6th November 2010, 08:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 6th November 2010, 09:04 PM by Madweasels.)
First of all, why is it that the units, who pay god awful money, have hardly any training schemes, set terrible conditions, rarely reward experience, always blame someone else for their lack of qualified fodder? It is always someone else's fault as far as they are concerned. They suck in the millions from developer funding, spill hardly any of it into the HE sector or Museum sector - and then expect universities and museums to a) supply them with fully trained staff who they can pay a pittance to (other professions laugh at us for this approach) and then b) expect the public sector to take all their finds and records with hardly any appropriate depostion fee or endowment (which they could or ought to be getting from their clients - but don't). They have set themselves on the greed first route - pamper the clients, f**k the rest of the discipline if they can't keep up but woe betide anyone else if they don't do as they want.
Anyway, Jaw's sensible and constructive views mirrors those of Anthony Sinclair (HEA Subject Centre Director) who says, in the recently published Schlanger and Aitchison (eds) set of papers "Archaeology and the Global Economic Crisis", that (p.43)
"The current system of archaeological training could be
7. transformed to forge a new working relationship in which students would
balance work in contracting firms whilst at the same time studying for a degree in
archaeology. Some of the credit (assessment) for the degree would then be given
to work-based learning. Although there is already an NVQ in Archaeological
Practice, within which credit is already gained for work-based learning, a degree
from a traditional university is likely to be a more attractive qualification for
such students since it would offer future employability skills beyond one sector of
employment. This would be of interest even to students not planning to continue
into professional archaeology since work experience itself enhances employability."
He also suggests a form of tiered university education in which some (the traditional universities) went in one direction (academic) while others (new universities) could have a more vocational approach.
Get the set of papers here. It makes very, very interesting reading:-
http://ace-archaeology.eu/fichiers/25Arc...crisis.pdf
Anyway, Jaw's sensible and constructive views mirrors those of Anthony Sinclair (HEA Subject Centre Director) who says, in the recently published Schlanger and Aitchison (eds) set of papers "Archaeology and the Global Economic Crisis", that (p.43)
"The current system of archaeological training could be
7. transformed to forge a new working relationship in which students would
balance work in contracting firms whilst at the same time studying for a degree in
archaeology. Some of the credit (assessment) for the degree would then be given
to work-based learning. Although there is already an NVQ in Archaeological
Practice, within which credit is already gained for work-based learning, a degree
from a traditional university is likely to be a more attractive qualification for
such students since it would offer future employability skills beyond one sector of
employment. This would be of interest even to students not planning to continue
into professional archaeology since work experience itself enhances employability."
He also suggests a form of tiered university education in which some (the traditional universities) went in one direction (academic) while others (new universities) could have a more vocational approach.
Get the set of papers here. It makes very, very interesting reading:-
http://ace-archaeology.eu/fichiers/25Arc...crisis.pdf