Degree Debate: Arts or Languages? (1 Viewer)

[bassistx]

I've changed my idea about a science-based career. I'm thinking of (Secondary) education and then eventually a university lecturer (hahaha I wish!).
I heard that with science degrees, you go to uni 4-5 days a week and with arts it's only 2-3 days a week lol. But that's not the reason... I just think teaching would be better because you finish at 3 (if not earlier) and you only work 9months a year in total. Great holidays. Fantastic because fam/frens are super important.. get to spend time with them

ANYWAY!

So, I want to be a LOTE teacher (ESL as well). I know Uni of Can has TETSOL (if I got that right) so I'll take that course there.
But as for ANU, should I do a Bachelor of Arts (majoring Italian and Spanish) or a Bachelor of Modern Languages? (also majoring Spanish and Italian).
I can't decide. And it's driving me nuts even though I'm not going to uni for another 3 years lol.

So which is better? Arts? Languages??
Also, any education/teaching degrees I'm not aware of... I checked ANU's site and there's nothing, except some sort of short course about language teaching. I checked Uni Can's site and I got this education stuff for graduates. I didn't find anything for undergrad secondary school education.

HOWEVER... I'm a little confused. I mean, if I've already taken an arts or languages degree, then can I enter an education degree as a graduate? Wouldn't I have to have done my masters?

Meh. Anyway. So which should I do? (unis in Canberra only).

EDIT: For an arts honours... If you do 3 majors, you might not to be able to apply/whatever. If I'm doing only 2 majors, I can still try for an Honours, right?

 

[Schmeag]

Personally, I would prefer Arts as it gives you a bit more leeway to choose other subjects if you so wish. But I'm an indecisive person at heart, so I always like to have that extra pathway or extra escape route. Then again, languages aren't really my strong suit. At the moment, it appears that Modern Languages does not have an honours year:

A 4th Honours year will be approved in future, however Honours will not be available in 2008.

A Bachelor of Modern Languages is very specific, and you'd have to be sure that you want to specialise in those areas. You'd have to really enjoy languages to take up this degree.

If you wanted to become a university lecturer, you might have to obtain some form of postgraduate degree. Maybe a Masters in Education. Just remember that a Masters is actually a postgraduate degree (or a degree that you enter as a graduate).

Sorry if this post is a little incoherent.

 

[I am here!]

You definitely do not 'need' a DipEd or an MEd to pursue a career as a university lecturer. What you do need are substantial qualifications in the field within which you are keen to teach: in this case, you should, at the very least, have an MA in or be working towards a PhD in your chosen language.

Progressing from a career in secondary education to tertiary education is very rare. University lecturers are rarely just 'teachers' (and if they are, they are not paid very well) - university staff are expected to be 'academics'. Even if your job does not imply research, you will not advance in academia unless you publish articles or write books or speak at conferences etc. The exception to this is within small universities that focus almost exclusively on teaching - these jobs seem to pay quite poorly, as I've said above.

And please, university lecturers do not work till 3 for only 9 months of the years - those are basically their offices hours. Apart from that, they bust their arses on a whole plethora of other shit: i.e. their research, university committees etc etc. Even school teachers have shit like marking etc to handle, so their free time gets crumpled rather quickly.

If you want to be a 'teacher', I'd recommend looking towards secondary education. I think a BA would be much more beneficial than a BML as it shows your prospective employers that you have a varied liberal education, which means that you are flexible etc, you can work out the rest of your interview spiel by yourself. Naturally, you'd either do a DipEd concurrently (from what I've heard, they are puss and can easily be slotted into a BA regime) or follow your BA up with an MEd - that would qualify you to teach your major at basically any high school.

You don't really need an Honours year to become a secondary teacher (although, that little mark on the CV can probably help you score a much better job) - if you're still keen on university lecturing though, it is practically a must.

I don't know much about UC, but in terms of reputation, I suppose I'd have to recommend ANU!

 

[I am here!]

What I should have mentioned above is that without a PhD you are very unlikely to find solid work as university lecturer - the minimum of an MA, or a PhD in progress, will probably land you short-term contract adjunct positions which means you may well have to relocate for a new job every year (or even, every semester) - which would be fairly shit, as you can imagine.

 

[yosemite sam]

I want to do languages too but because I know that i might get bored or sick of just doing a straight language degree i'm doing Arts so that I have the flexibility to do some languages but also some history or philosophy or whatever as well to keep it interesting for me.

 

[bassistx]

Wow, thanks guys.
I understood the terms you used, dw lol.

I wouldn't go straight for my PhD. After I get my Masters, I'd take 2 years off, teach and travel, and then go back for my PhD fresh.
I'm cancelling the whole TETSOL whatever thing.

And I've decided to do an Arts degree instead because I can major in a language (prob Italian and minor in Spanish) with a major in English as well. There is more of a demand for English teachers than LOTE teachers, so until I find that perfect LOTE teaching job, I need something to do lol.

I know teachers get paid crap, but oh well. I know a lot of time goes towards marking too. But I just think that hmm. It's better than a 9-5 office job, ya know? But yeah, being a uni lecturer would mean heaps of transfers. I wouldn't think about it seriously until I was in my 50s, probably. I'd have enough experience and all by then.

Or... I might just end up as a translator, working for the UN lol! Now that pays big bucks! Haha. But it'd be so awesome to work with them. I plan on learning 7 new languages by the time I'm 30. I've already nailed 3 (English, Arabic, Italian) so I think I'd be fine spending 2-3 years on a single language or 2 at time.

Meh. Anyway.

Thanks heaps guys! Arts it is!