28th November 2008, 01:50 PM
I have to agree with points made in both the previous posts. I also think that a degree is not neccesarily enough to 'do' any job, not only archaeology. Nothing beats practical experience, in any profession.
I did my one and only degree at Glasgow from 2001-2005. It was a four year honours course and to pass required something like 12-15 weeks of fieldwork. It didn't have to all be digging, post ex and other work counted as well. On the good side, we had to find this work ourselves, which encouraged the keen students to undertake a wide range of activities and weeded out those who already sort of knew that they did not intend on archaeology as a career. On the bad side, some of the work we found may have been of dubious quality! However, I still feel oddly grateful that i was made to find it, as I have since found out that some degrees require far far less fieldwork to complete.
Since then I have worked in commerical archaeology, held an IFA bursary and at present am working in a university. Three very different roles but I'm not sure that it was my degree that truly helped me be good at any of them. I think rather that is has been experience and a willingness to keep teaching myself (cheesy as that sounds - sorry!) all the way through. I only did the degree in the first place because I had to, it was the only way in. I'd of course rather not have the huge amount of student debt that I do, but I did enrol knowing how badly archaeology paid compared to other degree needing work. (http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/.../p!eaLXbeX is an interseting link here)
Another point is that Universities these days are also businesses, and whilst the staff may yearn to train future archaeologists, uni bureaucracy dictates that many have to bite their tongues and educate graduates. You just have to hope that you can spot the keen ones, and encourage them to pursue archaeology - although that itself may get harder in the current climate :face-huh:.
I did my one and only degree at Glasgow from 2001-2005. It was a four year honours course and to pass required something like 12-15 weeks of fieldwork. It didn't have to all be digging, post ex and other work counted as well. On the good side, we had to find this work ourselves, which encouraged the keen students to undertake a wide range of activities and weeded out those who already sort of knew that they did not intend on archaeology as a career. On the bad side, some of the work we found may have been of dubious quality! However, I still feel oddly grateful that i was made to find it, as I have since found out that some degrees require far far less fieldwork to complete.
Since then I have worked in commerical archaeology, held an IFA bursary and at present am working in a university. Three very different roles but I'm not sure that it was my degree that truly helped me be good at any of them. I think rather that is has been experience and a willingness to keep teaching myself (cheesy as that sounds - sorry!) all the way through. I only did the degree in the first place because I had to, it was the only way in. I'd of course rather not have the huge amount of student debt that I do, but I did enrol knowing how badly archaeology paid compared to other degree needing work. (http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/.../p!eaLXbeX is an interseting link here)
Another point is that Universities these days are also businesses, and whilst the staff may yearn to train future archaeologists, uni bureaucracy dictates that many have to bite their tongues and educate graduates. You just have to hope that you can spot the keen ones, and encourage them to pursue archaeology - although that itself may get harder in the current climate :face-huh:.