how to make clothes in a way that’s good for the planet and dealing with suppliers from all around the world. These are not things that students are doing for fun. The media studies course and the games design course and the fashion course are all connected, to parts of the economy and our culture.
The term Mickey Mouse course has always been a bit tricky to understand. In the United States it used to mean a class that was really easy to pass.. In the United Kingdom it can have a different meaning, often with a bit of politics behind it. People use it to suggest that some subjects are not really worth studying or that they are a waste of money. Nowadays when people talk about a Mickey Mouse course they usually mean the things about universities that they do not like, such, as Mickey Mouse courses themselves.
The label is really good at what it does. It is also very misleading. This is why the label works well and why the label is so misleading, at the same time. The label is an example of something that is effective but the label can also be deceptive.
Something really caught my attention the day. A list from a think tank in the UK was going around. It had almost 800 courses on it. These courses were put into groups. The people who made the list looked at the names of the courses. Used their own judgement to decide which group to put them in. The groups they came up with were things like
* some categories that were pretty general
The list had a lot of courses on it and the think tank, in the UK was the one who made the list of courses. The categories they used to group the courses were based on what the courses were called and what the researcher thought about them. The UK think tank made a list of courses and they put the courses into groups.
Fashion, including textiles and jewellery
Games, mainly linked to the computer games industry
Media, such as film, photography, jazz and popular music
“Woke,” covering topics around ethnicity, gender, mental wellbeing and sustainability
Miscellaneous, including leisure-linked vocational courses and arts and crafts
People did not make a difference, between undergraduate and postgraduate study. They did not care if the courses were actually being taught or how they were being taught. The information they had was very limited. They did not think about the situation. The main goal of undergraduate and postgraduate study was not to understand things but to get a reaction.
And provocation works.
People are really worried about what school’s actually for. This is because jobs do not seem stable and it is hard to know what will happen in the future. The government always talks about how we need skilled workers and how we need to be more productive. Parents get stressed about how money they have to borrow. Students feel like they have to explain why they are making choices all the time. When you think about all of these things education is the thing that people start to question. Anything that seems like fun or lets students be creative or is not very clear becomes the thing that people criticize. Education is what people are worried, about.
If you look back at the past you can see that these kinds of decisions do not hold up over time. History shows us that these judgements age badly.
People used to make fun of arts degrees in the 1960s and 1970s. Then, in the 1980s it was sociology that people did not like. On in the 1990s people started criticizing gender studies. But the thing is, many of the people who studied arts degrees, sociology and gender studies they went on to do important things in media, policy, education and business. Arts degrees, sociology and gender studies these subjects they helped shape the people who studied them. They did things that nobody expected when they graduated.
People often laugh at courses that’re too specific or too vague but the thing is, education courses like these can still be useful, in other ways. Having a degree does not always mean someone is trained for one job. Sometimes what a degree really teaches you is how to think for yourself how to adapt to situations how to work with other people and how to deal with things when they are not certain. The skills that education courses and a degree teach you like thinking and adapting and collaborating and surviving uncertainty are not always easy to measure. You will rarely see them listed in tables that show how much money you can make.
There is also a class and cultural dimension to the debate about education. Classes that focus on knowledge or creative things or social issues are more likely to be dismissed than classes that are related to traditional jobs. The prestige of the class still matters a lot. The person who teaches the class and the place where it is taught and the students who are in the class often affect what people think about the class more than what the classs actually about. The class itself is not as important as who teaches the class and where the class is taught and who the students are, in the class.
When you think about it a simple truth gets lost in all the noise. Nobody really knows what skills will be the important skills in ten years. Some industries will. Then they will fall. Technologies will. Shift. New job categories will. Old ones will disappear. It is really risky to bet everything on a definition of what is valuable, to the economy. The skills that matter most the skills, are hard to predict because industries and technologies are always changing.
That does not mean that public funding should not be looked at carefully or that universities should not be responsible for what they do. It means that only thinking about how much money education can make in a time is not a good way to think about it. Education is about more than making money it is about the universities and the public funding, for universities.
Learning is really important for reasons. It helps us understand the culture we live in. It helps us get along with other people. Learning also helps us deal with changes that happen in our lives. These are things about learning but they are not always easy to see. That is why some people do not think they are important. Learning has value that goes beyond being useful right now. It is good for our understanding and it is good, for our cultural life. The benefits of learning are not always easy to measure which is why some people do not care about them.. Learning is still very important because it helps us respond to change.
The phrase “Mickey Mouse degree” is still around because it makes people feel better. It makes us think that someone there really knows what is important and what is not.. The truth is, we are all just trying to figure things out. The “Mickey Mouse degree” idea gives us comfort because it says that someone somewhere has all the answers.. Really the “Mickey Mouse degree” is just something we use to make ourselves feel okay about not knowing what we are doing. We all know that the “Mickey Mouse degree” is not a thing but it is a nice idea to hold onto.
The more honest starting point might be this. We don’t fully know what the future needs. So a healthy education system leaves room for curiosity, creativity, and even the occasional course that looks strange today but makes sense tomorrow.
