MA in Everything

So why is this an MA? I can understand the feeling, I have it too, but if you/we don't want to study in an academic institution, what is it about a MA, something normally only given by an academic institution, that you want? For me I think it would partly be wanting to have instruction from someone who knew their stuff, and partly it would be needing to have some kind of formal structure for my learning. Most of a degree education you could get for "a dollar fifty in late fines from your local public library", but we don't do that, do we.

Indeed. I don't think it's about a qualification per se, more about the structure and respect given to a personally-driven programme of learning. In part, it's about honouring a person's commitment to learning without needing an institution: I'd want it to show up on my CV as something useful and focussed rather than as a year of messing around being 'unemployed'.

But it's also about the practical framework for learning. I want two things:
1) a tutor who is interested in all my learning objectives, can spot connections, recommend teachers, suggest new avenues of travel that I might might find interesting (rather than what is academically or professionally necessary); and
2) a peer network of people loosely connected to my studies - perhaps the other tutees of my tutor, and the other students of my subject teachers.

So if I can find teachers who want to teach me, and a tutor who's interested in me personally, then the networks should be the easy part. Maybe it's the individual teachers and tutors who actually 'accredit' me, personal testimonials rather than objective 'quaifications'.

It sounds like you're moving towards a kind of networked Masters?

Thinking about the origin of the terms, when Richard Sennett came in to speak to the Young Foundation last year, he told us about the way that assessment worked in a craft guild. When you reached the end of an apprenticeship, you had to produce a piece of work which demonstrated your command of the core skills of your trade. What's interesting is that the assessment wasn't made by the Master to whom you had been apprenticed, but by the journeymen - in other words, the peer group you were about to enter judged whether you were ready to be one of them.

I don't know much about how this worked in practice, but it sounds interesting as a model. How would it apply to your Masters?

I really like the idea of being assessed by your future co-workers.

I know that both Andy and Dougald are familiar with my initial steps towards a DIY Masters degree, but here's my initial post on the subject.

Just been pointed at this:
http://admissions.ucsc.edu/discover/majors/IndividualStudy.cfm

Interesting.

Thinking about what we'd need to run our own course independently, the current list is looking like:

* mentors
* tutor - someone to suggest things to learn and make it all hang together
* teachers (and therefore recommendations of teachers)
* venues to meet
* support network - students, librarians, alumni
* evidence afterwards that you weren't just messing around (qualifications, testimonials, practical projects work)
* networks - subject based (interest-based/targetted) and place or tutor based (social/serendipitous)

Anything else?