Media studies was in the hot seat and trending on Twitter in the UK. The Head of Policy was responsible for one of the most inflammatory of tweets; lamenting the number of students who study Psychology, Sociology, and most infamously, Media Studies. Wilkinson deemed 19,517 students undertaking the Media Studies A-Level compared to 7,557 taking French a "crisis." This was followed by the branding of the popularity of Psychology and Sociology over "hard" subjects such as Biology, History, Physics, and English Literature as an "epidemic."
Considering the number of A-Level and BTEC students who were severely let down by our educational sector this month, this thread was poorly timed to say the least. But shifting away from fleeting Twitter storms and short-lived moral outrage, why do we so see often see the shaming of those who pursue media studies or so-called 'soft subjects'?
This is not the first time we've seen snobbery towards educational decisions that do not fall into the traditional 'academic' category, and we should be looking at where this comes from and who tends to take advantage of this nose-lifting.
First and foremost, the decision one makes about their A-Levels or their degree necessarily depends on what they want to do for a career; studying English Literature at university isn't going help very much if you want to be a doctor, much in the same way that studying Physics doesn't make much sense if you want to be an editor for the BBC. Straight off the bat, you can't talk down to media studies unless you have decided that some careers are worth more than others.
Also, have we considered that a person might study Media Studies and French at the exact same time? There are a lot of dodgy assumptions you have to make about certain types of education, careers, and people in order to look down on vocational or 'soft' subjects. But why have we seen this type of behaviour so many times where people turn their noses up at subjects without an immediate career attached to it, especially the humanities?
Since the 2000s, when the fees for university education soared to £9k per year, we have seen students become much more selective in their choice of degree. Many students choose courses that are much more specific to the career path they want to follow, including courses such as business management, or media studies.
We have seen politicians such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, and David Cameron refer to these courses as "Mickey Mouse subjects", even if they were attempting to defend them. For the general election of December 2020, I attended a husting in Southampton where the UKIP and Conservative candidates for Itchen hinged their policies on the assertion that students who study these 'useless' subjects are a burden to the taxpayer (they didn't mention how).
It isn't being alarmist to acknowledge that this bashing of higher education has much graver implications. A terrifying detriment was set in 2017 when far-right Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, decided to cut funding from Gender Studies courses in the two prestigious universities in the Central European University. The reasoning was that the courses were not necessary for Hungary and did not attract enough students, despite gender studies being a completely valid scientific discipline.
What is the point of Sociology, Psychology, Gender Studies, and Media Studies? Like any other social science or humanity, they can be used to understand and criticise the way things are, and actively formulate and advocate for how things ought to be. Is this a skill that we should be so willing to handwave away? Furthermore, we need to be mindful of the culture we create around education that facilitates the undermining of our own academic freedom.
The Twitter storm is over and done with, latching itself onto the latest 24-hour scandal, but this British bombardment of Media Studies is reflective of a much more worrying mentality that we have the right to sneer at education.
Words by Elizabeth Sorrell
Featured image courtesy of Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash
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