Open Days 2009

Speaker:

My name is Raelene Reece, I’m the Registrar of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. I’m also the Selection Officer for all of the courses that we have in our faculty. So I’m going to talk to you a little bit today both about the Bachelor of Arts and the reason I talk to you about that is we’ve got lots of disciplines within Arts. So you can get lots of information about the individual disciplines by going over to the Union Hall and talking to the academics about their individual disciplines.

But I’m going to talk about the Bachelor of Arts in general. About the structure of it, about what goes into it. And I’m also going to talk about selection in general as well.

We’re about to find out either you’ll be plunged into total darkness or the lights will come on. Yay!

See, even at university we can figure out how to switch the lights on.

OK. Now that we’re excited that the lights are coming on, I’m going to try seriously to stick to my Power Point presentation, which I’m very bad at doing. But I’m going to make a considered effort to stick to my Power Point presentation today.

What is the Bachelor of Arts? Bachelor of Arts has been around for a very, very long time. In fact, when the university started it was only Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. That was it. And the reason Bachelor Arts is a special degree, or I think it’s a special degree, is that it actually gives you the choice to do the disciplines you want to do.

So over the years, I’ve been at La Trobe 20 years now. A bit embarrassing to admit that but over the years, we’ve had lots and lots of specialist degrees coming to being. Most of which are a version of the original Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science. But there is something like, in my faculty alone, I’ve got 14 undergraduate degrees these days. But the biggest one is the Bachelor of Arts.

I’ve got 600 people I take in the Bachelor of Arts so it’s absolutely our biggest degree. Most of the niche degrees probably take in about 50 to 60. And I’ve even got a double degree where I take 12 into the double degree because that’s all the places I have in that particular degree. So there’s great variation about the number of people.

Bachelor of Arts is still our most popular degree. And because it is something that you get to choose, so it is structured for maximum flexibility. All of the disciplines that we offer including – in the Bachelor of Arts you can take a discipline from outside the faculty as well in each year level. So if you’re seriously interested in Physics and you’ve done Year 12 Physics, you can do three Arts disciplines in first year and you can do two subjects in Physics at each year level throughout your degree. So you don’t have to give up totally those sort of things that you are very interested in, even if it’s not part of our faculty.

The thing I’ve noticed over the 20 years that I’ve been here is that students these days choose subjects that they like doing which I am absolutely all for. I think it’s fantastic. So I do get people who are doing Physics and doing history. In the old days you did Physics, Chem 2, Mass and English or you did History, Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology, those sorts of things. Very, very different. These days, as I said, people are choosing things from all over the place. And that’s why in our degree we try to give you some flexibility to not have to drop off those interests that you have.

These are the disciplines that we offer within the Bachelor of Arts. So when students come to enrol for the first time, they usually say to me, “What should I do?” OK. There are no “shoulds” about the Bachelor of Arts. You should be doing what you’re really interested in.

So the first thing I’m going to ask you is what are you interested in? Quite often they’ll say, “I don’t know.” So then I go to, “What VCE subjects did you do?” So we try and work back to find out what sort of things you like studying.

But remember, when you apply to do a degree it’s not the degree that you’re studying. The degree is what you get at the end of it. You’re actually studying subjects, units within that degree. You’ve got to be interested in the units. If you’re not interested in the units then you’re not interested in the degree. Because you’re going to have to do essays and exams based on the content of that unit so you need to make sure it’s something you’re interested in. Because I really don’t fancy you coming here and doing subjects you’re not interested in. There’s no point. You won’t do well and doing well is really important if you’re going to sell your degree to an employer at the other end of this process. Because that’s why we’re here presumably, to enjoy ourselves, to study, to learn some more and to get a job. OK?

So these are the disciplines that we offer. Now, if you’re doing a first year at a Bachelor of Arts, you’re going to choose four disciplines, so you’re not going to choose all of those. Quite often, I get students who want to choose all of them but you can’t. You’ve really got to bring it down. But we do make you do four different disciplines at first year. And the reason we do that is I don’t want you to talk to me about majoring.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the structure of the degree and yes, you do have to do a major to get a Bachelor of Arts. But in first year, you’ll be taking four different disciplines and you can choose to major in any one of those. So you might come in saying, “I really only want to do English because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been interested in. I don’t want to do any other subjects.” And you may find out, because we’re going to make you do four different disciplines, that at the end of the time you think, “Yes, English was OK. But Linguistics, now that was really interesting. I’ve never come across it before. I really enjoyed it. That’s what I want to major in.” That happens all the time. So you come in thinking you know what you like, sometimes over first year that changes. You actually find something that you like better.

Areas of study, you can do your major in the Bachelor of Arts in these areas of study. The reason I put them separately is you won’t find a subject called “Aboriginal Studies 1”, OK. What you’ll find is a listing in the handbook that says “Aboriginal Studies” and there’ll be a whole lot of subjects listed there. From Politics, from Legal Studies, from History, from all sorts of places. So they’re not a discipline there’s a subject called “History 1”. There’s a subject called “Politics 1”. But there are subjects that have content about aboriginal areas and they’re the subjects that are under that list.

So when you’re looking at these, you’re more likely to be choosing something – there’s not a “Peace Studies 1” subject as well. But there are subjects that are specifically related to Peace Studies. And you would choose to put your major from those lists of subjects.

Obviously, when you come to enrol we are there to help you. That’s what we do, OK. I’m not an academic. I’m an administrator. And our job and my team in the faculty office are there to actually help you choose subjects to get through your degree. To make sure that when you finish three years you’ve actually got a degree, not just a whole of unrelated subjects which has been known to happen.

OK, why do you do a Bachelor of Arts? Because you’re interested in it. And some people think that’s probably a very bad reason. I think it’s the best reason for doing a degree. I think if you’re doing a degree you’re not interested in it’s going to be painful. You’re going to be stressed out and you’re not necessarily going to want to work in that area when you finish. If you really love and enjoy Humanities subjects, doing a Bachelor of Arts is probably the right choice for you or one of the other niche degrees around the Humanities area.

Some people do know exactly what they want to do and some people have absolutely no idea what they want to do. So best thing is choose something that you’re interested in and you might find a pathway coming out of that into something you really do think that you can work in down the track.

The structure is pretty straightforward. We make you do four pairs of subjects at first year level. As I said, not interested in what you want to major in first year but this is the actually degree. So at first year level in the Bachelor of Arts, you end up doing eight subjects. So to complete your first year, you’ll end up doing eight subjects. At second year, you’ll do six at third year you’ll do six. That’s a full time load. So that’s the way our degree is structured.

And the major, people get really hung up about majors. They’re not actually that complicated. All it means is, if I want to do an Archaeology major, I do two first year Archaeology subjects, two at second year and three at third year. That’s a major. So it’s not really complicated. I have students saying to me, “Oh but I really want a double major and that’s going to be lots more work than if I…” And I say, “No, it’s not any more work at all.” You still do the same number of subjects. You just choose the ones you want from particular areas to get your major.

Specialist degrees, as I said, specialist degrees are a moderately new phenomenon. We have quite a few as you can see. Basically, the subjects that are done in a specialist degree, particularly at first year level, probably you can be doing them in the Bachelor of Arts. Just in the Bachelor of Arts, we don’t tell you which ones to do, in the specialist degrees we will.

So if you want to do a Bachelor of International Relations, we will say, “We want you to do these two politics subjects.” We offer Australian Politics at first year, we offer International. If you’re doing a Bachelor of International Relations, we make you choose the International option. We then say, “We want you to choose the next two subjects from this list of subjects that we think are relevant to International Relations. And these are the two subjects and these are the list.” And there’s a couple of electives that you choose what you want to do. So it’s a more structured degree.

The key to knowing about the specialist degrees is if you’re doing International Politics as part of a Bachelor of International Retaliations and in a Bachelor of Arts you choose to do the first year International Politics subjects, you’re sitting in the same class. You’re not different. You’re the same. It’s the subjects and the way that you put them together.

The reason that International Relations has an ENTER of 90 is that I take about 40 people into the Bachelor of International Relations. And surprisingly lots and lots of people want to do a Bachelor of International Relations. I take 600 into the Bachelor of Arts so it’s got an ENTER of 70. But at first year level, you can take exactly the same subjects in your Bachelor of Arts as you do in the first year of the Bachelor of International Relations. So it’s what we call a pathway.

I’ll talk a little bit more about pathways later but if you don’t get the 90, I don’t want ever to see a student say, “Oh I got 85 and, you know, I’m not going to get into therefore I’m not doing anything.” There’s always a way to get to where you want to go. You need my expertise to help you in that process.

For the first time in my life, I have a Year 12 daughter this year and it’s been an eye opener. It really has been. I understand how complex it is trying to get your kids into – for both the students and the parents you need to get some expert advice. And we’re more than happy for you to contact us to get that expert advice. Particularly if you don’t get the ENTER that you thought you were going to get. If you’re in that situation, come and talk to us straight away. There is always a way to get to where you want to go. It might take you a bit longer but there’s always a way.

We have some degrees that are only offered at Bendigo, and Mildura. Our Graphic Design, Visual Arts are only offered at Bendigo and Mildura campuses. And the Bachelor of Urban, Rural and Environmental Planning is a four year accredited planning degree. Again, only offered at the Bendigo campus. Bachelor of Arts of course is offered at all of the campuses. We have five campuses. It’s offered at all of them.

ENTER scores, they come and they go. They go up, they go down. Not massively, there’s never huge jumps but it is all to do with how many places I have and how many people want to do the degree. And that’s why they change from year to year. Sometimes as little as changing the name of the degree gets it a higher ENTER. International Development used to be called Bachelor of Development Studies. And everyone used to think it was Child Development. And that had never occurred to us until somebody at open day said to me, “I want to talk about your Child Development degree.” And I went…

We then decided we better rename it because it was pretty confusing it. So we renamed it International Development. Now the ENTER is starting to go up because it’s got the word “International” in it. Now this course is exactly the same course, no difference.

So that’s what happens with ENTER’s. So be very wary. Don’t assume that because something’s got an ENTER of 95 that it’s actually a very, very difficult course or that’s something that’s got an ENTER of 75 it’s a very, very easy course. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It’s to do with how many want to get in and how many places you’ve got. So as I said, they come and go.

RC means Range of Criteria. So if you want to do Visual Arts or Graphic Design, you need a portfolio. So we’re not basing it on your ENTER. We’re actually basing it on something else.

Double degrees, no we are not – well, over my dead body. We are not getting rid of double degrees at La Trobe. The reason we are not getting rid of double degrees, as I said, VCE students these days have many and varied interests. My daughter does Physics and she does History. So for her a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science double degree is ideal because it will allow her to keep her interest in Science and her interest in Arts.

Double degrees basically means that you end up doing two degrees. To tell you the honest truth, if you get a Bachelor of Arts and then get a Bachelor of Science you will end up doing the same number of credit points as you do for the double degree because you cross credit within them. So two three-year degrees would be 720 credit points but a double degree is four years and it’s 540 credit points. So you get to cross credit between the two degrees. And it’s a set program that we have organized to say you do this many in Science, you do this many in Arts.

If you’re doing Law/Arts or Law/International Relations that’s a three-year degree and a four-year degree, so it takes five years to do. So that’s really the way double degrees work.

You can do part time study. The four and five years, that’s if you want to get out in the absolutely minimum of time, you overload yourself a bit and you end up doing two three-year degrees in four years.

However, part time is a very good option, particularly if you have to work. I will tell you this again when you come to enroll because I say it every year. If you’re working full time, you cannot study full time, not possible. Well, it’s possible but you’ll get really lousy marks and you want your degree to be something you can sell to an employer at the end of the time you’re here. Not something were you rush through or 50 in every subject. As an employer, I would not probably give you a job if you rush through with 50 in every subject. However, if you’ve taken a little bit longer and you’ve got A’s and B’s in all your subjects, I think that it’s probably somebody I would be looking at.

Double degrees administered by us, you’ll see that there are only two degrees administered by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. That’s because when we have double degrees, we actually flip a coin to see who gets to administer the double degree and I keep winning. So I only have two that I have to look after. But in a sense, because all double degrees, you are part of both faculties. If you’re doing Art/Science, yes, you’re part of Science but you’re part of Arts as well. So you need to talk to both of us. Arts/Science just happens to be administered by the Faculty of Science and Technology.

So Arts/Arts Education, the reason I need to talk to you about that is, please be really aware. This degree is a secondary teaching qualification not a primary teaching qualification. So if you’re going to do Arts/Arts Ed it will definitely be doing secondary teaching and it will be teaching in the methods – the teaching methods available are those that are written up there.

So the other way of doing Education which a lot of you who were not at high school in the last 10 to 15 years is that you do a straight degree, Bachelor of Arts, and you do a Diploma of Education, a one-year Diploma of Education. That is still another way of actually of getting to be a teacher. And you can choose to do primary or secondary. But this particular double degree program is definitely for secondary only.

Double degrees have higher ENTER’s, why? Any ideas? Because we don’t take many people into them. So that’s the reason. Not a lot of people want to do them, not many places so they have higher ENTER’s. And as you see, there are a number of double degrees that are involved with our faculty of which I administer to. But if you need to ask questions you probably need to ask both faculties the questions.

Our strengths, so I’ve been talking about Bachelor of Arts in general and our degrees. I think the strengths of La Trobe in particular are the fact that we have some very good academics, particularly in Humanities and Social Sciences. A lot of people who are very high in their particular areas, Politics, we’ve got a lot of people in Politics. We’ve got some fantastic people in Media Studies. So the academics are good. The academics are also accessible. So if you need to talk to an academic about your subject, you can find them and you can talk to them. We don’t lock them away.

So make sure that you ask them questions. That’s what they’re employed to do. That’s what I’m employed to do too. I’m there. So you ask the academics about things to do with your units. You ask us about things to do with your degree. Come and bug us. Come and talk to us as many times as you’d like. My staff know that that’s what we’re there for.

So I think it’s a supportive environment both administratively for your degree structure and academically. So if that’s what you’re looking for then I think La Trobe is a good place to do that.

Work or industry related experience. You can do some subjects in some of our disciplines that are internships or work related. The bachelor of international development, we’ve just recently decided to give some credit for people who do volunteer work with NGO’s or aid agencies. Bachelor of International Relations has an actual internship, as does Media Studies. So a number of places.

You can actually get some work experience as part of your degree. So that’s always a good option. If you can take that option, it’s a good option because it’s a great thing to put on your CV. And it helps you to understand how the subjects you’re doing in your degree count towards work experience and when you get into the workplace as well.

And this is where my main message is. I mean, students talk to me about the subjects, parents talk to me about the jobs because that’s what they’re worried about. And I am a mother so I’m worried about it too.

The point of doing anything in the Humanities and Social Sciences is to get good skills. You don’t go to an employer and say, “I’ve done a major in History, give me a job.” What you say to them is, “I’ve done an Arts degree. I basically got A’s and B’s in all my subjects” or “I’ve done honours and I’ve got an honours degree.” Better still. “And because I’ve got A’s and B’s in all my subjects I have really employable skills as you can see there.” Believe me, if you’re doing an Arts degree and you’re getting A’s and B’s, you’ve got those skills. And they’re the skills that employers are looking for.

That’s what you say to them. You don’t go, “Oh I’ve just got an Arts degree.” I nearly throttled a student the other day because she said to me, “Oh I’m only doing an Arts degree.” I thought, “Hmm…” Anyhow, I think these skills are what you have to sell to the employer. And as I said, you don’t get a good degree, A’s and B’s, without these skills.

Pathways, plenty of ways to be a secondary teacher. That’s probably the most obvious. Year 12, double degree, teaching. However, here’s another one. Year 12, you do a Bachelor of Arts, grad dip, secondary teaching. That’s one pathway or into the Bachelor of Arts, do well, get a B average, get a 75 average, transfer to the Arts/Arts Ed degree, secondary teaching. From Year 12 don’t get straight into the Bachelor of Arts. Do a Diploma of Liberal Arts at TAFE. Pass all your subjects, get into the Arts degree. So there are lots of ways.

So there are lots of ways, even if you’re not going to get the sort of ENTER’s that are going to get you into an Arts degree, come and talk to us. Never assume that there’s nothing you can do. There is always something you can do. We can always find some way, something that we can advise you on.

OK, so you can go right up to a Master of International Relations. There are always pathways both to get in. And once you’re in there, there are pathways as well.

Overseas study opportunities. You should know that this is the ideal way to get overseas. Doing exchange as part of your degree means that you actually can spend six months overseas. With funding from the university to actually help pay your airfare. And it’s a fantastic opportunity and you should always be thinking about it.

We’re part of an international network of universities all around the world. And as part of that, not only exchange, but I’ve just been to this Global Citizenship Seminar in Hiroshima. It was a week, We had four students who are looking very silly there in kimonos but basically they had a seminar on Peace in Hiroshima. They went and was totally funded by the university. So there are ways to get there.

So when we give you these phone numbers, we actually mean you to ring. We actually mean you to come and find out what you need to know.

OK, if you’ve got more questions come and talk to me or I'd ring the Union Hall, go and talk to the academics.