A handbook for new diggers?

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I was at uni when there was a massive boom in archaeology student graduate numbers and with it an increase in "Masters" (not oxbridge ones which you buy).

Come accross this
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ah-shs-office/learn...logy_final

what they started doing in my day was watering down the undergraduate courses and putting that flannel in the masters courses. This makes interesting reading. There is a stratergy at work. Is it that the qualification to get on the masters course is pure twank.

"The IoA successfully compensated for falling undergraduate enrolments by expanding its Master?s
provision" what does that mean?

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i) The popularity of archaeology as an undergraduate subject

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[SIZE=3]Archaeology is a subject with considerable public interest and appeal. Nonetheless, the number of [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]applicants competing for places on UK undergraduate archaeology programmes declined by almost [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]50% in the period from 1996 to 2008. It appears that students (and their parents) became increasingly [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]wary of high costs and the necessity for loans, especially as a career in archaeology is seldom [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]associated with high salaries. This national trend probably impacted the IoA particularly hard because
of the high costs of living in London, so that IoA undergraduate enrolment fell from 245 in 2004/5 to
150 in 2008/9. Furthermore, archaeology is relatively popular with mature students (15% of the
2011/12 undergraduate intake were age 21 or older), with the result that undergraduate recruitment has
been more susceptible to changing rates of mature student participation in HE than would be expected
in many disciplines.

The IoA successfully compensated for falling undergraduate enrolments by expanding its Master?s
provision (see next). Since 2009 there has been a slight recovery in the number of applicants to
undergraduate archaeology programmes and this, coupled with the IoA?s decision to launch a joint
Archaeology and Anthropology degree, resulted in improved undergraduate enrolment (185 in 2011/12).
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[SIZE=3]ii) The growth of Master?s training[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The period from 2002/3 to 2010 saw a 27% increase in the number of Master?s students in UK HE. In [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]the context of both declining undergraduate numbers and its mission to educate future leaders in [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]archaeological research and management, the IoA seized the opportunity presented by this general [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]trend and greatly expanded the range of its own Master?s provision to the point where in 2009/10 its[/SIZE][SIZE=3]18 degree programmes collectively recruited 272 taught Master?s students. Since then Master?s [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]recruitment has declined by circa 5%. The IoA?s mean UGGT ratio over the period 2007/8 to [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]2009/10 was 1.6, which significantly surpassed UCL?s 1:1 target for 2012/13 and is - based on[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]anecdotal evidence - considerably above the average for UK archaeology departments. In absolute [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]terms the IoA undoubtedly has the largest and most diverse Master?s student community anywhere in
the UK and quite possibly in the world.
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