Some 174 students graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) Joint Honours followed by 170 with a BA (Major Honours) and 173 with a BA (Single Honours).

The Conferring Addresses were delivered by Professor Peter Woodman, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, UCC (attached).

The week-long conferring ceremonies conclude tomorrow (Friday, September 12th 2008) with a further 412 students graduating from the College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences.  The Conferring Address will be delivered by Dr Maurice Bric, Chairman, Foresight.
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Conferring Address by Professor Peter Woodman, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University College Cork, Thursday, September 11th 2008

Three Wishes

Could I begin by adding my congratulations to you and could I also add our thanks to those here today that provided help and support, namely your friends and family.   Until recent years, it was usual to thank your parents and your spouse but now, for a significant number of you, we also recognise the fact that for your children, your studies, anxieties and crises played a big role in their lives.
 
Universities have changed. In the academic year 1982/83, when I started here, the faculty of arts could not fill a cohort of 500 places and virtually every student in the day degree was a school leaver who was well under the age of 20. Since then our Faculty or College, as it is now called, has gradually but consistently remodelled itself.  The numbers of students in the faculty has doubled, there has been more than a 50% increase in the number of subjects offered and the make up of the student body has shifted. There are the large numbers of overseas students who throng our campus and who are mostly taking subjects in this faculty. There is also a very different age profile. By the time I retired I was more likely to be mistaken for a student than as a lecturer!   Over a decade ago we pioneered the introduction of the mature student category so that at least 15% of our students fall into the mature student category while there are also routes for those trying to over come social and physical disadvantages.

Does this square with how arts are still occasionally portrayed? We all know the jokes! So, besides self congratulations on our part, what has this got to do with you?  Simple, the world has always changed and always will change therefore for many of you it is not a question of that first job it is more about being ready for the way your life will change.  I think a good Honours BA degree is as good an introduction to life as any. Now I was one of the lucky ones who knew what they wanted and got it but there is a lot to be said for keeping your options open. You never know what opportunities will appear.

When, in 1961, I was starting at Queens in Belfast, the advice to my Parents was that I should not study Archaeology. There were no jobs in Archaeology. At that time there were less than 20 people in Ireland who could claim to be gainfully employed in Archaeology. Now it is probable that up to 1000 people work in this area and many of those are from other countries. We had a short fall in our own graduates! The nature of our profession could, again, change radically in the next few years. We used primarily to be surveyors, now, due to the fact that we are often caught up in development confrontations, we are seen as diggers but in the future areas such as scientific post excavation analysis or architecture history could dominate.
 This is also true of many of the professions for which you are headed.

The early 1960s, when I was a student, was also an era when University education was, for various reasons, open only to a select few with an implicit assumption that a degree was a meal ticket!

Now it is different. Third Level participation has grown enormously and there are plans for it to grow again. This means that a degree, a BA or otherwise, is not putting you on a direct path into a life time of employment.  There has to be something more.  

To begin with, remember that within 10 years it will be you that will be assessed for jobs or other opportunities.  In fact, while a good degree is a great introduction to the next part of your life, many of those who have influence on our lives today, whether this is in the literary world, politics or commerce had a "ball" while in College! Many acquired other skills and because arts students were often the back bone of University life, activities in societies and clubs were another important aspect of University Life and I hope you took the time to enjoy that part of your education.

Therefore, you must remember that the skills and the knowledge you have acquired from lecturers in the subjects you chose to study are important but will they be sufficient or relevant in 20 years time? Many of you will find yourself working in entirely different areas; in fact, some of you may be involved in types of work or research that has yet to develop.  This is an awful thought but it is not confined to Arts as the same can be said for any one who has participated in 3rd level education. Even today, people who have trained in one area and who are employed in a large company or public body often find themselves with responsibility for matters in which they received no training.  

I believe  that  graduates of the Arts faculty irrespective of whether you followed  a very specific programme or  like yourselves opted for a broader approach have talents and a potential to over come the challenges that you will face.

But to address this awful Vista I have three wishes.

For you, our graduating class, I would like you to remember the following and hope that your education here at UCC has already introduced you to these observations.

As an arts student
I hope, on occasions, you have had to struggle to get your head around a particular problem when there is no simple answer in the text books! That is what life is like. There is no instruction manual and the information you have is very partial so it is your judgement that counts.
   
How often have you accepted the conventional wisdom or have you challenged it. Just because it is written down does not make it right. Did you learn to say BUT or Why the most dangerous sentence one can come across is that that begins "It is reasonable to presume that......"
We all, myself included, have invested  in the retention of comfortable, conventional explanations and the history of science is littered with  examples of road blocks which stopped us changing the way we thought or where the ideas were just ignored.  

So what has this got to do with arts? Surely it is our job to criticize and question the conventional in what ever form it takes in society. If, as a result of your time here in UCC, you have learned to do that, then your contribution to the world around you will be so much richer.
 
To our University I would have the following wish
Many of us embraced modularisation because we believed it would create greater choice and as an opportunity introduce more flexibility. It became, sadly, a form of academic accountancy. There are many reasons why this happened but I still regret the fact that students cannot, within reason and practablility have more choice of individual modules from across a range of disciplines. Yes, there is a need to protect the standard of our individual subjects but is quantity not being substituted for quality and a bit of ingenuity? Most of the procedures are in place but we (or rather you) need to abandon "Check Point Charlie Professionalism" in an undergraduate programme.  It has to be asked whether each subject has got nothing to offer to students that fall outside the narrow administrative constraints that exist.

You are only supposed to get three wishes but here is an extra one. I would really like to see at the very least, each subject teach more explicitly the History as well as the Philosophy of their discipline. It is open to debate as to whether it should be a subject in its own right. I believe that the benefit of showing students how ideas are always changing is invaluable. We can all learn from the fact that human society in the pursuit of knowledge has spent more time and ingenuity in avoiding the obvious than embracing it.

For Government, indeed any Government, more co ordination between Rhetoric and action
As an aside can I observe that while recognizing that all levels of our educational system are vitally important it is remarkable how some criteria are applied in different ways! Why is it that in first and second level efficiency is assessed by reduction in class size while in 3rd level it would seem to be the reverse?  One of our greatest achievements at 3rd level is in the quality of graduates that we produce with our limited resources. One of the few advantages of being an external examiner on that other island is that one comes home confident that your graduates are as good as any elsewhere. But we can only go so far if we do not have realistic investment.

Finally, during this period of economic downturn, it is interesting to listen to suggestions that those who have lost their jobs should avail of further training and education including 3rd level. We have had various reports on the importance of Life Long Learning but there is still in that area the huge barrier of an inequitable fee structure. There is a constantly changing world out there so retraining and new directions in life are essential. For those who will need it and for you our graduates when looking for that change then it might require part time access to many areas of third level education. This is most likely at a point in your life when demands from mortgages and the needs of your family come first, and then huge financial barriers will exist. We have an interesting ladder of opportunities in education. This ranges from National school to our highest awards but getting back onto that ladder has problems.

Platitudes and reports are not enough; the regimented regime of administrative oversight that pushes students through along one narrow track has in many countries had its day. This is less about money but more about the philosophy and vision of educational administrators

You if you wish, you can be a generation that brings about change. I hope you do, but first enjoy yourself today!

832MMcS






 

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