I find the comments made about MA courses only really being training grounds for doctoral research and that anyone who wants to pursue an academic programme above undergraduate level but not as far as a PhD is barking up the wrong tree somewhat intriguing. Maybe there is a cultural difference between North America and Europe here. Of all the people on the MA course I took, only one, to my knowledge, has gone on to a PhD so far. That was me, and I certainly didn't intend doing that when I started the MA. OK, the course I took was slightly unusual in that it was intended to have an element of vocational training in it (I took an MA in film archiving at the University of East Anglia). But even people I knew who did the concurrent film studies MA (a variant of the course which was purely academic and did not have any vocational element) were not all determined to head for a PhD. Out of - I'd guess - 10 people in that year, two were always intending to progress to a PhD and duly ended up doing so. Both are now lecturers. Of the other eight, two of them ended up as cinema managers for the same chain of arthouse/rep theatres, another two are now journalists and another now works in arts administration. I've lost touch with the rest. In my case I'd always intended to use my MA as a qualification to gain a position in a moving image archive. At the end of the course I found myself unable to do so, but had become interested in a topic which I thought could do with some serious researching. I managed to convince both a university and a funding body that it was, and so ended up taking a three-year detour via a PhD programme. I think it would be a pity if we got to the point at which no-one took MAs other than to tick a box en route to a doctorate, because I think there's a lot to be said for the educational value of a stand-alone, intermediate higher degree. Certainly many of the people I know who have taken a 'stand-alone MA' have gone on to use the skills and knowledge they've gained to constructive, high-level use in a variety of workplaces. Leo Dr. Leo Enticknap Director, Northern Region Film and Television Archive School of Arts and Media University of Teesside Middlesbrough TS1 3BA United Kingdom Tel. +44-(0)1642 384022 Fax. +44-(0)1642 384099 Brainfryer: +44-(0)7710 417383 ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html