1st December 2008, 03:04 PM
When I was doing my archaeology BA there were over 100 students in my year!
Kevin's points are right, but we get back to restricting access. Now square that with increasing access for the public to participate...
Because there are so many archaeology graduates employers know they will always be able to hire fresh staff. And its accepted that 80% of graduates who try digging will leave within 5 years or whatever the stats are, so no-one cares. And because most archaeology sites/tasks are fairly simple, and there are still enough old lags to do the difficult bits, units don't properly bother to train new staff UNTIL they've been there a while
For me its about teaching an awareness of the issues, skills and industry at universities, rather than set skills per se, although there should be a simple set of those like grid, strat and levelling. With an awareness in place the student can then proceed to fleshing it out with new skills at work without being swamped on day one and not understanding how it all fits together. I agree universities can't do the employers job, but they shouldn't pretend to the students that they train students for commercial skills if they don't.
Kevin's points are right, but we get back to restricting access. Now square that with increasing access for the public to participate...
Because there are so many archaeology graduates employers know they will always be able to hire fresh staff. And its accepted that 80% of graduates who try digging will leave within 5 years or whatever the stats are, so no-one cares. And because most archaeology sites/tasks are fairly simple, and there are still enough old lags to do the difficult bits, units don't properly bother to train new staff UNTIL they've been there a while
For me its about teaching an awareness of the issues, skills and industry at universities, rather than set skills per se, although there should be a simple set of those like grid, strat and levelling. With an awareness in place the student can then proceed to fleshing it out with new skills at work without being swamped on day one and not understanding how it all fits together. I agree universities can't do the employers job, but they shouldn't pretend to the students that they train students for commercial skills if they don't.