A waste of time and money?

Having found myself with some (rare) spare time I decided to investigate a few of the blogs I have heard great things about. One of which is Ned Potter's (aka The Wikiman) which is often mentioned. After having a look through some of his posts I came across this one: The LIS Masters is a qualification of convenience. The wikiman makes some valid points, I did not know I wanted to be a librarian at 17, I could not commit 3 years to a full time undergrad BSc and the MSc delivered by distance learning was really the only option open to me unless I won the lottery and could afford to live for 3 years without working.

However, although I did do the course 'just to get a bit of paper to get me a better job' I also got a lot more out of it, not just the 'interesting stuff' I learnt. I learnt a lot more about the organisation that I work for, not just the business side of it but also what different people do, people which I had seen every day for 3 years and smiled at but never really spoke to. I also got to know people who had done the course in previous years and got to be good friends them.

I agree that the level isn't really of a high standard until you do the dissertation, I don't see how it can be when it's a one shoe fits all Masters. It's not even something that could be split into a series of narrower focussed degrees, where would you draw the lines? Public/academic? What about HE/FE? What about by size? By speciality? The library world is very good at drawing all these classifications, but by making things so specialised has the library world created a situation where it is impossible to have a meaningful qualification? The BSc is a suitable introductary course but what about people who don't have the luxury of knowing what they want to do with their lives at 17?

How far does a bit of paper get you? It depends on how you measure it really. The experiences I have because of my MSc have been valuable to me, but I don't think I'm any better at my job because I have another 3 letters after my name. I'm better at my job because I went out and spoke to people, the MSc was the impetus for it but it was how I chose to tackle the assignments that made it happen.