25th February 2013, 12:48 PM
UCAS provide freely available data on UK applicants; theyseparate v400 and the v401/2 (among other codes) into BA archaeology and BSC archaeologicalsciences which includes some, not all, forensic science students. When I gotthe data last this was BA: 558 BSc: 1851 (including forensics) with about 2417individual applications for BAs and 100 more places finally taken up than the452 people who wrote UCAS applications (as you say these extras come from mature student’sand overseas student’s). But this was a couple of years ago, this data is recycledby a number of other higher education institutions and unedited it tends to overrepresent the numbers of students in archaeology because of the massive rise inForensic courses/students from 2001 onwards (of the 1851 only about 10% are archeologists).It is not impossible to separate this information, UCAS have a whole team of researcherswho answer specific questions, they will do this for a fee.
Foreign students need to provide a certificate/proof of equivalencefor their grades; they also need to have a certificate of competence in the Englishlanguage, so their entrance requirements are actually higher than for UK students.As for fees, Undergraduate fees are the same for home and overseas students at £9k, postgraduatefees depend on institution, and course studied but overseas students can be around£4k higher than home students which is a much better reflection of what it actuallycosts to teach them.
The numbers of students looks stable despite fees and hasbeen since 1998-2001 with a rise in science students at that point (and declinein about 200 BA students as they choose to take BScs instead, and a slight risein the numbers as a result in the increased diversity). The most obvious changein the last decade was the increase in the number of degree awardinginstitutions increasing from about 15 in 1998 to over 33 in 2009, all competingfor the same pool of student’s and giving the impression to the established institutionsthat numbers were falling off.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not painting a negative picture,unlike many in academia; archaeology will continue to be taught atUniversities. That is not the point, the numbers of students at the top end isa finite resource (and decreasing, last year’s grades were down and that looks likea trend which will stay because of increasing pressure on standards). With more institutions competing for the samenumber of students, at the top and across the sector there will be changes inthe provision of archaeology degrees.
This is a much better position than many heads of departmentswere predicting a few years ago, with some negatively suggesting only 3institutions will remain active. What is more likely to happen is that theprovision will spread out across the sector as some top end universities reducethe size of their teams and merge archaeology back into the history andclassics departments they arouse out of. Some institutions are trying to positioningthemselves as postgraduate institutions, this is a good strategy but risky dependingon fashions and access to loans, so it may not provide long term stability. Othersare becoming joint degree providers, or distance learning providers.
Because of these changes you can understand why some academicsare quite worried, esp. those in the highest risk institutions (the lowere part of the half of the top half if you like) they have the most to lose as they also have high staff numbers.This worry is exacerbated at the moment because it is an REF audit year. The academicstaff research output audit is designed to allow the ‘fair’ subdivision ofdecreasing amounts of gov research funding based on research quality; it is likelythat many institutions will do better than last time, but get less moneyputting more pressure still on staff heavy institutions.
As to cutting programs, if any unit in any university isnot covering its own costs/performing inline with a university benchmark it isin trouble, esp if staff make promises they cannot fulfill. This can bemeasured in lots of ways, you may think some of them are silly (I will not disagree)but performance and income indicators are here to stay, like it or not theyhave become part of the higher education landscape. Universities are changing,restructuring and trying to find their place in a new system, archaeology will continueto exist but as with all things it will change, and there is room for thatchange to happen without ‘the study of archaeology [becoming] a thing of thepast? as this thread rather negatively puts it.
Foreign students need to provide a certificate/proof of equivalencefor their grades; they also need to have a certificate of competence in the Englishlanguage, so their entrance requirements are actually higher than for UK students.As for fees, Undergraduate fees are the same for home and overseas students at £9k, postgraduatefees depend on institution, and course studied but overseas students can be around£4k higher than home students which is a much better reflection of what it actuallycosts to teach them.
The numbers of students looks stable despite fees and hasbeen since 1998-2001 with a rise in science students at that point (and declinein about 200 BA students as they choose to take BScs instead, and a slight risein the numbers as a result in the increased diversity). The most obvious changein the last decade was the increase in the number of degree awardinginstitutions increasing from about 15 in 1998 to over 33 in 2009, all competingfor the same pool of student’s and giving the impression to the established institutionsthat numbers were falling off.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not painting a negative picture,unlike many in academia; archaeology will continue to be taught atUniversities. That is not the point, the numbers of students at the top end isa finite resource (and decreasing, last year’s grades were down and that looks likea trend which will stay because of increasing pressure on standards). With more institutions competing for the samenumber of students, at the top and across the sector there will be changes inthe provision of archaeology degrees.
This is a much better position than many heads of departmentswere predicting a few years ago, with some negatively suggesting only 3institutions will remain active. What is more likely to happen is that theprovision will spread out across the sector as some top end universities reducethe size of their teams and merge archaeology back into the history andclassics departments they arouse out of. Some institutions are trying to positioningthemselves as postgraduate institutions, this is a good strategy but risky dependingon fashions and access to loans, so it may not provide long term stability. Othersare becoming joint degree providers, or distance learning providers.
Because of these changes you can understand why some academicsare quite worried, esp. those in the highest risk institutions (the lowere part of the half of the top half if you like) they have the most to lose as they also have high staff numbers.This worry is exacerbated at the moment because it is an REF audit year. The academicstaff research output audit is designed to allow the ‘fair’ subdivision ofdecreasing amounts of gov research funding based on research quality; it is likelythat many institutions will do better than last time, but get less moneyputting more pressure still on staff heavy institutions.
As to cutting programs, if any unit in any university isnot covering its own costs/performing inline with a university benchmark it isin trouble, esp if staff make promises they cannot fulfill. This can bemeasured in lots of ways, you may think some of them are silly (I will not disagree)but performance and income indicators are here to stay, like it or not theyhave become part of the higher education landscape. Universities are changing,restructuring and trying to find their place in a new system, archaeology will continueto exist but as with all things it will change, and there is room for thatchange to happen without ‘the study of archaeology [becoming] a thing of thepast? as this thread rather negatively puts it.