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Marcus Brody Wrote:There's no problem with this type of course in itself, but it's unlikely to be particularly attractive for the 95% of archaeology graduates who don't want to work within that particular niche.
But for how long will it be not attractive to 95%? ?10,000 a year to not have a job? Not many families can afford this or many banks will be willing to give a loan.
This year it may be the case but next year or the year after that?
That being said I don't think it should be all practical skills- archaeology covers a wide range of areas and subjects and requires a wide range of skills. Public speaking/ communication is one aspect that is unverisally needed is almost every area. Teach that to archaeologists serves both needs of those not going into archaeology and who are.
Furthermore the way things are taught now dons't prepare people for other areas of work. Just because they did not become an archaeologists means they some how transfered what they were taught to another area. Lots of people with archaeology degrees work in fast food.
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27th June 2011, 03:32 PM
(This post was last modified: 27th June 2011, 03:56 PM by Marcus Brody.)
Doug Wrote:But for how long will it be not attractive to 95%? ?10,000 a year to not have a job? Not many families can afford this or many banks will be willing to give a loan.
You could run a course solely designed to produce commercial field archaeologists, charge ?9000 a year, and there'd still be no guarantee of a job in the commercial sector for the graduates. And ?9K a year would be a lot for a course that would only equip you to get a job in a sector where the average pay is something like ?17,000. At least in the current system, an archaeology degree is not seen as so specialised as to be applicable to only one sector. People with degrees in lots of subjects work in fast food, it's more likely to be a result of the fact that there are too many graduates produced for the number of what would traditionally be seen as graduate jobs that are available. It's not that archaeology degrees are singled out as translating particularly poorly to other jobs, it's probably seen as directly comparable to any other humanities-type degree, no more or less valuable outside its specific sector. This would not necessarily be the case were an archaeology degree to be more tightly vocational.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum
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Marcus Brody Wrote:At least in the current system, an archaeology degree is not seen as so specialised as to be applicable to only one sector......
This would not necessarily be the case were an archaeology degree to be more tightly vocational.
We are making assumptions here but in that same spirit we could make the assumption that a more specialised degree would have no affect on getting a job somewhere else.
I say this because what does a degree give you now that specialised degree could not? Writing? Reading? Thinking? Current degrees are over-hyped to make it seem that because they are bland you could use it anywhere but really they are giving no more skills then what you got in grade school. GIS works in hundreds of other fields. Report writing works in thousands of other fields.
I would put forth that right now a specialized degree can give all the same transferable skills that current degrees give ... no, actually a ton more. Puth forth a skill that would be taught in a specialized course and for 95% of them I could show you how they are applicable to multiple other areas.
At the same time let me put this forth- how does knowing the history of the neolithic help you in other careers?
So if a specialized course happened only people interested in a career would take part- not a bad think. We also don't know how many people would actually be put off by such a course. Anyways, it would help the 30% of the students who are looking for archaeology as a career and not hurt the other 70%. (I know we keep saying 95% but that is not true its closer 70-80% lots try archaeology but can't survive on the life of a shovelbum. Its a lot higher then 5% who want to be archaeologists. Even if they want to be academics - GIS, writing, creating a budget, knowing the laws where you dig, knowing how to dig, etc. are all skills they can use. A specialized course would not hurt those looking to be an academic.
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Doug Wrote:With a straight face can you say that every class you took at uni gave you the skills to think? That before going to uni you did not think at all. That uni ?taught you how to think about archaeology?. You're asking the wrong question there. By focusing on the individual elements you miss the point. It may not be the case that every single class teaches you how to think, but the ultimate effect of all the classes you take is to do so. School teaches you what to think because the National Curriculum and schools are focused very closely on passing exams to stay ahead in the league tables. This does not mean that pupils in school do not think (with some notable exceptions of my acquaintance!), but it does mean that the thought processes are channelled quite closely. When you go to university, especially as you progress through the system, you are being taught how to think. You are asked to find the answers for yourself. If you engage with that process you will get more for your money, because you will develop your ability to weigh up the options and put together a good argument, among other things. The practical skills you propose would not teach this. I forget the proper terms for it, but basically the archaeology/humanities degree should develop your abstract reasoning skills, which are much more in demand in modern society than purely practical, deductive reasoning skills are. If it only teaches practical skills, it might as well be an HND or whatever the equivalent is now because it will not expand your ability to think.
Quote:And right now uni?s teach content and not what to do with that content.
What precisely do you mean by content? It might be argued that all taught elements are content, whether practical or theoretical.
Quote:completing a task on time
What do you think that 5% penalty for each day your essay is late is all about? There you go, practical skills being taught without even a class in sight. :face-stir:
'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'
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@Doug
Quote:But for how long will it be not attractive to 95%? ?10,000 a year to not have a job? Not many families can afford this or many banks will be willing to give a loan.
That is not what is happening. The state is going to charge a gra
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Odinn Wrote:When you go to university, especially as you progress through the system, you are being taught how to think. You are asked to find the answers for yourself. If you engage with that process you will get more for your money, because you will develop your ability to weigh up the options and put together a good argument, among other things....
the archaeology/humanities degree should develop your abstract reasoning skills, which are much more in demand in modern society than purely practical, deductive reasoning skills are. If it only teaches practical skills, it might as well be an HND or whatever the equivalent is now because it will not expand your ability to think.
I think you might have missed my point which is probably because I am not articulating it well enoughxx(. sorry that's my fault
First, I question if a university really provides you with "abstract reasoning skills". Really, did we not have them before we went to university? Do people who do not go to university not have them?
Second, the part were I am arguing about content is to say, supposing that a university does teach "abstract reasoning skills", does it matter how you get them. If your follow your process of "progress through the system, you are being taught how to think. You are asked to find the answers for yourself". Could that not just as easy be done with a course on heritage law. Sure you can sit there of copy word for word the laws or you could understand why they are in place, who doesn't like them and why, and ways they could be improved. Same with theory on the adoption of agriculture- anyone can recite facts but the good students understand why people think it happened and the problems with these theories.
I was just saying what is taught is interchangeable for the process of learning "abstract reasoning skills" thus content doesn't matter in that sense. Again, assuming that this is something that can AND IS taught at universities.
That being said would it not be better if while learning "abstract reasoning skills" you also gain skills that could help you in archaeology or other fields? Call it a two for one deal.
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27th June 2011, 05:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 27th June 2011, 05:04 PM by Doug.)
@ Oxbeast
It is all guess work, we will see fairly soon, but commercial rates will kill you and make sure no one ever crosses the 21k or whatever mark it is because they will not be able to afford to service the dept. Saw a talk by an archaeologists teac
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It's also the case that the degree as currently structures gives you the opportunity to take specific classes in either areas that particularly interest you, or that you think would be useful in finding the type of job you hope to get. In my undergraduate degree, I took a mixture of classes, some looking at the archaeology of the particular period or region, which could be classed as being primarily for interest, some for more pragmatic reasons. Into the latter category, I'd put things like planning legislation, IT, and survey techniques - perhaps not the most exciting or glamourous, but areas that I thought would be useful. There was a requirement to complete a certain amount of fieldwork. Although the minimum was fairly low, it was obviously beneficial to do as much as possible, so I did. The degree offers the scope for the individual to tailor their learning to their own requirements and aims, which I think can only be a good thing. To a certain extent, it works in the other direction too, in that it's the responsibility of the student to select those classes that best equip them to work in their chosen field - if you think you'd like to work in commercial archaeology, you should be looking at those classes that are more practical, if you want to specialise in pottery of a particular period, take classes on that. Although everyone may come out with the same qualification, the range of classes or modules available on most degree courses means that the skills or knowledge of individual students may be vastly different.
On a less serious note, I'm also not convinced that learning GIS is the passport to a job that it once was. It now seems fairly commonplace for archaeology students to have at least a grasp of the basics, and this is likely to be replicated in other disciplines, meaning that there will be more competition for any GIS-based jobs that come up. I'm not suggesting it's not a useful thing to learn, because it obviously is, but I wouldn't necessarily base any career assumptions on that alone!
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum
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I fully agree Mr. Brody. GIS really is not that special anymore in archaeology. The good think though is that environmental, oil and gas, engineers, developers, etc. don't have saturation of gis people like archaeology does. I try to steer people to it not because they will get a archaeology job- there are very few of them for just GIS (it doesn?t hurt in general) but that it will get you a job somewhere else.
Looking at my posts, they might come off as a bit extreme to the full all out commercial only degree but I am actually think along the same lines. Choice! If student X wants to be an archaeologists then he should be able to take all the classes he needs. If student Y wants to fluff away all of mommy and daddys money then by all means they should be able to.
I guess the problem I see is that except for one or two programs that choice is not really there or the advice on what to do (most academics have not and never will do commercial). Not that students shouldn?t search out for advice but many times they are led astray not always on purpose, like I said the teachers rarely have been involved in anything else or if they were it was 20 or 30 years ago.
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I should also say that people make mistakes and should make mistakes. So you took a degree and not can't find work, lesson learned.
The real problem I see is that it will now cost your 30,000-40,000+ quid and 3-4 years of your life. Those are some dire consequences for a mistake you make when your 17-18.
Not that many archaeologists could buy a house but with those levels of dept. That many years of your life wasted. I think universities need to have a deep think about what they are asking students to do, at least that would be the right think to do.
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