moreno Wrote:The NVQ…if Chez is reading this post, perhaps he can reiterate why he felt this was unfeasible.
If you mean me, I think you are referring to when I spent quite a bit of time trying to understand the economics of the NVQ as I was thinking about becoming a freelance NVQ assessor. From what I remember my analysis of the costs and benefits of the NVQ was that as an independant, freelance assessor I would get a day rate of just over ?100 a day and there was quite a large outlay of time (=money) to get set up, and paying off this outlay was a major factor in meaning that the day rate was so low (about half what it should be) that it was not worth pursuing. So the NVQ is too expensive for archaeologists to self-fund doing the course, yet too cheap to pay independant assessors a meaningful day rate. And with numbers taking the NVQ so low it was not financially worthwhile to become an assessor as the income stream was too unreliable to make the risks stack up.
That does not of course mean that the NVQ is not a great scheme when either or both the trainee and asessor are subsidised by employer or other organisations. It just doesn't stand up in terms of market economics without subsidy (a bit like degrees?)! Subsidised assessor training would perhaps be a way around this problem as it would consequently raise the day rate a fair bit (but still not to anywhere near the ?200+ it should be). The NVQ would still be too cheap to get really good assessors.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Archaeology is not a Graduate Profession, it is a profession that just happens to have a lot of graduates doing it