PROCEDURES FOR ACADEMIC DEGREES- BY PROF. WANDIA

Let me give you free advice on doing a Masters or PhD.

1. If you're doing it for "the market," don't waste your time. A job that wants to employ someone with a post-graduate degree cares more about what you studied than about the title of your degree. That's why you find people with linguistics degrees doing PR or with medical anthropology in charge of public health. So look at people's dissertations and their work experience, and stop looking at the name of the degree. And if you want to move careers, just move, mara moja. Don't do a Masters or PhD as the formula that will make you move. Degrees are not magic.

2. It makes no sense to do a masters in something you are not familiar and then do a thesis on the field you were running away from. If you're moving fields, move completely. Don't be a BEd Science student doing MA communication and then writing a thesis on Mathematics classroom. First, you will struggle to locate yourself in the research, two, you will be a master of nothing. If you think you might continue doing Math Education research, apply for a Masters of Education in Mathematics Education. Develop your expertise. If you want Communication career, do communication. But an NGO doing work on mathematics education will probably prefer an MEd Maths Education to you. 

3. Avoid doing three degrees in three different things. Choose your Masters based on what you already know, and the PhD the same. Build on what you already know, even if you want to move out. I once had a student who did a BEd in French and was doing communication. I asked - why not a Masters in French? You would still do communication and translation work, anyway. So now she was struggling to get a thesis research because she was way out of her depth.

This fixation on discipline names comes from our bad, very bad attitude towards knowledge. We think knowledge ties you to one place. It doesn't. Knowledge opens your world. And once you have an expertise, you move in and out of the discipline. You start to PHILOSOPHIZE, but based on your expertise. I barely teach French any more (partly because my students were misadvised that language has no market). Now I give talks on politics, education and history. I'm invited to talk about Rwanda but my degrees don't say Rwanda. 

Mordecai Ogada's studies are in carnivore ecology but he talks about environment and politics.

This obsession with ensuring that your degree has a vocational name - that if I want to be a journalist, my degree certificate must say journalism - is based on rumours and bad advice. Decide what you want to do, and make education decisions based on your interest, not on the name of the degree.

Lastly, Masters and PhD degrees are not for skills. If you want skills, go to TVET and get a diploma. Post-graduate degrees are for broader thinking about the fields in which we work.

PROF. WANDIA NJOYA

- Kenya