HR is skating on thin ice by sending out mixed message

I read with a wry smile your ‘Degrees of Difference’ article (Personnel Today, 13 May), explaining that would-be HR professionals can now combine their studies in HRM with dance or “festival management”, and that a number of HR practitioners considered this to be a good idea.

For a profession which continues to engage in endless self-flagellation about our failure to be taken seriously in the boardroom, one can’t help but wonder whether entrusting our future to a generation of graduates in subjects which must (to some extent) lack the intellectual rigour of more traditional academic subjects is one of our better ideas.

Carole O’Neil, HR and training director, Cundall

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What do you think? Are joint HR degrees dumbing down the profession or are they a way of attracting new blood into HR? E-mail your views to [email protected]