Pseudo-Professional Programs
Pseudo-Professional Programs
How to spot them
Once upon a time, an interactive map popped onto my Facebook feed. It depicted US universities that offered degrees in medieval studies. A few seconds later, a second image appeared. It was an advertisement soliciting recruits for a degree program in "public administration."
Thus strange juxtaposition brought to mind the hypothetical case of person who, while much more interested in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine or the building of Offa's Dyke, succumbs to the siren song of practicality. So, with grim resolve and unwarranted optimism, he enters a program in which he delves into, and perhaps even writes, works with titles like Nonprofit Evaluation: Using a Multiple-Constituency Approach to Discover Determinants of Organizational Effectiveness.
At the end of this long exercise in insult to the Mother Tongue, our hero goes looking for a position in the field of public administration. However, rather than being welcomed with open arms by employers desperate for his expertise, he finds that such jobs are already in the hands of semi-literate ward heelers and the nincompoop nephews of former state senators. So, our would-be public administrator ends up himself stacking pineapples at the local supermarket, under the watchful eye of a somewhat younger manager who, more often than not, got into the grocery game right out of high school.
Had our hero embarked upon a degree in medieval studies, those who loved him would have said things like "what do you plan to do, run a booth at the Renaissance faire?" They might even have staged an intervention of sorts. However, because a degree in public administration sounds like something that might be found along the path to the corner office, both kith and kin are much more likely to express their approval. Because of this, would-be students, as well as their friends and relations, ought to learn the art of distinguishing a proper professional program from one that is merely “pseudo-professional.”
Fortunately, this is easy.
Colleges and universities find it hard to maintain, let alone establish, courses of study that prepare students for well-paid employment. For one thing, people qualified to teach the component courses of such curricula invariably command top dollar. For another, professional associations, which exist to keep the lucre in lucrative lines of work, take pains to limit the number of schools that teach the secrets of their trades, and, in particular, the number of people they train. As a result, proper professional programs tend to be both small and obscure. Moreover, as they rarely lack for large numbers of suitable applicants, they spend little on advertising.
At the same time, academic institutions find it easy to create and sustain pseudo-professional curricula. For one thing, there is no need to seek the active cooperation of an outside body. For another, the requisite professors can be found among the flotsam and jetsam of the existing faculty, or, what is more likely, in the threadbare ranks of the reserve army of the academically underemployed. Thus, they are like unto the lilies of the field … especially on Facebook.