Andreas Whittam Smith: Media studies is no preparation for journalism

Is it just prejudice that media studies at school and university are widely regarded as a soft option – or as a "one-way ticket to the dole queue", as a former chief inspector of schools put it?

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority published a report last week that gave some sustenance to the critics. It showed that sixth-formers can achieve A grades in media studies with "less impressive" performances than are required for English or history. The issue, however, goes a little deeper than the rigour with which examinations are marked. After all, standards could be tightened up, so that fewer students received high scores without critics being persuaded that media studies were now a proper subject and on a level with English or history. The disdain is strongly felt – particularly among people who work in the media.

Beware, though, of exam snobbery. I have suffered from it. This may be hard to believe, seeing that at Oxford I read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). Nowadays PPE appears to be a very smart subject indeed. I can identify five members of the Cabinet who read it – Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Ruth Kelly, David Miliband and Jacqui Smith. David Cameron and William Hague are also PPE graduates. And among foreign politicians I can go to Pakistan and add the late Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan.

But turn to the history of PPE and a different picture emerges. It was established in 1920 as a modern alternative to classics. And not to any old "classics" but to the admired Literae Humaniores (or "Mods and Greats" in Oxford slang). It comprised Greek and Latin literature and philosophy and it was the examination at which the great Victorians and Edwardians excelled – and among them three prime ministers: Gladstone, Salisbury and Asquith. As a result, PPE was looked down upon for many years as the "poor man's Greats". Even last summer at an Oxford dinner I sat next to an old man who was still resentful of the vanished prestige of the "Greats" of his youth and who continued to sneer at PPE.

Nonetheless, there is a problem with media studies. For they borrow ways of thinking from other disciplines such as literature, history and even economics and then apply them to TV, film, radio, newspapers, magazines, advertising and the like. This approach, second hand in its nature, has limited utility. When students are asked, for instance, to identify major differences between film and television narratives and then to go on, say, to analyse types of television fiction such as soaps, series and serials, they won't be able to arrive at a full understanding without the context that a broad knowledge of literature provides.

This impression of superficiality is reinforced when one turns to recent exam questions. In January 2007, for instance, A-level students were asked to analyse the text of an advertisement in the Radio Times that was promoting the cookery programme Jamie's Great Italian Escape. It was the single question on the paper, and 1 hr 15m was allotted for the task. Other questions have had a catchall nature: "give a detailed analysis of one newspaper showing how well it caters for its readers" or "what factors influence the selection of news". In a fourth examination paper, students were asked to compare episodes from Desperate Housewives and Kath & Kim and say what media issues they raised.

Then there is the paradox that the people who actually work in the media, whose output is studied in sixth forms and universities, find it difficult to take the subject seriously. They cannot believe that what they do is worthy of academic consideration. This is particularly so in journalism, which has the characteristics of a trade rather than a profession. Journalism has no formal training that is a condition of entry. Work experience, which is an informal version of apprenticeship, is the best way to learn the job. There are no codified rules of best practice as there are in, say architecture or medicine. There are no precedents with binding force as there are in the law. There is nothing akin to the theology that ministers of religion must master. There are no official functions to perform. There are no wigs, copes, mitres, flat hats, white coats, dinners, livery companies, institutes or tribunals.

Journalism is just a trade where the gifted, the average and the incompetent sit side by side in the same office producing work of varying quality. Least of all is it an academic discipline, though undertaking a demanding course in something else at university is the best preparation for it. Were I still an editor, I wouldn't offer a job to a graduate in media studies; I would always prefer that the applicant had been tested in one of the older disciplines, even Mods and Greats.

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