HPSS: Most useless course in UL?

Gambra

mrmanire wrote: »

I suppose you have a good point there Gamba. I think the problem with HPSS is less the content of the course but more the general culture of slackness that seems to apply to it; much like Public Admin. English and History students always seemed to take the whole thing thing far seriously. If Politics and Intl was around in my time I'd definitely have done it.

There are just so many lads in it like the guys drake mentioned literally taking the piss. Even the name of the course is horrific. Try putting it on a CV!!!

The general "slackness" has nothing to do with the course at all, it's the people themselves. Those people would be useless wasters no matter what course they'd be in, HPSS didn't make them that way. It's not like the first lectures you get the lecturers say to you: "lads, this course is grand. Turn up and you'll get a good grade!"

mrmanire

Come on Petee. Make a comment yourself aside for "lamenting" how useless this thread is.

You must have an opinion on HPSS yourself?

NickDrake

Peteee wrote: »

But the SU has nothing to do with HPSS (this year)

But it did in previous years and that is very important to the history of the SU.

But how about the amount of HPSS involved this year and previous years that are not elected. I.E that go to all the meetings and are on the committee thing they have

In relation to MrManire ( **** name by the way) He has stated valid points here on this thread about the course.

Probably the best thread on here in over a year

NickDrake

Gambra wrote: »

The general "slackness" has nothing to do with the course at all, it's the people themselves. Those people would be useless wasters no matter what course they'd be in, HPSS didn't make them that way. It's not like the first lectures you get the lecturers say to you: "lads, this course is grand. Turn up and you'll get a good grade!"

Thats a fair point but how come they HPSS manages to attract so many of them

mrmanire

Gambra wrote: »

The general "slackness" has nothing to do with the course at all, it's the people themselves. Those people would be useless wasters no matter what course they'd be in, HPSS didn't make them that way. It's not like the first lectures you get the lecturers say to you: "lads, this course is grand. Turn up and you'll get a good grade!"

The thing is that they do turn up and get a good grade. The slackness present in the course can't just be explained as being the usual random wasters signing on. HPSS has far more so it must be course related.

I don't know if any of ye took HPSS Geography in first year. I came out of first lecture and 3rd year I knew in course told me never to go again and take his essay for the end of the year. The course in retrospect seemed rubbish (it was) so I took his advice and got got an A1 for only one hours geography all semester. Can't take the degree back off me now!

Treetirty

Ah man, I'm doing HPSS and I'm kinda wondering how useful it is now. Saying that though, I have always known that it is an arts degree and like pretty much every arts degree ~ by themselves they are pretty much useless.
So I'm kinda curious @The OP, why didn't you use your degree to go on and do something "better" whether it be a masters or whatever?

mrmanire

Treetirty wrote: »

Ah man, I'm doing HPSS and I'm kinda wondering how useful it is now. Saying that though, I have always known that it is an arts degree and like pretty much every arts degree ~ by themselves they are pretty much useless.
So I'm kinda curious @The OP, why didn't you use your degree to go on and do something "better" whether it be a masters or whatever?

You have in one there boy; you pretty much need to go and do something else; don't know if arts related is the best way to go. I'd even get out of UL for that. Always looks better to do your masters in a different college, especially if you have HPSS as an undergrad. Personally I'm doing a business related professional qualification at the moment. At least it will pay the bills!

cson

mrmanire wrote: »

and with Irish music and dance; well I suppose you can dance.

Ignorance is bliss eh? :rolleyes:

mrmanire

cson wrote: »

Ignorance is bliss eh? :rolleyes:

ignorance of someone taking the piss is also bliss don't you agree? :rolleyes:

cson

Oh I'm not ignorant of you taking the piss. Its your ignorant comment, whether in jest or not that I have issue with.

Peteee

NickDrake wrote: »

In relation to MrManire ( **** name by the way)

Stop with the name calling. It won't be tolerated.

OP, if you did indeed do HPSS and found it so easy what grade did you get?

I'm expecting a 1.1 since the course requires no effort and is easy.

cson

Right, having read through this thread again I believe we can summise the following;

The OP appears to be highly critical of his former course HPSS. It would appear by all accounts that it is not the highway to gainful employment after graduation. Furthermore, opinons have been proffered in this thread that the removal of this course would be of benefit to the University.

In addition, we have seen several colloquial accounts which reference the ease with which one can pass and obtain a good degree in the course. The number of hours or rather lackthereof also appears to be an issue at heart to certain posters.

Lastly we have had allegations that the SU is clique based, due to the again alleged high numbers of HPSS students that have held SU positions. This would seem to be a contentious issue for some posters.

I would also hasten to add that it is notable that there is a lack of references and sources quoted for some of the allegations and statements made. Referencing from Peter Pan world sadly doesn't hold much, if any, sway in reality.

To conclude; certain posters are critical of the HPSS course and as a corollary its alleged ties to the SU. Now I don't know what we can add to that or indeed how one can advance any more arguments than what has already been offered.

In summary; you don't like HPSS - we get it.

mrmanire

Got a 2.1 because

mrmanire wrote: »

2:1 - Turn up to odd lecture, two days per assignment

What's point of working the arse of it for a useless course

klong

cson wrote: »

Right, having read through this thread again I believe we can summise the following;

The OP appears to be highly critical of his former course HPSS. It would appear by all accounts that it is not the highway to gainful employment after graduation. Furthermore, opinons have been proffered in this thread that the removal of this course would be of benefit to the University.

In addition, we have seen several colloquial accounts which reference the ease with which one can pass and obtain a good degree in the course. The number of hours or rather lackthereof also appears to be an issue at heart to certain posters.

Lastly we have had allegations that the SU is clique based, due to the again alleged high numbers of HPSS students that have held SU positions. This would seem to be a contentious issue for some posters.

I would also hasten to add that it is notable that there is a lack of references and sources quoted for some of the allegations and statements made. Referencing from Peter Pan world sadly doesn't hold much, if any, sway in reality.

To conclude; certain posters are critical of the HPSS course and as a corollary its alleged ties to the SU. Now I don't know what we can add to that or indeed how one can advance any more arguments than what has already been offered.

In summary; you don't like HPSS - we get it.

I should point out that the info from my own post close to the start of the thread was from a Careers briefing.

From my own POV (as a HPSS graduate also)...very few, if any Arts graduates walk into any job straight after graduation. I don't believe Arts degrees are designed for the purpose. I think of them as more like a foundation. HPSS graduates- provided, of course, they have a good enough degree- can go on to do postgrads in a huge variety of subjects. I've seen plenty of solicitors, for instance, with "B.A., LLB" on their nameplates, for instance. But speaking of a legal career- the law courses have feck-all hours too. Should we be measuring the "usefulness" of college courses by how many lecture hours there are?
Would I do the course again, with the benefit of hindsight? Probably not, but then when you're 18 and filling in the CAO form, I think "what am I good at and interested in?" comes ahead of "what career do I want?" more often than not.
There's also the issue regarding a HPSS clique in the SU. I can't agree with that. One of the reasons people study HPSS is their interest in politics, so such people will naturally gravitate towards the SU. Come elections...well, people can only vote for the people who have put themselves forward.

ninty9er

NickDrake wrote: »

Ha ha! But I am right in what I am saying. You know it

Are you now!!:mad::mad:

Okay I don't turn up 'til 10:30/11 unless I have a meeting, but most days I work until at least 7 and I'm on Blackberry as long as I'm awake and not on holidays.

It is not unusual for me to reply to emails received on a Sunday evening within 45 mins to an hour.

I guarantee you will not find many others outside of a Students' Union doing that.

If anyone else wants to see the make up of the ULSU Executive it is as above plus:

CSO : BSc Health and Safety
Chair of Council: BEd Science Education
Equality Officer: English and History
Community Relations Officer: Public Admin
Faculties Officer: Computer Engineering
Societies Officer: Computer Games Development
Clubs Officer: Computer Systems
First Year Rep: BBS


I might be slightly off on one or 2 of them.

EDIT:
HPSS is only as usless as it's best graduates. Now to be fair, I can't name any, but there are probably HPSS graduates clogging up the civil service all over the shop. If you fail to get employment with a HPSS degree, it is probably more down to a) the effort you put in to getting your degree b) you not trying hard enough to get the job or c) being so incompetent that you can't even get through the interview for a civil service job.

mrmanire

ninty9er wrote: »

Are you now!!:mad::mad:

Okay I don't turn up 'til 10:30/11 unless I have a meeting, but most days I work until at least 7 and I'm on Blackberry as long as I'm awake and not on holidays.

It is not unusual for me to reply to emails received on a Sunday evening within 45 mins to an hour.

I guarantee you will not find many others outside of a Students' Union doing that.

If anyone else wants to see the make up of the ULSU Executive it is as above plus:

CSO : BSc Health and Safety
Chair of Council: BEd Science Education
Equality Officer: English and History
Community Relations Officer: Public Admin
Faculties Officer: Computer Engineering
Societies Officer: Computer Games Development
Clubs Officer: Computer Systems
First Year Rep: BBS


I might be slightly off on one or 2 of them.

EDIT:
HPSS is only as usless as it's best graduates. Now to up the civil service all over the shop. If you fail to get employmbe fair, I can't name any, but there are probably HPSS graduates cloggingent with a HPSS degree, it is probably more down to a) the effort you put in to getting your degree b) you not trying hard enough to get the job or c) being so incompetent that you can't even get through the interview for a civil service job.

Yeah I think Drake is being a bit harsh on the SU and since when did this thread become a knock the SU thread! In fairness though; the SU isn't doing many favours by not starting work (on days without meetings) until 1030 or 1100. Compared to graduates who have started working this year and may have to be up at 0630 or 0700 just to commute to work for nine; it's not very impressive.

Also many graduates in this country are working jobs where they may have to work ALL DAY on a Sunday UNPAID (would never happen in civil service) so the Sunday thing isn't very impressive either. The point I'm getting at is while Drake shouldn't be knocking the SU; there is no point in exaggerating the scale of the work done too. Much respect to lads who go in though and take a year out to do it.

As for the HPSS comment; the course is useless and the fact the civil service takes on so many and overpays them so much says a lot for the civil service and it's own discrepancies but that's a whole other discussion.

cson

mrmanire wrote: »

As for the HPSS comment; the course is useless

Repeat ad finitum. :rolleyes:

mrmanire

cson wrote: »

Repeat ad finitum. :rolleyes:

Ad infinitum I'd think :rolleyes:

NickDrake

mrmanire wrote: »

Ad infinitum I'd think :rolleyes:

Ya exactly it is Ad infinitum. Cson trying to go off topic again with a poor attempt to show off.

Anyway back on topic . I think Mrmanire has gotten to the core of the problem here. The course is just plain useless.

And I don't think that it is just a coincidence that so many HPSS graduates and students have ended up in the SU or tried to get into the SU.

Both of those have been established as facts!

cson

NickDrake wrote: »

Ya exactly it is Ad infinitum. Cson trying to go off topic again with a poor attempt to show off.

Anyway back on topic . I think Mrmanire has gotten to the core of the problem here. The course is just plain useless.

And I don't think that it is just a coincidence that so many HPSS graduates and students have ended up in the SU or tried to get into the SU.

Both of those have been established as facts!

Source?

Or are we referencing Never Never Land again?

mrmanire

Shouldn't need to reference the membership of the SU over the last few years but if you do; just check out the old An Focals online.

NickDrake

cson wrote: »

Source?

Or are we referencing Never Never Land again?

What are you talking about? And enough of the personal slags. This is a debate and you are just trying to throw it all off topic with snide remarks.

Regarding the source, previous An Focals over the years - see the website and ask the SU themselves. Don't be lazy now

cson

NickDrake wrote: »

What are you talking about? And enough of the personal slags. This is a debate and you are just trying to throw it all off topic with snide remarks.

Regarding the source, previous An Focals over the years - see the website and ask the SU themselves. Don't be lazy now

You made the statement ergo you provide the source to back it up. I'm particularly looking forward to the source that backs up the 'fact' that HPSS is a 'useless course' - surely you have a better, more reputable source than the opinions of 2 or 3 posters on a public message board?

As for your opinion that I'm throwing it off topic, we have reached the stage in the discussion where all that is being 'debated', or rather not being as is patently the case, is that 'HPSS is useless' - so on, so forth.

Get over it and change the record tbh

sceptre

NickDrake, considering your personal comments about another poster only a few posts up the page, I'd step out of that glass house first. Cson, nowhere near as bad but not helping. The "report this post" button exists for a reason and it isn't just so that the page looks prettier.

With all the complete crap that has been added to this thread at times (here's a hint: try to add something to the universe, not suck useful electrons out of it), I'm locking it for an hour or two until I take a look at it and decide whether to keep it or nuke it (or snip bits of it), issue a few infractions for rudeness and deliberate peace-breaching stupidity or assume people can heed a general warning (which I doubt, there's already been one from Peteee a few pages back).

Add to the universe when posting, don't take away from it. The OP asked a comparatively simple question. Some of you since then appear to be unable to not act idiotic. I'd be worried about that if I were you. I go away for two days so I can get properly fed for a change and this is how some of you waste your time? Pffft.

In the meantime I'll take complaints about the thread locking by PM but if you're thinking of it, please make it coherent and logical. This isn't a playground, least of all anyone's personal playground of silliness.

sceptre

OK, so I'm not reopening this and I'm not going to issue carded warnings even though some people certainly deserve them for silliness, peace-breaching, taunting and doing little to add something useful to the discussion or deal with the original query in a constructive way.

I'm not reopening it as what was an invite for a simple discussion from the OP descended into idiocy from idiots. I could sugar-coat it but there it is. I think the OP got sufficient replies to the question but if that isn't the case, I'll happily facilitate a new discussion of the same subject.

With regard to the off-topic discussion ("discussion" is a rather generous term, considering what it was) I'd suggest to anyone who wants a discussion on the SU that the UL board is a good place for it: we've had such discussions before, including when I was working full-time for the organisation, and rational discussions are good, foundation of democracy and all that jazz. That would be put in a separate thread rather than a thread about HPSS. Incidentally, ten years ago most of the SU officers were doing Business Studies and no-one suggested that there was anything implicitly wrong with the course as a result of a tiny number of them doing an SU year, nor something wrong with the SU by virtue of many of its officers being BBS graduates or BBS students. Swings and roundabouts. But a reasonable discussion is good and you can of course have it on this forum.

General view before I close:

Is HPSS the "most useless" course in UL? Heavens no, and if you think so you've been seduced by this recent need for all courses to have a directly vocational element. Largely propagated by universities like UL (and other former pseudo-polytechs, which by the way were great) when they were trying to make a niche for themselves in the educational market. Now they're expanding their humanities departments, adding on Arts courses and aiming to solidly up their numbers they've become victims of their own publicity. If anything, there isn't enough humanities content in other courses - specialisation (see Adam Smith link below) is dandy but we're being left with thousands of specialised undergrads who can't think (unfortunately that's also down to the method of teaching, which in recent years has facilitated and encouraged regurgitated repetition even in the faculty of Humanities).

Courses like HPSS are a solid grounding in what makes us what we are, where we came fromand where we're probably going. I could expand on this for hours but the previous sentence gives it a solid worth of its own. If you think those things are useless then I wish you well holed up in your windowless office, designing better mousetraps. I don't see an Arts as undergrad as an end in itself unless someone wants to teach. But I'd rather have a population able to think for itself and individuals able to think for themselves than an entire nation that has been educated only in the particular sector of productivity with which their chosen career requires them to be familiar.

You like science and maths? Cool. You like languages, politics, sociology or whatever? That's cool too. In years to come when you're hiring people, if you find a particular course more relevant to your needs, hire them. Until then, very few of you (if any) are in a position to give out about someone else's choice of course. As for doubt about your own, lots of people have that. I'm a big fan of the general grounding and later specialisation (despite not doing that myself, to my peril) but I can understand how lots of people regard earlier specialisation as a good thing. What's the most useless course? Even judged by a purely utility measure (which would require ignoring everything in the preceding paragraph), it's nowhere near the most "useless". And like I said above, it's mostly past marketing that's given people this idea that graduates that aren't specialised to the gills have no particular "use" and are hence "useless". That'll be the former polytech talking, watch out for that.

There's room for a discussion on the usefulness of humanities courses (as opposed to graduates). It doesn't particularly belong here but you could start it here. Feel free to take it to the Politics board as a discussion on education spending and future society and I'll happily partake (or you could try the Humanities board - don't be fooled by the board title, it'd be a cutting discussion from both sides). Bear in mind that the standard of discussion will likely be rather higher than jokes about taking degrees from toilet roll dispensers.

So.. whenever anyone wants to start either of the above discussions, feel free. There's plenty of polite Internet available for discussion use. I'll join in if there's a reasonable discussion of both or either. But I'm leaving the thread locked and you can see why at the top of this post or by examining the complete idiocy in the past page or two.