Is it me? the rise of teh "trainee"

[P Prentice]

I passionately care about who digs the holes.

and there was me thinking you had no time for passion

[Wax]

I am hearing on the grape vine that universities are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit students to archaeology degrees. And that partly as a consequence of this Archaeology departments in universities are being increasingly cut back. Are we begining to see the serious skills shortage that might up the wages in the profession?

[kevin wooldridge]

I am hearing on the grape vine that universities are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit students to archaeology degrees. And that partly as a consequence of this Archaeology departments in universities are being increasingly cut back. Are we begining to see the serious skills shortage that might up the wages in the profession?

There are 41 UK places of higher education offering archaeology as a subject in the coming academic year 2014-15. Not sure that is any less than last year and indeed one college has just introduced a new archaeology course......The attached table doesn't give the number of students per course but one guesses there is an optimum number required to make the course viable. I am not hearing any rumours of a drop in numbers but there is certainly greater competition for those students with the highest A level scores.....and of course not forgetting overseas and mature students on undergrad and post-grad courses. Don't quite see the link between less students and higher wages. All the evidence suggests very few archaeology graduates pursue a career in archaeology, so surely an overall drop in numbers wouldn't necessarily affect the numbers entering 'the profession'....

http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co...rchaeology

[Wax]

Interesting figures but do we know how they compare with five years ago? There has certainly been a cut back in university based units.
Wishful thinking to suppose there would ever be salary raises from a shortage of trained people entering the profession where there are still far more archaeology graduates than archaeology jobs xx(

[kevin wooldridge]

Interesting figures but do we know how they compare with five years ago? There has certainly been a cut back in university based units.
Wishful thinking to suppose there would ever be salary raises from a shortage of trained people entering the profession where there are still far more archaeology graduates than archaeology jobs xx(

If you click on the Year box at the top of the list you can get figures on the number of places offering archaeology courses back til 2008. The total number has actually increased over the years although some of the places change....my guess would be therefore that the number of students remains relatively consistent.

The relationship between supply, demand and wage levels is far more complex than suggesting that a deficiency in one may result in an increase in the other.......Important factors to bear in mind are the average age of a field archaeologist (currently 40+) and the gender bias of that age group.....these alone suggest that factors such as career aspiration, expected and required rewards and future career prospects for archaeologists are different and therefore difficult to compare with both other professions as well as established economic models......(Archaeology follows more closely what I would call the 'B&Q' model after that company's famous campaign to deliberately employ an older work force)

[Doug]

Just a couple of comments on student numbers

1. They have been declining for about ten years now. Sort of, archaeology degrees are classified in two ways- straight archaeology degrees and archaeological science degrees. Unfortunately, archaeology science degrees are lumped in with forensics degrees by HESA (higher education statistics agency) so we don't know exact numbers. Though the just archaeology degree classification has declined significantly in terms of number of students.

2. Decline in archaeology students is part of wider generational trends. For the last two years there has a been a decline in overall University enrollment. You look at the demographics of the coming generation and there are far few kids than in the past.

3a. I think kevin hits the nail on the head, complexity. Not sure you all remember back that far to 2006-2008 but some units, at least in Scotland, were importing Polish archaeologists. Literally flying them over on Ryanair. The Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe project in 2007 was meant to capture the movement of archaeologists between countries. Instead it captured the complete collapse of it. Look at Ireland, 800 archaeologists before the collapse, now below 100 (edit- should clarify those are in a Union). YES- 90% loss. (non-union loss is 82% for all archaeologists in Ireland). That is a lot of potential archaeologists looking for jobs. Actually probably not, most have left the profession by now BUT before the fall about half of them were not Irish. UK archaeology is about 95-98% British. If Ireland can go to 50% of their archaeologists from out of country there is a lot of slack that we can take up with EU archaeologists.

3b. Now before anyone jumps on the UKIP bandwagon and become a total C%(#$%($ towards everyone. It won't matter if the UK drops out of the EU. I just worked on a project were the supervisor had 25 years of archaeology experience AND no degree. YOU DON'T NEED A DEGREE TO DO COMMERCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY. We had another guy come in on some days with no degree either. Until people are required to have a degree looking at university students will make little difference in determining supply and demand. Some of the best archaeologists I have worked with have had no archaeology degrees.

3c. Until you actually constrain who can be a commercial archaeologists you are not going to see wages increase much. All other variables are meaningless in terms of trying to figure out if wages will go up.

[barkingdigger]

While Kevin & Doug are correct about the "too many variables" issue regarding wages, I wonder if the decline in straight archaeology students is anything to do with the crushing uni fees? After all, taking a degree that may not lead to any employment wasn't much of a risk when it was free, but at £9k a year plus expenses it becomes a more serious decision. Perhaps we are seeing some folks being pressured into more mainstream degrees just to be able to pay off the loans?

As for needing a degree to dig, some of the best diggers in the '80s (and later supervisors, POs and Directors as they progressed) came from the old MSC scheme with no uni background at all.

[Doug]

The decline occurred well before the new 9k fees were introduced. Around 2005 and 2006. Even before the recession and about 5 years before 9k. It does not look like a correlation, 9k fees and decline. The best I can figure out with the limited data is that the decline has come mainly in non-traditional students. You look at the UCAS data (which is pretty much 17-19 year olds going to uni for the first time) and the rates are steady. You look at part-time students e.g. looking to change career, interested in the subject, etc. you see a massive decline. That is were the loss is occurring, part-time students, by a lot. That tends to correlate well with the increase in fees to 3k. BUT that is only part-time students. Your full time 17-19 olds have stayed steady for years now. I think fees have discourage people who are interested in a second degree or learning archaeology because it is fun but not to many people looking at it as a first degree or career.

In terms of career after uni, the 9k fee might influence some people? However you don't have to pay back student loans till you make over 25k so not a big worry for most new archaeologists.

I should also say the Universities pop out 1000 (yes, a thousand that is no typo) people with Masters each year in straight archaeology, possibly another 200 in archaeological sci. Yeah, about a quarter of them are American/Canadian and going home but still 500-700 people who have gone beyond a BA/BS. For PhDs it is about 150-170. Two degrees you don't really do for the fun of it. Even with declining undergrad levels there are more than enough people with archaeology degrees (degrees that indicate you are at least interested in an archaeology career) for years to come.

[kevin wooldridge]

There has been a small decline in students studying archaeology in recent years, but that decline is relatively small (a few hundred out of roughly 6000). The current figure for the number of archaeology students is however considerably larger than it was in 1997 and in 2001 although lower than a peak in 2005. That would seem to suggest that it might be too early to draw generalisations regarding the effect that the increase in tuition fees may have had on student numbers... The attached link is to tables based on student numbers per subject over the past 18 years....

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/content/view/1973/239/

[Doug]

You just have to be very careful with that data- between 2001/02 and 2002/03 they changed how they listed subjects. Archaeology gained something like 2k in students in that switch. comparable data is only from 2002/03 onwards which saw growth for a few years, then decline.