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Comments of MeCCSA on the British Academy Review of Graduate
Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences
October 2000
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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.
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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).
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Funding for Postgraduate Study
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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.
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In its current review of the postgraduate training
guidelines the ESRC seems likely to accept the provision
of separate guidelines for our field within, though
distinct from, those for sociology. However it will
continue to be regarded as a sub-area within sociology
for this purpose. This is not only inappropriate
disciplinarily (many students in the field are not,
and do not aspire to be, sociologists), it also inevitable
suppresses the likely availability of support for
the field. While we welcome the development of guidelines
specific to the field, this does not address the
fundamental inadequacy of a structure in which there
is no subject panel for a field of substantial and
growing numbers at undergraduate level.
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The Arts and Humanities Research Board does not publish
statistics on its provision of Postgraduate Programme
Awards, though it does publish pie charts in its
Annual Report roughly indicating 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.
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Funding for Research
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The ESRC programme Media Economics and Media Culture
included 17 projects addressed to issues in our field,
and made a significant contribution to research within
its remit. However, of all funded projects (outside
the Programme) supported by the ESRC, in the last
full year reported, fewer than 3% dealt with the
media in any way.
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The British Academy Review of Research (2000) shows
that the subject affiliation of award holders surveyed
included only 4 in cultural studies and 6 in film
studies. While others in media studies may well have
been trading under other labels, in Sociology, American
Studies, or Psychology, for example, these two categories
only account for 4.2 per cent of the award holders
surveyed. In 1996-2000, of all small awards made
by the British Academy, just 2.2 per cent were in
communications, cultural, or film studies. The numbers
are too small to make sensible deductions from the
apparent success rates in each of these areas.
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The Arts and Humanities Research Board has been a
welcome addition to potential sources for research
funding. Its panel structure included a panel for
Visual Arts and Media and a sub-panel for History
of Visual Arts and Media; these two are now integrated.
This would appear to offer a home and a vehicle for
support in our field. However these panels have a
responsibility for art and design as well as our
fields, a breadth of oversight which may make provision
for communication and media studies difficult. While
cultural studies in particular probably surfaces
in the work supported by many, if not all panels,
it is uncertain at best whether this panel structure
serves the field well. Cultural, communication and
media studies as a set of cognate fields is dealt
with quite separately from art and design within
the Research Assessment Exercise. This is an issue
on which the Association has had repeated and valuable
discussion with the senior officers of the Board.
Their advice has been that it is a paucity of proposals
rather than the inadequate panel structure which
has handicapped the field. However, while we accept,
and indeed aim to address, the need to encourage
and support more and better research development
and submission of proposals, it may be that the panel
structure itself acts as a disincentive to potential
applicants. In 1999-2000 the Board made 109 Advanced
Research Programme Awards, of which fewer than 15
per cent were in either visual arts and media or
the history of visual arts and media, despite the
inclusion within these broad categories of art and
design as well as, to a far smaller extent, the fields
with which we are primarily concerned.
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There is plainly a fundamental problem for an interdisciplinary
area like ours in its uncertain fit into the remits
of the various research funding bodies. The AHRB
Working Group on Subject Domain and Research Definitions
Report (July 1999), notes the difficulties this poses
in many areas such as ours. It suggests, in a rehearsal
of a previous formula used by the Humanities Research
Board, that:
"In areas such as cultural and communications
studies, for example, or in area studies or gender
studies, the Board's general stance should be that
if the focus of the proposed study is on artistic
or creative practices, history, languages, literatures,
or on the study of texts or images, then it falls
within the domain of the arts and humanities".
In the past this approach has been amplified by
the view that research on 'impacts' would properly
be the domain of the ESRC. The panel, and the Board,
have recognised the inconsistencies and difficulties
this poses. A research project addressing the relationship
between gendered employment practices in the media
industry and the portrayal of women in media texts
for example, or of the latter on women's perceptions
of the gendered nature of social relations, would
clearly straddle the boundaries being created. Such
transgressing of boundaries is probably more typical
than exceptional, and it may be that since no single
and simple demarcation would ever be achievable,
a more flexible and all-embracing approach to research
applications from both Board and Council is required.
The worst possible outcome, that good proposals 'fall
between two stools', is a risk to which many in the
field feel themselves prey.
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Recommendations and Observations
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Cultural, communication and media studies embrace
a variety of cognate research fields which have been
extremely successful and which have grown substantially
in recent years. Students graduating in these fields
are successful in obtaining employment outside academia.
Nonetheless there is a very serious question to be
addressed in the need to ensure the training and
recruitment of the next generation of researchers
in this important area. Equally important is the
need to ensure that teachers in these fields in the
future have a sound grounding in and good opportunities
to pursue research. Research and teaching in the
UK in these areas has a very high reputation. This
should be protected and enhanced, and in this the
research councils, and other bodies funding research,
have an important responsibility.
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At present the areas with which we are concerned
do not have well defined locations in the administrative
structure of the AHRB or the ESRC. There would seem
to be prima face evidence that this may significantly
suppress the funding and support available to them.
This is exacerbated by imprecise intellectual boundaries
to the fields. While these are inevitable, perhaps
even desirable and productive, they do increase the
risk that good graduates, postgraduate programmes,
and research initiatives, do not get the support
they merit or the attention they warrant. These boundaries
have been addressed to some limited extent by an
enquiry conducted by the AHRB. We recommend the establishment
of a joint working group of the AHRB and the ESRC
to assess and make recommendations about the responsibilities
for and contributions to the development of research
in these fields by both bodies. We would hope that
the active involvement of this Association in such
an exercise would be possible.
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In advance of such an enquiry we have recommended
the acceptance by the ESRC of subject specific guidelines
for postgraduate training for communications, media
and cultural studies (as a cognate field within the
sociology subject area panel for the time being,
though this may not be the ideal long term solution).
We also recommend that the panel structure of the
AHRB be kept under review to assess the contribution
of the Board to research and research training in
our fields provided by the Visual Arts and Media
Panel, given its heavy commitment to support for
art and design. We further recommend that more thought
be given to support by both the Board (with whom
this idea has already been floated) and the Council
(with whom it has yet to be discussed) for support
for training for young researchers in the preparation
and submission of research proposals to funding bodies.
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Each of the funding bodies discussed in this paper,
and indeed other statutory bodies such as the QAA,
or exercises, such as the RAE, take different positions
and define the fields with which we are concerned
in varying ways. While this is inevitable to some
degree and not wholly inappropriate, there is clearly
a need for further coherence than currently exists.
Summary of recommendations
We recommend:
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the establishment of a joint working group of the AHRB
and the ESRC to assess and make recommendations about
the responsibilities for and contributions to the development
of research in these fields by both bodies.
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the acceptance by the ESRC of subject specific guidelines
for postgraduate training for communications, media and
cultural studies
-
the panel structure of the AHRB be kept under review
to assess the contribution of the Board to research and
research training in our fields provided by the Visual
Arts and Media Panel, given its heavy commitment to support
for art and design
-
more thought be given to support by both the AHRB and
the ESRC for support for training for young researchers
in the preparation and submission of research proposals
in media, communication and cultural studies to funding
bodies.
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