I voted 1 for this, but I was very lucky on getting my degree at the University of Glasgow which (thankfully) puts an equal emphasis on the practical skills required to actually do the job to a professional standard. We had to be able to show that we could produce the kind of work that would be expected of us in a commercial environment and we had a helluva lot of practical assessments and things. Plus, we were required to get a fair bit more field experience to graduate than most other universities ask for. Interestingly though, I actually have found most of the volunteer research digs I worked on much more demanding (mentally and physically) than any of the jobs i've had in commercial archaeology. Maybe i've jinxed myself by saying that, and the next project will be a killer :0
I don't think you can say that NO graduate straight out of uni can be ready for commercial archaeology - it depends on the nature of what they were taught, although there are a lot of uni's churning out archaeologists that (through no real fault of their own) don't know which end of the trowel is up...
I don't think you can say that NO graduate straight out of uni can be ready for commercial archaeology - it depends on the nature of what they were taught, although there are a lot of uni's churning out archaeologists that (through no real fault of their own) don't know which end of the trowel is up...