Teachers of French and German are cock-a-hoop about a survey which shows that most languages graduates can expect to walk into a job when they leave university.

But there is a sting in the tail for anyone contemplating reading media studies. In posters headed “Great news for language graduates”, sixth-formers on the verge of making life-changing choices of degree subjects are learning about unemployment rates among new graduates in the UK.

Using data produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency 2001, Keith Marshall of the department of modern languages at the University of Wales, Bangor, has shown that only 3.1 per cent of French and Ger-man graduates join the jobless queue.

At the top of the pecking order, as you might expect, come medicine, dentistry and veterinary science on just 0.5 per cent - and just below the two languages you find, perhaps surprisingly, law.

But right down at the bottom in 20th place and on 8.6 per cent - almost three times the figure for French and German degree holders - comes media studies. This puts it lower than the traditional subjects of English and maths, and even slightly lower than creative arts and design.

And yet, for many sixth-formers, media studies represents the dream degree ticket - English without the hard bits, a discipline demanding the kind of knowledge that any couch potato with a television has at his fingertips, and the vague promise of a wonderful afterlife in the glamorous world of the small screen.

Students preparing for interviews for media studies courses are reassured by being advised to come prepared with answers to searching questions such as: “What do you think are the reasons for the popularity of EastEnders?” And as they scan the university prospectuses, they find a subject that seems to contain a bit of everything, a study that can mean all things to all men. It involves a consideration of radio, television and journalism, and the effects of media on society, but it can also embrace graphic design, illustration and other art courses. It can range from Hollywood, scriptwriting and the silent cinema to linguistics, behavioural science and social psychology.

All this learning may sound very grand, but its relevance may not be clear immediately when the media studies graduate becomes a cub reporter on a local newspaper and finds himself covering golden weddings and later - when he is older and more experienced - murders and suicides.

It must also be confusing for those news editors and chief reporters who have not only missed out on media studies, but who went straight into journalism after leaving school and who have learnt that the two secrets of their trade are accurate shorthand and the ability to come back with a story, however tough the assignment.

And we must not forget those unfortunate newspapermen and women who have always laboured under the disadvantage that they spent three years poring over Shakespeare’s imagery or ploughing through the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle when they could have been swotting up on the latest soap.

They were never invited to tread the magical “pathway” or take their place on the stairway to small screen success, but somehow they managed - mysteriously and unaccountably - to find a job in the end.

Peter King teaches English at Wisbech grammar school, Cambridgeshire