3 - Varsity

Features Editor: Ed Cumming22 VIEWFeatures features@varsity.co.ukFriday November 2 2007varsity.co.uk/featuresWe all like to think our subjectis the best. The most academic,the most valuable, thecoolest...ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA TRENCHAverysubjectiveperspective...but we can’t all be right.Joanna Trigg surveyedwhich disciplines youvalue the most. Additionalmaterial by Ed CummingCambridge has much in commonwith lots of Britishuniversities. Young people, forone. And books. But if there isa difference between us andthe majority, it is probably theamount of time we spend withour chosen subjects. Hours,days, weeks of our life, poringover texts and festering inlecture rooms in our chosenacademic pursuit.And though we might jokeabout English students neverwaking up (there’s probablya less morbid way to phrasethat), and lawyers never leavingthe library, on the whole wewander around pretty contentin the understanding that allof our subjects are of equalvalue. Some might be moreuseful than others for certainjobs, of course. For instance Ithink we can accept, withoutour pride being too dented,that Medicine is more usefulthan say, Philosophy if youwant to be a doctor.But just as all jobs are notequal, so neither are all subjects.Obviously much of itdepends on the students involved,but it also has to be truethat some disciplines are moreacademically valuable thanothers, as well as more valuablefor future employment.To find out which was the best,we asked Cambridge studentsto complete a survey, rankingtwenty-five subjects in order oftheir separate Academic andVocational values.The results are printedopposite, together with thetop and bottom five subjectsoverall. While it’s far fromscientific, the results stillmake for interesting browsing.Many fall along predictablelines., although of course somerespondents used more seriousmeasures of value than others.One asked “Can you save lives/build/maintain civilisations/maintain law and order/ communicatewith other cultureswith it? If not then its vocationalvalue is not very high”.Another decided to examinevocational worth in terms ofhow important to the world itwould be to make a mistake.Clearly it is worse to mistakea human colon than one on thepage, but the world needs onlyso many doctors.The general, perhaps clichédsense one has of a subject is byand large borne out by theseVocational standings. Law doeswell, as do Medicine and Engineering.Perhaps more surprisingly,Veterinary Sciences rankshighly here too. It’s clearlyperceived to bestow many ofthe same values as Medicine,something anyone planning atrip to the doctor’s (how often