Chapter 5: Marketing education at UKZN
5.2 Discourses
5.2.5 Status
It was not just the students who commented on the lack of intellectual challenge in the discipline.
The lecturers too described Marketing as “not conceptually challenging” (Michael) and “not rocket science” (Nisha). Compared to Marketing, Economics was described as involving “much more analysis and interpretation” and Accounting was characterised as being “very analytical as well”
(Nisha). Michael also commented that “Marketing is…is not an historical…perfect science like Accounting”.
Of note is that it was the more quantitative disciplines that the participants viewed as being of higher status than Marketing. This is interesting in light of Marketing‟s attempt to legitimate itself as a rigorous and „scientific‟ discipline by adopting more quantitative approaches (Easton, 2002).
At UKZN, however, quantitative work was downplayed.
No, we don’t [do much quantitative work in Marketing], but I think in Marketing you also need statistics (Sihle)
…usually we don’t do much calculations in Marketing (Ben)
…and [the course coordinator] said – at that stage I didn’t understand the difference in the [Howard College] students, obviously – “These are Social Science students. Just back off a little”. Which we did…we didn’t push it [the quantitative material] (Michael).
Something that might have sharpened the difference between the disciplines for students is that they would have been taking level 2 Economics at the same time as the introductory course in Marketing.
Another discourse that was impacted in the perception of Marketing as having low status was that of „quantity versus quality‟, which related to the types and numbers of students who gained access to the discipline. The large number of students majoring in Marketing was attributed by some to Marketing having low admission requirements. It was felt that this attracted students with low matric points, as well as students who had failed to meet progression requirements in other (more prestigious) disciplines and who subsequently opted to change to an easier major.
Marketing was thus described as an easy or soft option that was often a “second choice”
(Lindiwe) or a “last resort” (Amantha) that students got into “by default” (Amantha). Thus „how difficult it is to get in‟ (which influenced „how many get in‟ and „who gets in‟) was used as an indicator of disciplinary status.
…my cousins, they tell me that…it’s…um, you have so much of students because it’s the only thing people can get into, leaving school with little points… (Amantha)
…one of my friends said “Ja, but now you notice everyone’s doing Marketing”. So then it made me think, okay, “Why is everyone taking it? Because it’s very easy? Is it not regarded…as a proper profession? Are people not serious about it or whatever?” (Kiara) I think that the Management School…it’s like the prostitute of the university. They’re easy, because everybody finds it easy to get here. That’s the problem. So we pick up just about everything and anywhere, er, with no concern for what they bring in and what was their background and whatever (Kamini)
…they shop around at the beginning of the year, say, you know, “Oops, I got in there, so maybe I should do Marketing (Michael)
When people are unable to pass Accounting…they go to Marketing thinking that “Oh, it’s going to be easy” (Amantha)
So we’ve got too much of a mishmash of everybody else’s scraps. And we don’t have what we should have - the quality (Kamini).
As Amantha‟s comment indicates, for many Marketing students Marketing is not their first choice as a major. For example, of the nine students in this study, three selected Marketing either because they were unable to get a place in Accounting or because they had not performed well in and had to drop out of Accounting. Perhaps Marketing‟s reputation as „easy‟ (Hughes et al, 2005;
Glenn, 2011) impacts on the types and numbers of students who enter the discipline as a second choice, with implications for their identity, motivation and performance within the discipline.
According to Kleine, “the more a student identifies with being a marketing major, the more committed he or she will be to enacting behaviours that lead to success as a marketing student”
(2002, p.15). This may also link to concerns that the lecturers expressed about the “calibre”
(Nisha) and “quality” (Kamini) of Marketing students, with specific reference to a lack of commitment and interest.
As discussed in Chapter 4, issues of quantity (such as class size, lecturer to student ratios and so on) and quality also relate to the LCT dimension of Density (Maton, 2005a). The analysis of Marketing using Density revealed that Marketing as a discipline has high material and moral density, which are associated with low status (Maton, 2005a).
Interestingly, however, an examination of the Faculty‟s admission requirements (see Table 5.4) shows that the perception that the admission requirements for Marketing are lower than those of other business disciplines (particularly Accounting and Economics) is not borne out. As mentioned previously, most students majoring in Marketing are drawn from the Bachelor of Commerce (General) degree. The table shows that the criteria for admission to the General and Accounting degrees were identical under the oldrequirements and are almost identical in terms of
the new requirements. And as Economics is offered as a major on the General degree, admission requirements are the same as those for Marketing.
Table 5.4: Admission requirements – Faculty of Management Studies, UKZN
PROGRAMME
OLD REQUIREMENTS:
MATRIC EXEMPTION AND…92
NEW REQUIREMENTS:
NSC-DEG AND…93
POINTS OTHER POINTS OTHER
Bachelor of Business Science 38 Maths B [HG] 33 Maths 6; English; LO 4 Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) 36 Maths D [HG] or B [SG] 32 Maths 5; English; LO 4 Bachelor of Commerce (General) 36 Maths D [HG] or B [SG] 31 Maths 4; English; LO 4 Bachelor of Business Administration 30 Maths E [HG] or D [SG] 28 Maths 3; English; LO 4 Extended Curriculum/Access 32 Maths E [HG] or D [SG] 28 Maths 3; English; LO 4 Source: www.ukzn.ac.za, 2011
Thus the participants‟ references to Marketing being easier to get into were probably not due to programme admission requirements. The continuing prevalence of perceptions to the contrary, however points to the power of the „quantity versus quality‟ discourse in controlling how the discipline is talked about.
Instead, such references to the ease of getting into Marketing may have been linked to the participants‟ belief that the introductory Marketing module (which provides access to a major in Marketing) was very easy to pass compared to introductory modules in other disciplines. As was seen in the discussion of the „rote learning‟ discourse, it was the introductory Marketing module in particular that was singled out as requiring simply the reproduction of textbook content for success in assessments.
This is in line with Camey and Williams‟ (2004) finding that students‟ perceptions of and attitudes to Marketing are typically lowered after taking an introductory Marketing course - something that the authors attributed to such courses typically being taught by junior lecturers who rely heavily
92 The old requirements would have applied when the students who participated in this study entered UKZN. In terms of these requirements, students would have had to pass the school-leaving (matriculation) examination with an exemption that qualified them for university study, obtain the specified points for their intended programme of study and obtain a pass in Mathematics on the standard grade (SG) or higher grade (HG) at a level of performance as specified in the above table.
93 In November 2008, a new school-leaving examination, the National Senior Certificate (NSC), was introduced, leading to a revision of UKZN‟s admission requirements. Students entering the Faculty of Management Studies from 2009 would thus need to meet the new requirements specified in Table 5.4.
They would have to pass the NSC exam at a level that enabled them to qualify for university degree studies (i.e. obtain a NSC-DEG pass), obtain the required points for their intended programme of study and also meet the Mathematics, English and Life Orientation (LO) requirements. The different points linked to the new requirements are reflective of changes to the rating scale used to calculate points and not of a lowering of admission requirements.
on publisher-provided materials. Introductory Marketing courses have also been accused of trying to cover too much (Raju, in Bolton, 2005). The emphasis on breadth rather than depth leads to a content focus and to the superficial coverage of topics, which is likely to encourage a perception of such courses as easy.
The introductory Marketing module at UKZN is in fact very broad, as it includes an overview of almost all of the topics that constitute the knowledge base of Marketing (as shown in Table 4.1).
And because the module is weighted at half the credit points of the third year modules (and has half the contact time), topics are covered quite quickly and superficially, thus contributing to a perception of the course as „easy‟.
For some students, the types of lecturers teaching in the discipline also provided a marker of disciplinary status, as the following excerpt indicates:
Aradhna Um…what leads to students failing in Marketing [student laughs] or not doing well in Marketing?
Sihle I think it’s…it’s our attitude.
Aradhna Attitude?
Sihle Ja, because like I’ve seen it happening in many other modules. Like you see this African lady coming to lecture you and you just take that person for granted – like this module is easy.
Aradhna Why?
Sihle [Laughs]. I don’t know, it just happens, and you see a white guy coming in and you start to be serious. This guy knows something. Like, you know…like it’s our attitudes…I don’t know.
Aradhna So the race of the lecturer gives you an indication of whether the module…
Sihle Ja.
Aradhna …must be taken seriously or not?
Sihle Ja. Like, in Economics, you only find white people there teaching Economics.
And you know about Economics, that it’s a killer course. So when you’re coming to Management, you see Indians and Africans so you…you know…I think it’s the way we take Marketing for granted that leads us to fail the course.
A comparison of the academic staff in the disciplines of Economics and Marketing in 2010 on the Westville campus, where Sihle studied, does indicate that there were differences in terms of racial profiles. In Economics, most lecturers (15 out of 22) were white.94 By contrast, in Marketing, all of the undergraduate level lecturers on the permanent staff were Indian (the white lecturers
94 This comparison is drawn from a list of the permanent academic staff who were based on the Westville campus in 2010, as appears in the draft Faculty Handbook. This list includes staff teaching at
undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
who were employed on a part-time basis taught primarily on the Howard College campus). At the time of Sihle‟s interview, all of the undergraduate Marketing courses that he had taken had been taught by Indian females and the first-year Management module that serves as a prerequisite for Marketing had been taught by black and Indian females. In comparison, in his undergraduate Economics modules, Sihle had encountered only white lecturers. According to Vila & Boluda (2008), several studies have suggested that the interaction of lecturers‟ and students‟
demographic characteristics impacts significantly on students‟ attitudes towards both lecturers and courses. In his study of language ownership among black Access students at UKZN, Parmegiani (2008) found that the students subscribed to the idea of a racial pecking order among lecturers, with white lecturers being preferred to Indian lecturers because they were perceived to have greater competence in English. It would seem that, for Sihle, the intersection of such discourse around a racial pecking order and the relative difficulty of the subject matter in the disciplines combined to produce a disciplinary hierarchy.
Thus a range of discourses contributed to the participants‟ perception of Marketing being a low status discipline at UKZN. And, as a result of this perception, several students reported “„taking Marketing for granted” (for example Bongani, Nothando and Sihle). This then impacted on the time that they allocated to their Marketing studies as well as the learning approaches and strategies they adopted in Marketing.
However, such perceptions of Marketing‟s status are not just limited to the UKZN context – they are much more widespread, as is evident in the literature that was referred to in previous sections and chapters. As a relatively young discipline, with an applied orientation and a weak theory base, Marketing has for a long time faced challenges to its legitimacy and status as a bona fide academic discipline. Business and management disciplines in general have been characterised as academically unchallenging, uncritical and too superficial for university level (Macfarlane, 1995; Brown, 1997; Cunliffe et al, 2002; Smith, 2008). Marketing specifically has been said to offer simply commonsense ideas and few specific skills (Aggarwal, 2007). It has also been accused of merely emulating and borrowing from other disciplines instead of pursuing its own fundamental research agenda and developing its own theory (Hunt, 1994; Crump & Costea, 2003; Rust, 2006; Glenn, 2011). Its reliance on examples – considered to be a form of argument that is inferior and thus inadequate for higher learning (Lischinsky, 2008) – further impacts on its perceived status, as does the fact that as a region, it is not a „pure‟ or „traditional‟ discipline (Beck
& Young, 2005).
According to Kogan, “the intellectual self-confidence of the disciplines and subject areas to which the academics belong…is the context in which a sense of academic identity flourishes” (2000,
p.209). Thus the low status of the Marketing discipline could be a reason why becoming a Marketing lecturer had not been the first-choice career of any of the three lecturers in this study (see Appendix C), and why (as previously mentioned) the lecturers to some extent described themselves less as Marketing academics and more as business people or marketers – an issue that will be considered further in the next section.