Every year, an article appears in the newspaper with a headline like, “Caution: A Mickey Mouse degree could ruin your career prospects and your entire life,” and every year I find myself quietly indignant.
Firstly, by the time such articles are published – around A-level results day – the majority of students have already decided on their university course, so what good is it to tell a group of fresh-faced students, fresh from their hopes, dreams and a carload of Ikea flat-pack furniture, that they’ve got the wrong car?
But another personal reason why stories like this upset me is that almost 20 years ago, I chose to attend a theater school with one of the biggest “Mickey Mouse” themes to ever grace a college brochure.
My chosen degree comes in last, labelled “least valuable”, according to graduate salary analysis by careers website Adzuna. Drama graduates sit at the bottom of the list, earning an average of £23,126 five years after graduation. This might not hurt so much if it weren’t for the fact that other arts and humanities subjects, including marketing (£26,495), English literature (£26,711), fine arts (£28,575) and music (£29,162), make far more. (Marketing was an especially bitter pill to swallow.)
Now, I could go on here and declare that “money isn’t everything.” In fact, it isn’t. There’s no point in telling it that way. But we all know that’s not the case, and I’m speaking from a position of supreme millennial privilege.
Although I was nowhere near as lucky as my baby boomer parents, who got scholarships to university and didn’t have to pay a penny back, I still had to pay £3,000 a year in tuition fees. It seemed like a lot at the time, three times the standard £1,000 a year that my sister and her ilk enjoyed. We had no idea what was to come.
Currently, students are forced to squander more in just 12 months than my entire three years’ tuition fees. Fees are currently capped at £9,250 per year, meaning that at the end of a standard three-year course, students will have to repay a staggering total of £27,750 in student loans.
Money is certainly important; earning enough to make that level of debt worthwhile is obviously a reasonable goal for graduates to have. But these “Mickey Mouse” analyses that reduce life choices to a soulless bank balance collection always miss the context and incredibly complex nuances surrounding the paths we ultimately take in life.
When I was 17, all I wanted was to be an actor (well, and date Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings). I read the TV Guide religiously every week, as if it held the secrets of life, the universe, and everything. I wrote down the names of actors I saw as “up and coming” and followed the careers of Romola Garai, Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Helen McCrory from afar with “interest,” as if their trajectories of stage and screen success were reaching me by osmosis.
At the time, no one could convince me that acting wasn’t my destiny, or that a drama degree was a bad idea – in fact, our vice-principal tried to convince me by pointing out that studying English would make me more “all-rounded” and that the top universities, i.e. Oxford and Cambridge, didn’t offer drama as an option.
No one could have convinced me then that acting wasn’t my destiny.
But even before I prioritized universities on my Ucas form, the subjects I despised were helping me develop real-world skills. Whereas most of my friends sent off their applications after just a quick glance at a glossy brochure, all of the universities I chose strongly encouraged prospective drama students to visit for interviews. Some of these were full-day events with practical workshops and one-on-one interviews. It was all about navigating a completely unfamiliar city, and finding the depth and confidence to express myself for the first time as a full-fledged person, not a kid but an adult.
“Confidence” is actually the salient word I use to tout the myriad intangible benefits I gained from my so-called “useless” degree. My classmates on other courses experienced the necessary growth from living away from home for the first time; they learned how to wash and dry clothes, survived on pasta and pesto six days a week, and instinctively knew how much alcohol they needed to drink to get drunk enough not to lose consciousness. Academically, they graduated with the knowledge of how to write logically persuasive arguments based on multiple sources and complete with appropriate citations.
But what about self-confidence? Their classes were in groups, and for a year of lectures, students slept namelessly in the back of the class. My class, on the other hand, was used to performing freely in front of their peers – not just acting, but presenting, debating, singing, dancing, and more. After the first semester, the shyness was gone. Speaking up, showing off, shouting, dominating the room, taking up space was no longer something to be embarrassed about, but something to be celebrated. There were 120 students in my class, and the worst prospect for them was to fade into the background and go unnoticed forever.
That might sound cheeky or “over the top,” but as someone who used to be a bit shy and used to deferring and being interrupted, especially by the opposite sex, I can hardly imagine a more valuable asset being cultivated. It helped me get my first “proper” job, when I persuaded myself to become a workshop leader at Lewisham Council during the recession following the 2008 banking collapse. I approached the interview with the unbridled enthusiasm of a slightly fussy golden retriever puppy and was hired ahead of far more experienced candidates. It later helped me feel at ease presenting travel videos for The Independent, hosting panels, questioning experts, facilitating talks and making the occasional TV and radio appearance.
My theatre degree has helped me in every job interview I’ve had and every professional role I’ve held – I have no doubt that it’s the “soft” skills it gave me that have helped me progress so far in my career and land my dream job.
Then there’s the quip that it’s “the worst value for money.” By the time I was in my third year of university, my humanities roommate was only able to contact staff for two hours a week, the rest of the time languishing over America’s Next Top Model. It was all but unclear where the £3,000 was going. Despite people joking that I got my degree in games and make-believe, my fellow actors and I slept in the drama club and spent at least nine hours a week, one day writing a modern version of Medea and the next learning how to spot the rich political satire embedded in Restoration plays.
It has helped me in every job interview I have ever had and in every professional role I have ever held.
As the fact that I wrote this article suggests, I never became an actor. But my degree has helped me in my current career. I discovered a latent love for writing by taking all the modules on scriptwriting, absorbing information about storyline, characters and pacing. That love, deep-rooted at a suggestible age, really began to grow and branch out when I finally got my head around it in my mid-twenties and realised that journalism was a career where I could write and make money. Who knew?
But I wouldn’t regret doing a “Mickey Mouse” degree, even if it hadn’t led to where I am today. I’ve noticed that the subjects commonly branded as such, from Surf Science at Cornwall to Comics and Graphic Novels at Teesside, have one big thing in common: They all sound, well, fun. Fun, even. Like the kind of thing you can look back on fondly, chasing a passion and spending three years filled with passion rather than miserable.
So, as cliché as it may sound, I encourage you to follow your heart when it comes to education. Sure, a law or business degree might earn you a big salary right away, but you’ll need to work your whole life. There’s nothing wrong with playing while you can.
