Doctor’s Notes 1: The Symptoms

As reported in Imagine No.19 (July/Aug 08) the latest warning about Universities not delivering the correct number or type of shock troops came from the Games Industry campaign group Games Up?
“95% of video gaming degrees are simply not fit for purpose. Without some sort of common standard, like Skillset accreditation, these degrees are a waste of time for all concerned." said spokesperson David Braben. Now, David knows his stuff regarding Games, as the founder of Frontier Developments, and the creator of Elite, one of the industry’s first million selling games back in the 80s, actually the first to implement 3D graphics on a home computer.
But in this case the statistic seems to be purely plucked from thin air. One wonders if 95% of Games Up? statistics are also wrong…? Nevertheless, beating up on Education ALWAYS gets headlines.
As you might imagine, the truth is a little less cut and dry. Education IS failing to supply the right kind of graduates. But it’s clear that the industry is just as much to blame for this state of affairs, as I’ll outline.

Flashback a few weeks before Games Up?’s headline-grabbing press release to a high powered meeting of academics and games developers hosted by TIGA (The Independent Games Association) at a plush meeting room overlooking London’s skyline. A roundtable discussion entitled “How can Universities and Developers work more closely together?” revealed how frustrated many academics were- despite numerous attempts to get support, advice and input from industry, to get links and share information, many academics felt little was forthcoming from an industry always too busy to engage with them. So there appears to be two sides to this big disconnect that’s going on.

Let’s try and unpick this. Industry and Education work in different ways.
It’s the story of two mindsets, two timescales, two business models. This makes our two bedfellows have a hard time connecting, never mind strolling out together. They’re so busy with their day jobs, they forget to talk.

Doctor’s Case notes 2: The need to make time for each other…

If you’re in the animation business your timescale is usually your current client. Every effort goes into getting the product out the door on time. There are crunch times just before delivery too, often involving late nights and extra resources. Your clients change, as do the durations of projects. You may not know what you will be doing in a month’s time! Industry needs to be fleet of foot, and finds it hard to take time out and think long term.

If you’re a HEI (Higher Education Institution) your timescale is almost clockwork. Your crunch time is from Easter to early July as everything gears up for degree shows and assessments. As a tutor you have two clients, often with differing demands. One is your university, and the other your students. And the two don’t necessarily have the same idea about what you should be doing. As an example, the University wants you to spend longer documenting all your tutorials and writing up notes, whereas students want longer tutorials, but can’t have them because of the time you spend writing up tutorial reports.
Generally, your teaching timescale revolves around a three year cycle called a Degree. Many courses are like lumbering supertankers; it takes years to change direction if something’s wrong. Want to change a module that’s not working or is outmoded? It’s quite a hard thing to do. An endless round of paperwork, committees, yearly programme reviews, time soon slips away…

Doctor’s Case notes 3: Skillset as the new Viagra:

So can Skillset bridge the gap, and get Education and Industry paired into connubial bliss?
As I strolled around the Skillset Animation and Games showcase at the RSA, London in July, it seemed that the utopian future was here; shiny faced happy students proffered me their showreels looping on their own laptops, showing proficiency in Maya, Flash, even Z-Brush, whilst tutors nervously rearranged piles of handouts and prospectuses. Captains of Industry gathered in clusters like at a school prom, and looked around with a non-committal air… because very few were recruiting.

Ouch! Here writ large, is the cut-throat problem of supply and demand in the animation and games industries. Universities produce more graduates than are needed because the business model is based around ever increasing bums on seats. But Animation and Games industry cycles expand and contract year by year. Education doesn’t respond to fluctuating need. It just tries to do more of whatever it did last year.
Additionally, many of the low level skills that our courses used to supply to industry, they’ve now outsourced abroad.

Now, Skillset on the whole do a good job (I’m an external examiner at two Skillset accredited academies and standards have definitely risen), but they could do a lot more to support key staff who want to change things. Until they do this, they’re missing a trick and actually holding back progress.

Firstly, it isn’t widely known that across Higher Education, making links with the industry ISN’T in most lecturers job description or contract, and Universities DON’T give dispensation or time for lecturers to woo industry or gain their trust. Most good courses happen because of dynamic individual lecturers busting a gut to make these connections on top of their daily duties. It’s these people, often fighting overbearing university bureaucracy, that need Skillset’s help. And David Braben’s too.

So Skillset could be more pro-active in backing up dynamic, industry-friendly staff. Currently, if an academic tries to set up a new degree, Skillset don’t want to know until it sees the first lot of graduates three years later when you’re eligible for accreditation. By that time it’s too late to change any bad practices in the curriculum. In other words, it’s three years before Skillset will say no, instead of nurturing and supporting such a venture.

Doctor’s Case notes 3: Innovative thinking

Now whilst Education’s slow rate of flexibility and response to change is a bad thing for producing up-to-date courses, it is a GOOD thing in other ways, which could yet make Industry swoon into Education’s arms.
Education has time to do valuable longsighted research and future gazing as a service for the Industry.

You see, there’s an underlying assumption that Industry knows what it wants, and that education isn’t supplying this. The truth is a little different. Industry is often as confused as the rest of us, and sometimes doesn’t think strategically or long term. As examples, the British Animation industry seemed surprised when Web 2.0 came along and didn’t take full advantage of the commercial possibilities, and recently seemed taken aback by the death of children’s TV programming and it’s impact on production (see British Animation in Crisis, Imagine No.19). Academics in their much maligned ivory towers replete with well established research methodologies have time to see these things coming, and inform businesses. Education also has the ability to research, to connect disciplines currently locked in their own silos. This just isn’t being exploited enough by Industry yet.

Doctor’s Case notes 4: Are three years enough?
Face it, our graduates need to be a lot more specialist than they used to. Maybe a three year course, which the universities business model is still based on, isn’t enough.
Academically a degree is worth 360 credits, 120 credits a year. That’s equivalent to 1200 hours of study a year, and actual teaching time may only be around one fifth of that.

Like a cheap sausage, animation degrees can also be stuffed with extraneous stuff to make up the bulk. It often ends up being far less than the three years of animation experience and tutelage that students expect. If you’ve seen work from French institutions like Superinfocom and thought they often outstrip what our Universities produce, it’s because of the five years they get.

So, the issue is one of appropriate form; is an Animation degree the best way to supply and develop talent?
Animation, like many creative media forms, is iterative- you get better by doing it again and again, improving your skills incrementally over time. Aren’t their more effective ways of learning this?

The Degree structure pre-dates digital media, and universities find it hard to adopt new ways of teaching that digital media allows. If you enable distance learning for instance, what happens to all those lecture theatres? Universities still can’t help thinking of themselves as bricks and mortar. They need to come up with new modes of delivery, and they know it. Today’s learners are used to an online world. They don’t value the physicality of the classroom.

Doctor’s Case notes 5: Training isn’t Education

Critics of the Degree system often point to the fact that an intense training course at somewhere like Escape can gain you more relevant skills than a three year degree, but they’re missing the point. There’s a difference between Training and Education.

It might sound woolly, but Training is learning specific tasks or skills (eg using Maya software correctly) whereas Education adds critical thinking, ability to communicate and creative problem solving to the mix, as well as skills. It’s more holistic. If you can learn to learn effectively, you are preparing yourself for an uncertain future. And that’s what Degree Education can do for you.

With Skills based work being outsourced abroad, it looks like Great Britain PLC really needs to generate the creative thinking project managers and IP (Intellectual Property) creators of tomorrow that a Degree education can generate. Knowing Maya or Flash inside out is no longer enough; there are guys in China and India who will devote more time than you can.
We need our Education system to produce the next Nick Park, who can produce the next Lara Croft, that can produce the next generation of attendant franchises, licences and sales. Intellectual Property that can be exploited and turned into wealth.
Thus Education, even the flawed degree model, will always be preferable to pure skills Training.

Doctor’s Final Prescription:
Of course, there are times when Education and Industry get on very well. But one can’t help thinking they need to spend more time in each other’s company.

Today’s Universities need to start diversifying, and the government needs to provide incentives for Universities to generate new business models- distance learning, project incubators, mentoring. This is already happening, but too slowly. They’re too hooked on degree funding, which is just one solution.

Today’s Industry needs to invest time and effort now for gains which will only turn up much later. It needs to make it company policy to devote a number of person-hours a month to education and training. Like some people adopt animals at the local zoo, businesses need to adopt a university for special treatment. Search out the lecturers that will go the extra mile and bend the rules, and strengthen their hand. It’s a change in mindset.