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Comments of MeCCSA on the AHRB Review of Postgraduate Awards
May 2001
Introductory Remarks
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The Association
- MeCCSA is the subject association for the fields
covered in its title in UK higher education. It was
formed in 1999 following the fusion of two predecessor
bodies, the Standing Conference on Cultural, Communication
and Media Studies, and the Association for Media, Communication
and Cultural Studies. The fused body represents both
individuals and departments in Higher Education, and
supports and fosters the development of its field.
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The Subject Area
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The composite and diverse areas covered by this body
range across the humanities and social sciences,
and embrace both technical and vocational training
as well as academic fields of study. The balance
between these, in teaching, varies from programme
to programme, and the variety of styles and substance
of research inevitably leads scholars and graduates
in the field to encounters with more than one funding
body, an issue to which we return below.
-
Data from AGCAS suggest that fewer students in this
area go on to further study after undergraduate degrees
than in many other areas. This reflects two features
of the academic field. First, students in these disciplines
are readily able to find employment. Despite much
press mythology to the contrary, students in cultural,
communication and media studies have better employment
records after graduation than graduates from most
other humanities and social science disciplines,
and indeed, than many science and engineering disciplines.
Secondly, the field into which many of them move,
including the imprecisely labelled cultural or communication
or information industries, have been and are likely
to continue to be fertile fields of employment for
graduates. They provide salaries and opportunities
which academic employment can rarely match. Thus
the temptations of postgraduate training and academic
employment are relatively limited. The expansion
at undergraduate level (especially in recent years,
though not nearly as massive or rapid as sometimes
suggested) is thus not reflected in comparable expansion
at postgraduate level, though this is a vibrant sector
comprising both academic and vocational courses (and
including the recent development of postgraduate
training in journalism).
-
Funding for Postgraduate Study
-
Students wishing to undertake postgraduate training
in our area have faced a particular difficulty in
obtaining financial support. There is no tradition
in the UK, unlike the USA for example, of industrial
support for postgraduate work in communications.
The ESRC has provided support for students on taught
masters courses, but the most recent data show that
relevant MA courses at only 20 institutions received
recognition between 1996 and 1999. Studentships in
our field, as well as courses, are recognised and
supported by the Council's Sociology Subject Area
Panel. In 1999 this panel awarded 64 places on taught
course and 49 studentships for research degrees.
These figures include awards to all fields within
sociology as well as the areas in which we are directly
interested. While it has not been possible to disaggregate
these figures it is obvious that the field receives
little or no support within this already overcrowded
subject area. ESRC support for taught courses is
about to cease with the introduction of the Council’s
new arrangements for postgraduate training.
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The Arts and Humanities Research Board statistics
on its provision of Postgraduate Programme Awards
roughly indicate the provision of applications and
awards by Board panel. In 1999-2000 these charts
would seem to indicate that of 454 awards made in
Competition A (taught masters' courses) , roughly
40 per cent were in Visual Arts and Media, while
in Competition B (research doctorates) about one
third of the 573 awards were in either visual arts
and media or the history of visual arts and media
(the large majority in the latter category). It is
impossible to disaggregate these figures or to give
them more precisely and we hope to obtain such unpublished
data from the Board. However, the more salient point
is the integration of our fields with the very large
areas of art and design in such data. Informal indications
from the Board suggest very few of such awards are
in our subject areas.
Responses To Specific Questions In The Review
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Mission and Objectives
Our concern here is with the definition of its field
and remit employed by the AHRB. In a joint statement
issued with the ESRC the Board rightly recognises the
impossibility of drawing clear boundaries between the
social sciences and humanities, and identifies several
areas where the boundaries are inevitably blurred. We
welcome the sensible view of both bodies that it is undesirable
to draw tight boundaries between their respective remits.
However we continue to fear that the intention of ensuring
that "no application falls into a gap between the
two bodies" may be failing both research applicants
and students.
The published commentary on the boundary in our area
of work merely says that "which of the two bodies
is the more appropriate depends on…the research
questions…the wider context…and the methodologies
to be adopted", without any guidance as to how those
criteria are to be applied. This is of little or no help
to intending applicants. While we do not wish to see
inappropriately precise demarcation, we feel intending
students need more guidance than this on how their research
ideas might best be constructed and to which body they
might be best advised to turn for support. We would welcome
an opportunity to pursue this further with the board,
as with the ESRC.
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Balanced Portfolio
We have two concerns under this heading:
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Although the breadth of research interests covered
by our fields, especially within cultural studies,
means that many students may well get support from
several of the AHRB panels, we nonetheless feel that
it would be of benefit to have a specific panel with
a remit for the fields we cover, not least because
of the danger that they may be subsumed within the
remit of the Visual Arts and Media panel, which has
also to cater for the very large body of work in
art and design.
-
Much important work within our fields is theoretical
or conceptual. We support the view expressed by several
bodies recently in addressing the ESRC that the Council's
reconstruction of its guidelines for postgraduate
training, in placing a welcome emphasis on the need
for rigorous training in methodology, may incidentally
limit the resources available for theoretical and
conceptual work. The same concern may need to be
addressed by the AHRB. We would caution against any
possibility that innovative postgraduate research
of a more theoretical character would find it difficult
to gain support, particularly if balance is unduly
shifted towards support with "a direct professional
or vocational outcome". We regard the role of
the AHRB, as it is of the other research councils,
to provide support for innovative blue skies research
with no immediate or obvious application, in the
interest of enriching the disciplines and laying
the foundations for unpredictable innovations in
applied areas in the future.
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Allocating Awards
We do not support the notion of quotas for institutions
or departments for research awards, which should be driven
by assessment of quality and merit.
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Research Training and Supervision
This is a complex area requiring full consideration.
The Postgraduate Training Guidelines recently produced
by the ESRC have been the focus of much controversy,
on the basis of what many perceive to be their unduly
prescriptive nature and their excessively quantitative
understanding of research methods. The QAA has, in its
turn, produced guidelines in the form of a Code of Practice
for the standard and content of research supervision.
These are matters that should largely be the province
of individual HEI's, though minimum standards of provision
and support should be required, and applicants should
have full information of what they might expect when
registered in different departments with differing styles,
cultures, or pedagogic methods.
The range of subjects covered by the AHRB does not easily
allow for general statements about 'training requirements,
but we do not believe those for arts and humanities students
to be in general distinct from those in other subject
areas.
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Funding
We do not have a subject specific view on this matter.
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