As for photography; I'd say that any qualification in the field is practically useless
I feel I need to qualify my own earlier comment. By 'practically useless', I didn't for a moment mean that the qualifications themselves are 'useless', far from it, see my previous post. Jst that you'd be looking at a person's actual pics, not a piece of paper with some grades on it, if you wanted to assess their actual ability for yourself. No good someone having a degree in fine art type photography, when what you need is expertise in a technical area they've never studied. So praps I should have said 'a qualification
on it's own is practically useless
'. I left college with a decent A-Level (A*
), but that didn't make me a 'good' photographer, having that bit of paper. But it did open the door to university, which was the ultimate goal anyway. I had offers from a range of institutions, including Oxford Uni, but chose instead to stay in London and do summat quite different. I never regretted that choice. For me, the academic phase, with Photography at least, was 'done'. I felt I'd learned enough, technically, to see me through, and that only be continuing to take pics, would I develop, progress and improve as a photographer. I really don't feel that having further qualifications in Photography, would have ever really made me a better photographer than I am. Having said that, I did get to glimpse the BA and MA Photography courses, and I think it would be quite 'fun' to do one. Maybe I will at some point, who knows??
I do know professional photographers who have never been near an educational institution, since leaving school, and for most of them, it doesn't seem to have held them back at all. But there are one or two, whom I think would praps have benefitted from such, as it would have maybe helped expand their horizons a bit more, take them out of their 'comfort zone', allowed them to see other ways of looking at things. Their work, whilst technically and professionally proficient, praps lacks the 'depth' needed to take them further than just being a jobbing snapper. but that's my opinion, and they may well feel very differently. To me, the idea of doing the same kind of thing, year in year out, is definitely not my cup of tea, but they may well be very happy doing just that. Hey ho.