That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
At some point in the questioning Dyke digressed to tell an anecdote about his son. Apparently, his son was to take a final exam at his university in Manchester the day after Manchester United’s Champions League face-off with Barcelona. This is some dilemma and he goes to his father from some solid advice.
Dyke’s parental response? “Do you think any one will ask you what you got in your degree in 10 years time son?” Maybe this is true. If you or me messed up our whole degree over a football match people might be more likely to ask "where can I find the beans" over "what did you get in your degree" as we stack the shelves in our local supermarket.
But I don’t think this is what Dyke had in mind. Because Greg Dyke’s son probably won’t be stacking shelves and Greg Dyke seems to have forgotten one remarkable fact about his son that separates him from the audience he was speaking to: he is Greg Dyke’s son. To hear our own Chancellor brush off a degree as something you do to get a piece of paper and quickly forget about, is just heartbreaking.
Do you think any one will ask you what you got in your degree in 10 years time?
Another member of the panel, Tom Gutteridge – Chairman of Skillset’s Northern Media Industries Panel, a director of Northern Film & Media, and (would you believe it) Visiting Professor of Media at the University of Teeside – scoffed at the value of postgraduate education. If you don’t leave university immediately after your Bachelor’s degree, he said, “there must be something wrong with you”.
According to Gutteridge if you are the sort of person who will make it in the creative industries you will be bored and bursting to get out. Actually, if you’re bored by university, i.e bored by having the chance to discuss and debate your degree subject with the top minds in the field, bored with all the many people, societies and opportunities that are on offer at university… I wouldn’t necessarily say there is something wrong with you, but I would say you are not the sort of dynamic person who would be useful to the creative industries.
Some of us value our education and give our all to it. Whilst we acknowledge that it is not the golden ticket into the career of our dreams we do not devalue learning and the intellectual stimulus a university degree provides. Students are often accused of neglecting practical experience for academic qualifications. I think what tonight has shown is that students are perfectly aware of the world outside academia but it is the professionals who have become arrogant and contemptuous of the academic world.
This illustrates exactly the stereotype I've had repeatedly of the arrogant, shallow and deeply dull media pro. Regardless of whether my impression is (to a greater or lesser degree) correct, the prospect of working alongside a group of people like that, whose predominant motivation is a dynamism without intellectual substance, puts me off any aspirations I might have to go into that line of work.
I went to the media convention, and you've really twisted their words here, so you can write as incendiary and antagonistic an article as possible...
Therefore, ironically, good/thought-provoking journalism. I've never felt so strongly about any article on The Yorker to date than this one.
Greg Dyke wasn't telling students to tear up their books and p*ss on their degree, you've really over-egged/missed the point.
And Gutteridge never implicitly said "bored": it was more a hint that those who really want to succeed will be dying to get out there and prove themselves in the publishing industry - it was specifically publishing, not creative industries as a whole. Personally, I don't see what's wrong with that - however harsh it may seem, it's fact from an experienced media pro. Taking on a fourth year of university obviously doesn't scream "I really want to get into publishing" as much as getting into it directly does.
And journalism is evidently a profession where experience, bloodimindedness and attitude count more than a degree mark. So what? Deal with it: journalism is ultra-competitive. Who says your ability to write a cogent piece/article should be judged on your degree mark? Indeed, who says there's no intellectual substance just because it's not judged on whether you got a 1st over a 2.1?
explicitly*
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