The Promise of a Sociology Degree in Canadian Higher Education

Abstract

Des descriptions de programmes universitaires de cinquante-quatre départements de sociologie anglophones ont été examinées afin de découvrir les thèmes publicitaires dirigés aux étudiants éventuels. En comparant les départements des universités comprenant des programmes de doctorat aux universités offrant principalement des programmes de baccalauréat, on a trouvé des variations dans leurs messages et leurs promesses aux étudiants. On a remarqué des formules habituelles dans les promesses de leur programme (l'étude des arts libéraux, le choix de carrière, ou l'amélioration des conditions sociales), l'acquisition des habilités (les pensées critiques ou déterminées par le marché) et les expériences d'apprentissage prévues (l'éducation élitiste, l'environnement d'apprentissage accessible, ou la stimulation intellectuelle). Après avoir composé un rapport portant sur ces modèles, nous prenons en considération leurs conséquences dans le contexte des questions plus générales de l'éducation universitaire.Program descriptions from 54 English-speaking sociology departments were analyzed to uncover promotional themes for prospective students. Variations in these messages were found when comparing departments from doctoral-comprehensive and primarily undergraduate universities. Patterns were noted in the stated promise of the program (liberal arts education, career pathway, or improvement of social conditions), skills to be acquired (market based or critical thinking), and the learning experience to be expected (elite education, accessible learning environment, or intellectual stimulation). After reporting on these patterns, we consider their implications within the context of broader issues in higher education.

What's for Sale at Canadian Universities? A Mixed‐Methods Analysis of Promotional Strategies

“…counts) and qualitative nature of manually coded themes across RI and PU university home pages were contrasted. These Maclean's‐ inspired categories, though socially constructed and arbitrary in their boundaries, have been used successfully in a number of existing studies of university marketing (Puddephatt and Nelsen, ; Pizarro Milian and McLaughlin, ), thus lending legitimacy to their usage here. As numerous methodologists have argued (Jick, ; Creswell and Clark, ), mixed‐methodology of this sort, with qualitative and quantitative components, allows researchers to triangulate empirical findings, providing insurance that they are not simply ‘artefacts’ of a single methodological tool.…”

“…Though marketing is now ubiquitous across higher education, minimal scholarly attention has been given to the promotional strategies enacted by Canadian universities. Existing peer‐reviewed research has either focused too narrowly on academic departments (Puddephatt and Nelsen, ; Pizarro Milian and McLaughlin, ), community colleges (Pizarro Milian, ), small samples of geographically proximate universities (Davidson, ) or novel types of social media not uniformly used across the university sector (Belanger et al ., ). Present understandings of the promotional tactics employed by Canadian universities are thus very limited.…”

Interdisciplinarity for sale: Logics of knowledge, labour markets and consumerism

“…First, it complements recent research which has explored the internal organisational structures of interdisciplinary programmes, along with their growth trajectories (Frickel et al, ; Knight et al, ), providing an understanding of their externally oriented behaviour. In doing so, it also provides an additional case study for the burgeoning literature on PSE marketing, which has already studied some disciplinary programmes, including sociology (Pizarro Milian & McLaughlin, ; Puddephatt & Nelsen, ) and business management (Opoku, Abratt, & Pitt, ). Perhaps most importantly, however, this study employs contemporary insights from organisation studies (e.g., Deephouse, ; Zhao et al, ) to theorise legitimation and strategic positioning at the level of the academic unit.…”

“…To examine how interdisciplinary programmes promote themselves, this study followed the template developed by Puddephatt and Nelsen () to study the marketing of Canadian sociology programmes, relying on online programme self‐descriptions. The Canadian context is one where interdisciplinarity has grown greatly, both with regards to programme numbers, research funding and stakeholder support (Gillis et al, ), but where there is ongoing resistance in academic quarters to its ethos (see Burawoy, ; Puddephatt & McLaughlin, ).…”

“…As in previous PSE marketing studies (Pizarro Milian, , ; Pizarro Milian & Rizk, ; Puddephatt & Nelsen, ), qualitative analysis software (QDA Miner Lite) was employed to track trends in our textual data. We employed a hybrid coding scheme that incorporates both deductive and inductive strategies (see Fereday & Muir‐Cochrane, ).…”