Liverpool University Offers Beatles Masters Degree

A new sort of Beatlemania is emerging – the academic kind.

Liverpool University has announced that it will offer a masters degree program on The Beatles, popular music and society. The course focuses on the legendary band’s music as well as how it was influenced by the city of Liverpool. The university  claims that the program is the first of it’s kind in the UK and “probably the world” [BBC News]. Check out what the course’s leader, Mike Brocken, had to say:

“There have been over 8,000 books about The Beatles but there has never been serious academic study.”

He added:

“The Beatles influenced so much of society, not just with their music, but also with fashion from their collar-less jackets to their psychedelic clothes.”

The course, which can be studied full or part-time, consists of four 12-week modules and a dissertation. Wow. Academics must be freaking out right now. Apparently, if you have “a good first degree” and some “music industry experience,” you have a shot at becoming a certified Beatles expert! Maybe they could even get Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to come in for some guest lectures.

The competition for entry must be stacked, but Brocken made it sound like the standards for entry would be high. Let’s just hope they uphold a strict screening process… the last thing we need is a few hundred more Beatles snobs claiming to be the ultimate authority.

What this really means is that within the next decade, we’ll be seeing bundles of Beatles novels and essays emerging from the graduates of the program. And that means this discipline is likely to seep into undergraduate programs and even high schools! Behold: Beatlemania is the new Academia.

What do you think of  Liverpool University’s new Beatles MA program?