And if you’re new to Twitter or aren’t sure how to get started, check out TwiTip’s 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners. Give it a whirl!

Now for the Great Links… and some real stinkers that also deserve attention.

Via EIA, Andrew Sullivan and Michelle Rhee – two peas in a pod? Believe it or not, yes. I suppose even Sullivan gets to be sensible every once in a while. Blind squirrel, broken clock, etc. etc.

There aren’t too many men teaching K-12, reports Eduflack. In MA, fewer than 25% of K-12 teachers are men. And it’s everywhere, too – in April 2007 I wrote a post about male elementary teachers in NY dropping to 9%, a 40-year low. Some folks like MenTeach have been trying to raise awareness for a while now. Check them out and subscribe.

Ted Tedesco of Woodbury, Vermont is a hero. He’s worked to restore the Pledge of Allegiance in that small school district. The admins’ solution to his request is ridiculous, but at least everyone sees it. That, and a generation of kids in Woodbury knows how important it is to defend their country and their culture. As I wrote in the comments of the Core Knowledge post:

“A few months ago I attended a reunion banquet for a tiny, rural high school that closed shop during the consolidation efforts of the 1950s. Their meeting included the Pledge of Allegiance. When the Pledge came up in the agenda, all of the ~100 in attendance rose – and some with great difficulty, as they were in their 80s and 90s – to recite it.”

You know where I stand on this issue, and there’s a reason why I call the Green Mountain State “The People’s Republic of Vermont.” [Sorry, Jessie.]

Across the pond, here’s why I like the Tories. They’ve got a plan to re-introduce a bit of rigor to GCSEs and A-levels. The GCSEs in particular have been gutted – remember this physics teacher begging the government via petition to return mathematical rigor to secondary physics?

“Hot Boys”? I’d prefer that EdSector’s Quick and the Ed bloggers had a bit more self-respect. I already have trouble taking them seriously – these post titles don’t help.

Schools suing bloggers? You betcha. PRO on HCPS links to a libel case against an unhappy parent. Well, if “libel” means “a school district seething when held accountable by the public.” Guess who won? [UPDATE: PRO on HCPS gives us a better link for schools suing bloggers.]

Litigation is expensive when you’re trying to fire a teacher, administrator or school employee. In nearby Utica, NY, Craig Fehlhaber’s hearings have cost the Utica City Schools $250,000 – and counting. If Fehlhaber wins, the district will likely have to reimburse his attorney’s fees as well. We went through the same process in Cooperstown several years ago. If you ever wondered why schools tend not to dismiss bad employees, now you’ve got one reason.

Dave at ‘Friends of Dave’ – a very sharp blog, subscribe with all deliberate speed – highlights some recent irony in California. The California Association of School Business Officers have a conference at which they’ll discuss our tough economic times and how their districts can cope. And that conference is at a hotel/spa/golf course in Newport Beach. Dave has a sensible take on it all, but c’mon, CASBO. He says, “It is a bit ironic that the people who are typically the ones telling their co-workers that they can’t have an extra ream of paper are the ones having a really nice time at a Hotel and Spa on the beach.” Agreed.

Victory in Iraq Day – November 22, 2008. ZombieTime has declared 11/22/08 VI Day and I’m with him 100%. Read his post to see why it’s appropriate to declare VI Day and you’ll see why I support it, too.

“Building a GREAT teaching workforce,” described by American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence’s Dave Saba. Saba/ABCTE sing the praises – rightly – of a new report on the effectiveness of alternative certification programs.

And then there’s the education blog…

… and Twitter, an excellent, free PR tool. If you aren’t following me on Twitter already – or using it yourself – sign up for free, check my profile and click follow. There’s always a good conversation to have or a good link to click.

That triumvirate of e-media makes it easy to do a roundup of interesting stuff I’ve read, so give a warm welcome to the world premier of the Great Links Curriculum.

The British are one baby step ahead of us in self-destruction. DailyWritingTips brings us a story from the Telegraph about banning “elitist” and “discriminatory” Latin phrases – like bona fide, vice versa and et cetera. Fancy book larnin’s a 20th century skeel, it seems.

“Why Parents Get Angry When They Learn the Truth,” from Motel Special Ed.

“Quantifying Greatness” - Greg Forster debunks an unfounded gripe about the Great Books.

Exhibit 1036a: Perfect example why normal people don’t take educrats seriously, courtesy of Salon. Really, that diagram could be drawn for just about any topic on Earth.

The Carnival of Education is up at the Core Knowledge Blog. This Carnival’s scripting took some real effort – well done.

Flypaper with some sober common sense. Want to retain great teachers? Remove the bad ones.

Obama celebrated in the World of Warcraft? Good Lord, there are so many factual errors in this testimony as to make me want to call the poor kid out. We’ll see.

Having solved every problem in New York public education, the State Education Department decided to buy a ton of fruits and vegetables.

Racial taunts in class for supporting John McCain? You betcha. This ideological intolerance happens a bit more than people realize, and sometimes – as in this case – it can get ugly.

Really, really, really, really smart to get into law school? George Leef at Phi Beta Cons drags that argument back to reality.

Head over to eMailOurMilitary and drop a quick note, even if it’s just a quick thanks.

Bill Gates?!?!? Making curriculum?!?! Relax, mouth-frothers. Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Pondiscio will calm you down.

… and another political candidate in the education world whines while laying bare her ignorance on blogs, media and technology. Advertising, too, I suppose. Well done, Ms. Gallucci of Pinellas County. Perhaps the problem isn’t your makeup or wardrobe, but the woeful inadequacy you bring to the job.

In New York State, the education budget cut spin begins. Give it a day or two, you’ll want to throw money at NYSED just to get this circus to stop.

I was thinking earlier today [as I fried 12oz. of bacon and topped it with sharp cheddar, which I write to induce "Americans are so fat" deprecation so the foreigners will feel better about what follows] if there’s any group of people, any country, any anything in the world about which my feelings oscillate so often and so quickly. I mean rapid shifts like those in sports – he’s a hero when he hits a home run and a bum when he strikes out – but about more rational subjects.

No – the Brits win the prize. I can go from thrilled and proud to eyes-closed-and-shaking-head in about 3 minutes.

Boris Johnson, the recently elected mayor of London, is a Brit I’ve loved for many years. He’s sharp, funny, too honest and too open. He wrote a piece on the BBC licence fee that Wikipedia describes:

“In the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, a television licence is required to receive any publicly broadcast television service, from any source. This includes the commercial channels, cable and satellite transmissions. The money from the licence fee is used to provide radio, television and Internet content for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Welsh-language television programmes for S4C.”

I think it’s about 150 GBP right now – or about $275 USD.

Boris introduced his editorial, which advocated relaxing gripes about the fee, by saying:

“Treachery, thy name is Edmonds. After decades in which his hairy chops have been clamped about the hind teat of the BBC, Noel Edmonds has announced that he will not pay the licence fee, and I can imagine that some people will declare him a hero.”

And that’s why I love Boris Johnson.

Then some dolt of a [retired] professor has to muck it up by suggesting we throw out spelling and apostrophe rules to improve literacy, which I wrote about over at the GlobalScholar blog.

At least it’s not as bad as the imposition of sharia courts in the UK.

You guys drive me mad.

Aw, I can’t stay mad at you.

“Democrats are Standing up to the Teachers Unions: Can this be True?” asks little Ed over at Ed is Watching. Maybe he’ll get some answers on September 19th [if the event doesn't run past his bedtime]. Yet another thumbs up for the DFER folks.

From RightWingProf, who came across this dandy fop opining out of San Diego: “Sarah Palin often uses lots of notes when she speaks, even going so far as to use tabs and different colors of notecards. This is just so unbelievably tacky and small town I am considering killing myself.” Yipes. I know that frustration, though. I see it every time I obliterate, shame, or otherwise invalidate an argument made by someone who has contempt for ignorant, small town rubes [like  me].

Brown University reformed its curricula in the late 1960s. I wouldn’t have done it, and not the way they did, but no one asked me then. They’re reforming things now – and ACTA says that it’s not perfect, but that it’s a step in the right direction.

Mike S. Adams has founded F.A.S.H.I.S.T. at UNC-Wilmington – Faculty Against Sexual Harassment Initiatives and Sensitivity Training. He asks whether “mandate” is sexist, and then says, “Five years ago the administration chipped in $60,000 to help bring Ludacris to campus. He sang a lot about hos. Shouldn’t we be forcing the administration to attend mandatory sexual harassment training not the other way around?”

Haaaaaaaaaaaahahahha. Awesome.

An interesting video about Senator Obama and edu-huckster extraordinaire, Bill Ayers.

The Onion: The Word “Presumptive” Prepares for Another 4-year Hibernation.

BIG NEWS: Detroit Superintendent hung up the phone on someone. My school board members barked at me like junkyard dogs, used school facilities/organizations to campaign against me, and school employees used in-house computers to suggest that I was a drug dealer. I don’t hang up on anyone [nor do I take or sell drugs].

Today is Battle of Britain Day in the United Kingdom. British resilience is a trait I love, and one that we in Upstate New York share. Let us hope that steely resolve makes a comeback in the wake of Sharia law.

EdWeek published an article last week stating that participation in high school athletics rose to about 7.4 million students:

“The survey was based on figures supplied by the associations from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It showed 3.06 million participants in girls sports, breaking the former record of 3.02 million set last year, and 4.372 million in boys sports, breaking the former record of 4.367 million set in 1977-78.”

Thank goodness all those kids are in the United States, because competitive sport in the United Kingdom apparently leads to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and general fat-itude:

“Schools should cut down on competitive sport because it is putting children off exercise and undermining the government’s drive to tackle obesity, researchers warned today.

Last month, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, promised to bring back competitive sport in schools and to extend the range of sports offered to children.

However, a new study by Laura Ward, from Loughborough University, claimed the heavy emphasis on fitness and competitive sport in many secondary schools is doing little or nothing to help curb the UK’s record teenage obesity rates.”

Some might say that running around while playing sports provides general exercise. Ha! Wrong, sayeth the academics:

“But Ward will tell the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association in Edinburgh later today that too many PE teachers, particularly men, are still emphasising the importance of competitive team sports at the expense of more individual activities.”

Yes, a sport is different than a targeted, sustained cardiovascular exercise regimen. I’ll even admit that a regimen provides more health benefits than a sport.

I don’t care.

I prefer the former to the latter, and I’ve always been more likely to engage a competitive sport than… a treadmill.

“Teachers’ own deeply-embedded attitudes are also influential. A teacher who has experienced lifelong success in sport is likely to want to focus upon competitive team games within their lessons. This then presents us with a persistent cycle whereby sport is privileged within PE and health-related exercise is marginalised.”

You know it’s serious when the academics bring out the “P” word.

If you think some students hate gym class now, turn it into “Exercise Class” and measure their attitudes again. I wasn’t a class-cutter in high school, but I’d have taken every opportunity to skip that one.

News flash: Kids prefer dodge ball to pilates.

I wrote yesterday about John McCain’s reference to teacher quality and the ABCTE’s recommendations for how we might improve the teacher corps.

As is often the case, we in the United States aren’t alone. The United Kingdom faces many of the same problems re: teacher quality on the other side of the pond.

You can check out the article and my thoughts on it over at the Global Scholar Blog.

Coventry University has innovative programs from technical/engineering-based disciplines like automotive design to contemporary social disciplines like disaster relief. The University’s appeal to international students is notable, and Coventry increasingly finds its student population to be more diverse each year.

It doesn’t hurt that Coventry, UK is a wonderful small city in the West Midlands and is a stone’s throw from the larger Birmingham. And, of course, if you need more than Birmingham can provide, London is a scant 95 miles by train.

Take a gander at Coventry’s summary video – it’s worth a look. [RSS readers, click here]

I’m a bit busy tonight following the local elections in the UK. It looks, at this point, like Boris might squeak out a win over Red Ken.

An American without a vote in the UK can only hope.

If you’re interested in following along as these results come in, check these live-blogs out:

• BBC’s live blog and tally
• Daniel Hannan at The Telegraph
• ConservativeHome’s Live ToryDiary

My Montgomery Ward TV only goes up to channel 41, and all that international stuff is super high, so I’ve got to follow the blogs. I suppose I could listen to internet radio, but Detroit/Philadelphia are playing. Priorities!

I’m also thinking about how to address this Edublogging Etiquette nonsense. It’s such a non-issue to me because none of this is unique to education blogging.

Stephen Downes left a comment that I agree with wholeheartedly – many education bloggers [and I would add especially the ed-tech crowd] need to understand the incredible diversity in the blogosphere. One compliment that I will always extend to the Downeses and Stagers and the rest with whom I frequently disagree is that they aren’t thin-skinned. They don’t take things personally, and it’s a testament to their priority being public education and/or kids.

You know, that thing we’re all supposed to be working for, regardless of how we think it’s best to get there?

The ed-tech crowd’s unyielding commitment to Google Earth Diversity – that is, cooing and fawning over a project just because other participants happen to be 5,000 miles away – isn’t as important as the genuine intellectual diversity they largely avoid.

They also need to leave their professional circles a bit more frequently. Education technology blogging is one of the most weirdly self-congratulatory, borderline-incestuous things I’ve ever seen. The “back-patting,” as Downes put it, is tiresome, cliquish and off-putting.

But the cherry on top is being labeled a brawler! I like that. Education blogging? Oh, no more of that – education brawling! The possibilities, the possibilities!

Other brawlers include Joanne Jacobs and Ken DeRosa.

I do find it a little sad, and a significant hindrance to future public education debate, that normal, reasoned, measured, accurate, substantive discussion is such a rare thing that it warrants public curiosity.

The rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Got it.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Lots and lots of woodworking – more along the lines of lutherie.

I like re-designing things to meet my needs and then making them. I wanted, in 1998, an electric guitar with a combination of features that I couldn’t find anywhere:

• A symmetrical, double-cutaway body like the Gibson ES-335, but solid wood and with a flat top.
• A fat, round, oversized neck with a Gretsch-style peghead. I had, and still have, no need for a slim, fast neck.
• Woods I liked [and from local trees], which were black walnut for the body and black cherry for the neck; Koa for the electronics cover on the back gives contrast without gaudiness.
• Moving the bridge higher up the body and putting controls on the opposite side of right-handed guitars. This freed up the lower portion of the body for additions later on and, by moving the bridge up, my arm doesn’t hit the controls accidentally.
• Green abalone peghead inlays of my last name and a lightning bolt inspired by Roy Hobbs’ patch in The Natural.

You get the idea.

Having this made would’ve cost me plenty – $2,000+ or so given the specs I wanted. I couldn’t, at that time, make the metal parts or electronics, so I had to buy the bridge, tuners, pickups, etc. But if it’s wood, bone, or plastic, I made it. Total damage? About $180, and that’s because I didn’t skimp on quality. Had I harvested used parts, it could’ve clocked in at about $50 + elbow grease.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m not a certified musician or certified luthier, I haven’t toured with a band, etc. I didn’t work at a musical instrument factory or apprentice with a guitar builder.

Makes ya think, yes?

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Install a podcast-playing plugin so it can debut today
2. Scan some old documents
3. Catch up on about 300 years of backlogged e-mails
4. Read today’s content from the 366 subscriptions I have in Google Reader
5. Write a blog post [doing that now]

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Bacon, pepperoni and cheese, beef jerky.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Return the scholarship money I was generously given by the Clark Foundation.
2. Develop a hybrid teaching academy with two components – 9-12 and post-secondary. The academy would have a business component similar to Boston’s MATCH, a humanities/classics curriculum drawing on Great Books and math done in-house with more advanced science coming through a university partnership. Post-secondary students would be actively involved in teaching the 9-12 students with a focus on their own pedagogy and scholarship. Think it’s not possible? Let’s talk it over.

5) Three of my bad habits:

1. Reading too much and not talking/writing enough.
2. Not being as politically active as I ought to be.
3. I’ll stop at two.

6) 5 places I have lived:

1. Hartwick, NY [resident of the Town of Hartwick but with a Cooperstown address/phone]
2. Western Massachusetts
3. Boston, MA
4. South Kensington, London, England
5. Sacramento, CA area

7) 5 jobs I have had:

1. Private teacher [English, history, rhetoric, algebra/geometry/trigonometry, physics, etc. to varying degrees - never Biology or a foreign language, though]
2. University-level student course evaluation editor
3. Corporate education
4. Query/result refinement for a search engine
5. Varied consulting

8) 6 peeps I wanna know more about:

First, a note – tagging is a tough business in this education blogosphere. You folks know that you can write serious policy/pedagogy/etc. pieces while still having a laugh and/or writing about something normal, yes? Actually, I remember all those posts castigating The Quick and the Ed for writing about The Wire, so I suppose they don’t realize it.

So, I’ll go beyond the education blogosphere for some of these 6 bloggers who I enjoy and want to know more about:

1. Born Again Redneck, whose blog name would beg for a tag even if his stuff wasn’t worth reading. [response]
2. WinExtra/Steve Hodson, who gives sound, insightful tech commentary without being a star-struck technofanboy. [response]
3. James Stripes of Patriots and Peoples. P&P is one of the few sites that suggests you can – and should – read A People’s History of the United States and its reaction, A Patriot’s History of the United States, and pull the best from both [I find far less worthwhile/accurate in Zinn, but I digress.] This site deserves a much bigger audience – for example, every college freshman in America? [response]
4. Doug Belshaw, with whom I don’t always agree [I'm not on board for many ed-tech ideas] but whose writing I enjoy. It’s a Britblog, too. [response]
5. Mr. Teacher/Learn Me Good, who’s a fine example of one who takes education seriously while still having a laugh. MrT is a warm, dry island in that polluted sea of eggheadery that is my RSS reader. He’s also got a column on education.com. [response]
6. Joel at So You Want To Teach? has a spectacular blog – it’s introspective/reflective without being trite and the valuable discussion makes it a must-read. I read every post in full. [response]

Have at it, folks.

The Mickey Mouse degree is a course of study characterized by lack of intellectual or scholarly rigor and is generally considered irrelevant, as are the individual classes that make up such a degree.

Whenever I try to explain the difference between a Mickey Mouse class and a worthwhile class, I usually contrast two examples:

“Principles of Economics, Micro/Macro”

vs.

“Gender Inequity in 17th-Century Siberian Basketweaving”

The latter isn’t a real course, but it isn’t far from many I’ve seen in terms of irrelevance.

We’re less likely in the United States than in Britain to judge negatively a student who studies fluff; after all, we’ve spent 15 years telling a kid to be himself and blossom as a beautiful flower no matter what type of fertilizer promotes his unhinged growth. This attitude is not all bad, but it has consequences on the value of the average body of knowledge transfered to one who completes a degree.

It’s easy to reduce a course title or dissertation topic into eye-rolling and snarky judgment and we know that those judgments aren’t always accurate. Indeed, “Gender Inequity in 17th Century Siberian Basketweaving” could posit that the basketweaving trade lured Cossacks and the greater Russian empire into the area, sparked a lucrative, specialized economy and expanded trade in a way that justified the path of the Trans-Siberian Railway centuries later.

I’m making all of this up, but you get the idea.

Boris Johnson [former Shadow Minister for Higher Education, current MP and short-lister for the Conservatives' run at London's mayoral race] is no stranger to the epic battle between the proponents of expanding Mickey Mouse programs and the hardliners who bemoan what they see as the rapid erosion of higher education.

Johnson breaks down the case against Mickey Mouse courses appropriately and makes three valid points in a recent piece:

1. Those who think we need more vocational training too often think it’s best for every kid but their own;
2. Mickey Mouse degrees are, in a way, vocational training;
3. The market is the ultimate judge of a degree’s value and will determine whether that vocational training is a credit.

When we hear about Mickey Mouse degrees in Equine Psychology – essentially ‘horse-whispering’ – it’s important to consider whether there’s a market for such a service. And this point comes up often; as much as I think the concept of a “Life Coach” is absurd and unnecessary, there wouldn’t be life coaches if no one signed up for coaching. No signups, no life coaching. No horses in need of whispering, no horse-whispering degrees. At some point we have to trust the judgment of our society/culture and deal with its demands.

That doesn’t mean we have to assign the same respect to a degree in Urban Insect Nutrition Studies as we do to a degree from MIT’s Astro-Aero Department – they’re two very different endeavors. It does mean that there may or may not be justification of a degree’s viability and we need to take that into account in this debate.

I’ve pasted below Johnson’s thoughtful piece, “Mickey Mouse degrees are just the job.” He’s known for his candor and is thought by some to be more entertainer than politician, but we’d do well in the United States to have a public figure who addresses difficult topics in education with such frankness and sense. I’d give anything for a Boris-like speech instead of the stale, trite weekly reminders that ‘it takes a village.’

Here’s how a real politician addresses education:

OK then, let’s have a good snigger. Let’s all look at the list of these so-called degrees, and sneer at the pathetic delusions of the students who are taking them. In the saloon bars of England, it is by now a settled conviction that the university system is riddled with a kind of intellectual dry rot, and it is called the Mickey Mouse degree.

Up and down the country – so we are told – there are hundreds of thousands of dur-brained kids sitting for three years in an alcoholic or cannabis-fuelled stupor while theoretically attending a former technical college that is so pretentious as to call itself a university.

After three years of taxpayer-funded debauch, these young people will graduate, and then the poor saps will enter the workplace with an academic qualification that is about as valuable as membership of the Desperate Dan Pie Eaters’ Club, and about as intellectually distinguished as a third-place rosette in a terrier show. It is called a Degree, and in the view of saloon bar man, it is a con, a scam, and a disgrace.

Kids these days! says our man with the pint of Stella, slapping The Daily Telegraph on the bar. Look at the rubbish they study! ‘Ere, he says, finding an account of the recent investigation by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which has compiled a list of the 401 “non-courses” being offered by our universities.

In a satirically portentous tone he reads out the brochure of Marjon College in Plymouth, which really is offering a three-year BA (Hons) degree in Outdoor Adventure With Philosophy.

Yes, he says with incredulous sarcasm, the dons at Marjon College give instruction in the ancient discipline of Outdoor Adventure by examining its “underpinning philosophy, historical antecedents, significant influences, environmental and sustainable aspects and current trends”; and just in case you thought that wasn’t quite rigorous enough, they guarantee that “the modules will include elements such as journeys, environmental management, creative indoor study and spirituality”.

Absurd! cries saloon bar man, and then jabs his finger at yet greater absurdities: a course at the University of Glamorgan in “Science: Fiction and Culture”; and get this – the Welsh College of Horticulture is offering anyone with four Cs at GCSE the chance to study for an Honours degree in “Equestrian Psychology”! It’s a degree in horse whispering! he says. It’s bonkers.

Why, he asks rhetorically, are we paying for students to waste their time on these Mickey Mouse courses, when it is perfectly obvious what they should be doing. Trades! Skills! Craft! This country doesn’t need more bleeding degrees in media studies and whispering into horses’ ears! What we need is people who can fix my septic tank! We need more plumbers,” he raves, and it’s not just because he resents paying so much for his Polish plumber; it’s because the whole university business is – in his view – such a cruel deception on so many young people. They rack up an average of £13,000 of debt for some noddy qualification, when they would have been far better off getting stuck into a job after leaving school and engaging in an old-fashioned apprenticeship.

That’s what he thinks; and that, I bet, is not a million miles from the view of many eminent readers.

And yet I have to say that this view of higher education – pandemic in Middle Britain – is hypocritical, patronising and wrong. I say boo to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, and up with Mickey Mouse courses, and here’s why.

The saloon bar view is hypocritical, in the sense that it is always worth interrogating the saloon bar critics about their aspirations for their own children or grandchildren. Would they like them to have degrees? Or would they like them to have some kind of explicitly vocational training?

It is notable how often a critic of university expansion is still keen for his or her own children to go there, while a vocational qualification is viewed as an excellent option for someone else’s children.

It is patronising, in that you really can’t tell, just by reading a course title, whether it is any good or not, and whether it will be of any intellectual or financial benefit to the student.

The other day my normally humane and reasonable colleague Andrew O’Hagan paraded the idea of a degree in “Artificial Intelligence”, as though it were intrinsically risible, and for 20 years we have all been scoffing at degrees in “media studies”.

But AI is one of the most potentially interesting growth areas in computer science; and the truth about Media Studies is that its graduates have very high rates of employment and remuneration.

Of course there are mistakes, and of course there are a great many students who drop out, get depressed, or feel they have done the wrong thing with their lives.

But the final judge of the value of a degree is the market, and in spite of all the expansion it is still the case that university graduates have a big salary premium over non-graduates. The market is working more efficiently now that students have a direct financial stake in the matter, a financial risk, and an incentive not to waste their time on a course that no employer will value.

It is ridiculous for these saloon-bar critics to denounce “Mickey Mouse” degrees, and say that the students would be better off doing vocational courses – when the whole point is that these degrees are very largely vocational.

We can laugh at degrees in Aromatherapy and Equine Science, but they are just as vocational as degrees in Law or Medicine, except that they are tailored to the enormous expansion of the service economy.

It is rubbish to claim that these odd-sounding courses are somehow devaluing the Great British Degree. Everyone knows that a First Class degree in Physics from Cambridge is not the same as a First in Equine Management from the University of Lincoln, and the real scandal is that they both cost the student the same.

There again, who is to say where a Mickey Mouse course may lead?

The last time I looked, Disney had revenues of 33 billion dollars a year – and if any university offered a course in the Life and Works of Mickey Mouse, I wouldn’t blame them in the least.

You can view more articles by Boris Johnson [education, international/local politics, etc.] at his weekly archives or check out his mayoral candidacy at www.backboris.com.