In June 2021 I wrote an article called Is it worth doing an MA? I listed several reasons why I think the answer is “yes”, but forgot to include one or two really important ones!

Thanks to Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith, Prof Andy Connell and Claire Lowe for setting the record straight! Here are their tweets:

The answer to this one is yes, yes, yes and more yes! Challenging our own thinking is incredibly important, particularly in the current landscape where “research says....” has become an often misused sentence starter to imply credibility of existing plans or thinking
— Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith (@FionaAS) June 17, 2021

learning learning learning - challenge and support to ensure we can be the best for our schools
— Claire Lowe FCCT (@ExecPrincipal) June 17, 2021

In short. Yes. For the reasons you give and for the simple pleasure of learning
— Andy Connell (@AndyJConnell) June 16, 2021

I absolutely agree with all of this. I very much enjoyed doing my MA (in Economics Education) for all the reasons I gave in my original article and the ones cited above.

Indeed, I am toying with the idea of doing another MA when I have the time, and if I ever decide to hang up my edtech boots, but this time in English Literature, and then perhaps even a PhD (I was offered the opportunity to do a PhD straight after completing my MA, because the tutors were impressed by my dissertation, but I turned it down. I sometimes regret that now.)

However, I have to say that I’m put off by not knowing which university to choose that isn’t going to try and ram particular views down my throat. To put it another way, I’d prefer a university that values intellectual pursuit. They seem to be increasingly rare these days.

A couple of years ago I was chatting to someone who had just completed her MA in Eng Lit. She had done her dissertation on Oscar Wilde. She said, “Of course, The Importance of Being Earnest is a thinly-veiled exercise in homoerotica.”

That was news to me, but I have a bit of a reputation for never noticing such things even when the evidence is staring me in the face.

“Is it?”, I said. “How do you make that out?”

“My tutor said so.”

Well, I have never heard of that play being homoerotic in any shape or form. I can’t see it myself, but am open to being convinced — by a decent argument. Accepting something simply because your tutor has said it does not strike me as the most intellectually robust defence of a proposition. If I ended up doing an MA with a tutor who makes pronouncements without backing them up, or with students who meekly accept such pronouncements instead of challenging them (or, worse, who shout down anyone who dares to question such pronouncements), I’d feel pretty annoyed at wasting my hard-earned money.

Thus it seems to me that these days, anyone interested in undertaking a degree of any description needs to check not only the courses on offer, how well they’re regarded in the industry concerned, and fees, but also where they lie in the relevant free speech rankings you can find online.

But as for doing an MA if you can find one that suits: you absolutely should!