Accredited Masters degree in "The Beatles, Popular Music, and Society."

Several universities are offering degrees in some unusual topics as
Puppetry,Anime, Sequential Art, And Appalachian Studies to name a few.
You can study the Beatles and get an accredited Masters degree in Beatlemania. These are a few of the unusual topics listed at:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/01/22/mf.odd.graduate.degrees/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Bear's books used to list some unusual courses of study available.

Anyone else got any "unusual degree" titles or subjects?

 

Master in Robin Hood Studies

My favorite crazy Master degree is this one:

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history/courses/Robin_Hood_Pathway.php

A MA in Robin Hood Studies form the University of...Nottingham.

Perfect.

 

Degree in booze

MBA in thewine business:
http://www.sonoma.edu/winebiz/mba-in-wine-business.html
Wine is a big business in California

Not a degree but here are certificates in beer brewing
http://extension.ucdavis.edu/unit/brewing/

 

I hear they include a course in creatively raising one's fees from the local wealthy..... kidding....

 

Does University of Texas at Dallas' Certificate in Chess Education count?

 

High Point University in High Point, NC offers a degree in Furniture Marketing.

 

It's too bad that the Beatle's-based masters is not available via DL--I'd be all over that.

 

Hey! But Robin Hood was real! I know he was!

 

Is the MA in Robin Hood Studies available by distance learning?

 

Does Heriot-Watt University still have its old MBA in Brewing?

 

Melbourne University award a PhD in Ufology in 2008.

 

University of Adelaid had a MA in Gastronomy! I applied- was accepted- then they closed!

 

That degree makes more sense than what you might think. North Carolina used to be a huge furniture manufacturing state. Sadly though, like all manufacturing in the US, this industry is dying out.

 

From the website description, it doesn't sound like it ... but along similar lines, UofWales Lampeter (soon to be UofWales Trinity Saint David) offers a MA in Arthurian Studies via distance ...

http://www.lamp.ac.uk/trs/Postgraduate/Degrees/MA_arthurian.html

 

Actually, now that I look at it, it looks like the MA in Robin Hood Studies is available in residence and by research. Maybe the MA in Robin Hood Studies and the MA in Arthurian Studies belong on the MA in History Sticky http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30213.

 

Yeah, I'm from South Carolina and when my parents built our new home we drove to the annual furniture market in High Point (a lot of manufacturers are based there). Markup on furniture is ridiculous, close to 400%, so a lot of people in the Carolinas will go to buy direct from the manufacturer and save a ton.
Still think it's a funny degree, and extremely specialized. Wouldn't a student be better served to just get a BS in Marketing?

 

>>

I don't know if it's the case with this specific degree, but sometimes it is industry that approaches a college and asks the college to create a targeted degree. There is somewhat of a funnel that is created, driven by industry to meet a specific need. I know in the community college arena, we have multiple programs which were openly created to meet the request of a training-specific degrees, and in turn, we are educating students to fill specific positions(not necessarily within a specific company, but certainly an industry specific job). While these programs are open to Joe Public, really, they are relationship driven. I'm not sure if a university would do this or not- I guess it would depend on what kind of numbers could be supported by the relationship. It certainly seems plausible that this could be the case.

 

I started working my degree in Betlemania, but everyone there was so smart I felt like the "Fool on the Hill". And it was a bummer because all the people there were "Nobody I know" I was going to quit, but my friend, "Mean Mr. Mustard" said I should just "Let it be" so I got in my "Yellow Submarine" and went back home to "Penny Lane". (Sorry, couldn't resist)

 

There's nothing wrong with studying popular music. There are degree programs in folk music and in jazz studies. Ethnomusicology studies some pretty obscure musical forms in very remote places. (There are some extraordinary sounds in parts of Africa, for example.)

But limiting it to one particular band is kind of ridiculous, even if it is the Beatles (who I loved back in the day).

The British and Australians are the ones most guilty of this kind of hyper-specialization, I think. They have a habit of trotting out extremely narrow degree majors, particularly at the masters level.

I much prefer more general major subjects, with the more specialized material offered as individual classes or as specializations within the major.

There's another tendency too, visible in the contemporary humanities here in the United States, to offer 'post-modern' subjects with a political edge, subjects in 'low' as opposed to 'high' culture (Beatles as opposed to Bach, or anime as opposed to Michelangelo) and in intentionally provocative subjects that are designed to "transgress boundaries" and shock. (Inevitably socially conservative boundaries, never their own pieties.) There's great interest in sweeping up everything that was "excluded" from earlier scholarship, which in some instances can be tremendously valuable but in many cases is simply trivial and tendentious.

 

Well said. I was thinking the same thing, but wasn't exactly sure how to articulate it. I guess, by its very nature, the state of education is constantly in a period of redefining itself. The nature being that there tends to be a large generation gap between those who instruct and those who are instructed. Education used to be primarily about fulfillment, development, and of course, class distinction. This is now contrasted with the modern approach of specialized employment training and postmodern approach of academic self-determination and relativism (meaning that a degree should be what a student wants it to be, and that the value of each degree should be determined by its own standards, or its own holder). Although, frankly, I'm not sure why- if someone actually desired to take formal classes on some aspect popular culture, rather than read, listen, or experience it on their own- it would seem attractive to obtain a graduate degree in it, rather than take non-credit less expensive continuing education courses.

If someone had the money and time, of course, it is their prerogative to get a Master's in Fingerpainting, should they so choose, but others would have trouble seeing the real-world value of it, and, it would get you basically nowhere in the professional world. To each his own.