Humanities Degree?

Arthur.

Was thinking of going to college next year as a mature student (28) and getting a degree in humanities. I see DKIT have started a new one this year, so might see about that one.

But just in general. A degree in Humanities, is it hard? Is it worth it? I know I'll never be a millionaire with it, but what jobs could I get with a humanities degree?

Thank you.

Denerick

Are you serious? Don't do the one in DIT, sounds like a load of meaningless flappy BS, invented so as to advance their cause to become a university (What kind of university doesn't have a proper arts/humanities system?)

You don't do a degree in 'humanities', you do a degree in 'the humanities' - history, english, sociology, philosophy, political science etc. etc.

Arthur.

Is that a typo on your part, or did you misread the OP.... I said DKIT not DIT.


Heres the one I was looking at

http://ww2.dkit.ie/courses/dk861

ANd I would probably end up concentrating on the history and Politics & Society.


But the questions still stand, how hard of a course would this be? Im hearing some people say its a doss course, but naturally enough none of these people have ever taken said course. Personally I reckon it will be tough enough, but I just want to get an idea of how hard/ how much work is involved before I get in over my head.

And lastly, (forgetting the recession and our economic problems for a second) what job/career would I be most likely looking at?

Denerick

Do you read books about history, do you follow politics? Do you read the newspapers? Are you curious about the world? The course will be as tough as you allow it to be. If you have no natural interest in what you're studying it'll be a nightmare.

And I would underline that you shouldn't do this course if you're thinking of career, not unless you're considering academia (Or maybe something along the lines of journalism) And to be honest you won't go far as an academic with a primary humanities degree from Dundalk, since I doubt very many academic departments will rate it with any great seriousness. You will be doing this course almost entirely for your own intellectual advancement, the material gains will be minimal to say the least and if anything it will set you back in the labour market. If you're thinking of using it for a career in the private sector you'd be better off doing a generic business course. For some reason companies value these even though for the majority of jobs you gain competance through on hand experience, and most business 'science' is simply exaggerated common sense.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was under the impression for some reason that DIT are thinking of putting together a proper humanities department.

Denerick

The programme summary made me laugh a little, The traditional areas of the arts and humanities are being transformed by the impact of new technologies which are changing what we define as culture and how we experience and understand the world and each other. Whether it is researching your family tree through the Online Census, conversing with virtual communities, blogging an obscure but dynamite new band or reading the latest novel on your ipad, the Web and Internet Technology are revolutionising the way we create and experience arts and culture.

This course seems like an unholy alliance between jargonistic and futuristic sociology-lite and some desperate attempt to hint at 'applicable relevance in the real world'. 'obscure but dynamite new band' made me laugh a little.

looksee

Even their write-up can only suggest teaching as a career choice from it, and they have not actually had it approved for teaching. I suppose if you were very creative you might be able to see yourself using the combination of web and multimedia skills with, say, history and politics to create information videos in those areas. Its a bit of a long shot though.

If you had the research instincts that you would need for this kind of course tbh you could have figured that much out for yourself.

You ask how difficult it would be, again, if you don't have the sense of enquiry and investigation to try and figure out what the course is offering, you would probably find it quite difficult. It is a new course, all the information available is there to read, no-one else is likely to be able to tell you much more than that.

I think the clue is in the phrase 'getting a degree in Humanities'. You won't automatically get it, and no-one is going to 'put' the information into your head. Unless you have a more pro-active approach I would say you might have problems. Sorry if that all sounds harsh, but I don't really think you have thought seriously about it.

bigsmokewriting

It's too soon to tell how university courses in 'digital humanities' will work out - TCD has a new masters course in 'Digital Humanities' kicking off in the autumn - not clear yet whether or not it'll make arts graduates more employable for specific jobs if they have a 'digital humanities' background. At the moment, an arts degree is not a gateway to particular jobs (an English degree does not equal 'becoming a book reviewer' for example), though there are areas of work where 'a good honours degree' (whatever the subject) are required. Other experience that you get along the way - part-time work, involvement with college societies, internships, etc - is as likely as the degree to shape what you do when you're finished with it.

Is it hard? Depends on the particular subject and how things are taught at DKIT. You need, or should need, to be comfortable with independent research, lots of time in the library reading and analysing rather than just memorising facts and figures.

It can be a great experience, but there are certainly courses out there with a much more immediately relevant impact on your career prospects, if that's your concern.

bigsmokewriting

Also might be worth asking around in the Education forums, including the DKIT one - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=846

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Kinski

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I had a conversation about this recently with a highly respected literature professor from an Irish university. He was involved in double marking some work produced by postgrad students in Digital Humanities; he described the work in question as "weird" and was basically of the opinion that it was all a bit of a fad.

The area does appear to be attracting more state funding at graduate level at the moment - probably as a result of all this "smart economy" bollocks that recent govts have been keen on - but that doesn't mean that the qualifications themselves are going to have any value. To take English as an example, I'm confident that ten years from now literature departments are still going to be recruiting staff based on the candidate's publication record and on how suitable they are to lecture in the usual areas - Shakespeare, Romanticism, Victorian fiction, modernism, and so on. Somehow I don't think they'll be setting up undergraduate modules named "Oscar Wilde and Digital Archives." Where will that leave the people who've completed PhDs in that sort of thing?

diddlybit

In my experience, digital humanities scholars work mainly in the field of creating new ways to disseminate the work of humanities scholars to a broader audeince without encouraging plagarism and de-valuing the work. There is a much greater scope in the fields of organising material in archival databases that are available online, so that the public can have access to work and materials that they would not seek out in person. I know that we can make jokes about the dighitalised census appearing on course work, but personally I think it's a great resource and many people have used it because of it's ease of accessibility, not because they had an overwhelming desire to trace their family.

Humanities scholars are notorious technophobes and have been reluctant to e-publish but this is slowly changing. Publishing online, due to the nature of serach engines, means that an article or a name, can appear on the horizon a lot more frequently than if, it was in a library gathering dust.

In my opinion however, some scholars have utilised digitial humanities to create new ways of reading, for example, John Bryant's fluid texts or reader accessibility to historical context at the tap of a mouse.

One of my favourite archives is the Whitman archive which includes scans of his drafts and also colour-coded indictations of when changes, deletions and addtions had been made to his work. I'm sad to say that being able to see the process by which he worked (from my own home) and having some insight into how he worked made me quite excited, especially when I saw that Whitman also mispells. As much as I love a musty book, the cost of combining all this information into a hard copy would be prohibitve.

A good example is here...http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/duk.00032.html

A humanties scholar will write a paper on the multiple meanings of these variant scripts and perhaps his creative processes, whereas the dig. humanities scholar will organise the material ensuring that it's available for both scholars and members of the public.