Let’s start with a positive, the MDSC Department at HWS has the potential to be an outstanding program. Now let’s get to the facts. If you’re lucky freshman year to get into the introductory course, one it will most likely be awful and you’ll question every day why you want to be a MDSC major and two that’s the end of the line. Forget getting into another MDSC course for at least a year if not longer. There are simply not enough MDSC courses to go around. You’ll be forced to take equivalent courses in other academic fields, which is fine to some extent. The issue though will arise when your major advisor questions why you haven’t taken more MDSC courses. You’ll politely try to remind your advisor it’s because they didn’t offer any for you to get into, to which your advisor will go off to list how the MDSC department is not to blame.
OK, so if the MDSC department isn’t to blame, who is. There are not enough courses offered by a long shot and this is due to not having enough professors to teach. There are not enough professors due to the lack of hiring which falls onto HWS as a whole. So yes, all those tuition dollars you spend don’t go to academics. If they did, the most popular majors you’d think would receive more money to hire professors. This is a really interesting aspect seeing that the MDSC department gets flaunted on college tours as being so strong and immersed in HWS. Not only is this a load of bull, but even if you do take courses in the MSDC department not only can the vast majority of the professors NOT teach well, most are so old they haven’t been in the business in decades. This is fine when it comes to theory courses but if you’re looking for hands on production work or simply fresh out of the business perspectives, you’ve come to the wrong place. One requirement that would be helpful in the screening process for hiring professors for the MEDIA and society department should be the requirement of knowing how to use word. Yes, word, one of the most basic word processing softwares out there.
Lastly, the major itself requires a lot, with a very specific list of courses that will count for certain requirements. This is fine and all, however, this list hasn’t been updated in years, listing courses that are no longer even offered and failing to include new courses that would fulfill the requirement. Then you also have to have a concentration. Even though the concentration titles are inherently interdisciplinary, the classes between concentrations some how aren’t transferable. Be careful, even though you are taking MDSC approved courses they might not even be able to be used for your major due to the fact that they may not fulfill your specific concentration. This is a ridiculous and completely arbitrary rule though because courses not approved for some concentrations would in fact make more sense in other concentrations and vice versa. These would be great points to bring up with your advisor however they have so many advisees and are over worked they won’t have the time to sit through all this with you. They all mostly know the problems here, but what can they do? What can any of us do?
Until HWS actually invests in the department, the takeaway here, is if you want to do something creative and meaningful, HWS is not the place for you and the MDSC department definitely isn’t for you.
~M