Manchester's universities are failing the digital media industry - North West Media Comment

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Manchester's universities are failing the digital media industry

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By Tony Foggett

Thursday, 02 August 2007

Considering that universities are increasingly run like commercial businesses, you’d think they’d have more awareness of what the employment market actually needs them to produce. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand.

I can’t talk for the standard of the available courses relating to other marketing mediums, but I can say that in my sector – digital media – Manchester’s higher education institutions are not doing their jobs.

Maybe it’s because digital is such a dynamic, shifting medium. Perhaps it’s down to the fact that it’s ‘new’ and universities are big tankers that take a long time to turn around. But when you have a thriving industry, one that’s in constant contact – trying to help the institutions react to the market place – and there’s still no sign of a significant response…well, you can get pretty fed up.

That is the case with the uni’s here and their apparent refusal to offer a full time BA in digital design.

The digital sector has a very real paucity of talented designers and - with no courses training the next generation - that looks set to continue into the foreseeable future.

It’s an extraordinarily complex arena, much more so than traditional design, and that demands that students have access to at least a full three year BA course. That is the only way they can experiment, understand the nuances within the discipline and be ready for the marketplace when they graduate.

The two-year foundation course that City College Manchester runs at the moment is roughly equivalent to a HND. It does have a vocational focus, which is helpful, but two years is not enough to give the students the time and understanding to get under the skin of this subject.

On a brighter note Manchester Met’s business school offers an MSc in digital marketing and communications, unfortunately this doesn’t deal with the skill shortage in digital creatives, but it’s a start.

It’s perhaps unfair to point the finger solely at this strata of education though. To solve problems of understanding and breakdowns in the supply chain you have to start at grassroots level – and it’s here, in the schools, where digital faces perhaps it biggest challenge.

You see, by its very nature it’s complex, it’s new and it’s changing all the time – so you can’t just learn it from a standardized textbook. What you can do though is open student’s eyes to the possibilities of the sector and train school career counsellors so they actually know that the industry exists.

I wonder how many even realise that you can get a job as a ‘digital designer’? Let alone that there’s so much need and opportunity in the field at present?

If counsellors possessed this greater awareness they could advise accordingly, there’d be more demand for digital media courses and the universities would then have to respond. Again, a case of supply and demand.

At Manchester Digital, the city’s trade association for new media and IT companies, we’ve just started doing an audit for our members of what institutions cater for the sector and where potential members of staff might come from. At this stage I’m convinced the results will make for pretty depressing reading.

However, hopefully the audit, like this comment piece, will be a catalyst for some kind of response from the universities. The more talented people we have that come through their ranks, the more likely we are to keep them here and help the industry continue prospering.

The demand is right here in Manchester, and throughout the northwest, now we just need the supply of courses and fresh talent to satisfy it.

Tony Foggett is managing director of Code Computerlove and a board member of Manchester Digital.

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Comments (2)

1 By Gez O'Brien , on 02-08-2007 12:15
Digital is moving too quickly for academic institutions to adapt fast enough to teach with our established Victorian structure of: ‘I teach, you learn, we test’. Students have to be self led and even self- taught with, hopefully, support from Lecturers and course leaders.

Perhaps part of the problem is that it’s difficult to attract and retain experienced course leaders and lecturing support staff that can lead students effectively to stay on top of the shifting sands of digital media.

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2 By David Bird , on 02-08-2007 12:19
As course leader for both the MSc in Digital Marketing Communications and the BSc in Digital Marketing Communications I can try and put some input here. At MMU Business School, we listened very carefully to what industry wanted and put together these two courses. Interestingly enough, even with all the hype surrounding digital, I have struggled to recruit students onto the undergraduate programme because "they just don't get digital" - the opposite is true of the Masters which is proving to be very popular. It's not economically viable to run specialised undergrad courses with less than 40 students per year (and the economic pressure is to raise that bar to 75).

People from the arts side of things at a variety of institutions say that it's not so much about meeting industry's demand; it's about students not wanting to study certain subjects. I have heard from some that many creative candidates seem to have an idea that they're "too good" to study digital media - they want to do proper art (I'm not making this up).

I can concur with this. We have an overwhelming demand for straight/trad marketing subjects, but potential candidates feel the digital/tech side of digital marketing might be too techie for them (I assure you it isn't). At the same side, BIT and eBusiness courses are struggling to recruit as demand from students just nosedives - I've heard students say they didn't do those courses "because they heard they were a bit difficult".

Efforts at MMU are already underway to create a degree programme that blends marketing, design and media creation, building on the success of creating the digital marketing programmes. Creating a new degree does take time - the Uni is a supertanker (don't get me started on it, I find it just as irritating). The proof will be in how many students actually want to study on it. Sometimes, the artists are a bit scared that the techie and the business might be a bit beyond them.

So - in many respects it's not so much about reacting to the industry. Our marketplace is the one that pays our fees - the students (much as we like you guys, we don't get any of our money direct from industry to educate students). If students in schools are not being fed the right information about their futures, then perhaps that's where the problem lies. We're trying to do it, but that's a lot of schools to visit and constantly reinforce a message with.

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