e: mScan Magazine e ON N | Special Theme | A Spotlight on Danish Education h
HT ATIO G I C Sp TL DU O SP H E A IS N DA lT
ia ec
New students on their very first assignment..
The deliberate career choice A high rate of employment as well as independent and motivated students are among the main benefits of taking a degree at Media College Denmark, where the niche is exactly that: being niche. By Nicolai Lisberg | Photos: Michael Lange
Where many education institutions grow bigger and offer even more directions for the students to choose between, Media College Denmark has gone in another direction. They have made a habit of keeping it small and specific. “The name almost gives it away. We are a vocational school with a specific educational focus on the exact area that we are working with, and that’s it. We have close contacts in the industry for which we are educating our students, and we make a virtue out of specialising in a certain area instead of going in all kinds of directions,” says Max Jørgensen, headmaster at Media College Denmark. 74 | Issue 121 | February 2019
The close cooperation with the industry is one of the reasons why the school has a high rate of employment after the students finish their degree. Many students find work immediately after leaving Media College Denmark, while some start up as freelancers or establish their own production companies. Only a few decide to continue studying something else. “The big difference between our programmes and the typical professional bachelor degrees is that our students spend a lot of the time working in the industry. Our course to become a film and television production technician, for instance, lasts four and a half years, and
for three of those years, the students are out working. It creates a strong connection to the industry, and it ensures that no one can leave here without a clear idea of what it is like to work in the real world, so to speak – because that’s where the students are most of the time anyway,” says Jørgensen, adding: “Although the students spend the majority of their time outside the school, they also have to learn the theory that supports the practice. It’s inevitable to have theory lessons, but we try to make the theory support the things they learn out in the real world. They don’t just learn which buttons to push and when, but they get properly trained in the consequences of pushing those buttons in that order, so there is a clear connection between theory and practice. In fact, we have a motto: equipment is nothing – skills are everything.”