[game_edu] Game studies and the economy

[Mark Baldwin]

I would suggest that the bigger problem is not too many game programs, but
too many game programs that are being created and taught by unqualified
faculty.   This I believe will generate a greater fallout.  One school I
teach at considers a network engineering degree to be qualification to teach
games!  I personally do not consider computer science to be qualification if
the individual has no industry experience, although  I am sure some here
would disagree J.

 

And unfortunately, as the economy gets worse, more and more schools will be
looking for any way to attract students.   Game studies attracts students so
I am afraid we are going to see more unqualified game studies programs.   

 

Mark

 

************************************

Mark Lewis Baldwin

Baldwin Consulting

685 Trailside Rd

Golden, CO 80401

303-526-9169

303-408-3727 (m)

mark at baldwinconsulting.org

http://baldwinconsulting.org

************************************

 

From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf
Of Brena Smith
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 1:00 PM
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Game studies and the economy

 

So it seems I've started quite the conversation here...just to steer it back
to education a little - do you all think there are too many programs out
there?  Do you foresee some schools shutting down programs altogether?
Someone early on in this thread stated that he knew of a school that had
prepared to hire faculty - only to shut down the search due to the budget.

This kind of thing is happening all over universities and colleges - from
history departments to the sciences - and libraries for that matter (I'm a
librarian).  But I wonder if the fall-out for game studies might be greater
in the long run due to its "new-ness" (for lack of a better term).  Once the
economy recovers (here's hoping), and endowments and grants gets back on
track (again, here's hoping), history and science departments will continue
to grow and develop - for the most part, this is hiatus.  Will it be the
same for game studies? 

And thanks for all of your thoughts - they have all been interesting.

Best,
Brena



On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Mike Reddy <Mike.Reddy at newport.ac.uk>
wrote:

Games Grads in UK has been cancelled. I talked to the head of Tandem, who
fortunately still have the Develop Conference to fall back on, and he
confirmed that only 5 companies were prepared to exhibit, compared with over
1000 registered students for the Manchester event. Other potential
exhibiters either had job freezes or were making people redundant. Sent a
really chilling message to more than the 17 students I was going to drive up
there! Morale is lower than low now!


_______________________________________________
game_edu mailing list
game_edu at igda.org
http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_edu

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_edu/attachments/20090402/24def088/attachment.htm>