Geography - and especially image - are crucial to university
recruitment, especially (though not only) when supply of places exceeds
demand.
In the three years I wass at Essex some of the top (5*) social science
depts had great problems recruiting undergraduates. The name Essex
didn't help (rememebr Mrs T) - and Colchester was largely unknown
too"!!!
On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Helen Twidle wrote:
> Hi All,
> This is a rather long posting - i hope you can all skim read:
>
> In response to Simon's (previous) posting on Lampeter - geography is in
> it's dying throws. I graduated there 2 years ago just as the rumours were
> beginning to fly. They are now running on a skeleton staff with very few
> students remaining. 2001 is the last year that they will be taking on new
> students - with just one full time lecturer teaching the whole human
> geography degree scheme, I understand. Is this fair on either staff or
> students?
>
> Whilst I don't know all the gory details on how and why this happened, (I'm
> sure that there are many ex- Lampeter staff and students on this list who
> know more - I'd assumed that someone else would reply to Simon's question)
> part of the problem was a lack of a recruitment officer.
>
> _Geography_ was part of the problem for the geography department. How can a
> small department in very-hard-to-reach West Wales get people to study
> there when most people in the UK don't even know where it is? In years gone
> by the lecturing staff were very active in going out and selling Lampeter
> to potential students and managed to keep the numbers up. For some reason
> this changed - perhaps too many other administrative commitments encroached
> on their time, perhaps funding dried up to be able to do this, or it could
> just be that students all wanted to study in cities, I don't know.
>
> Also, from rumours I heard whilst there, that there was the belief at a
> 'higher' (ivory tower) level that the university should return to it's
> theological roots and only teach classical subjects. Geography has not been
> the only casualty of this - the school of modern languages is also/ has
> been phased out. There may be others I am not aware of.
>
> What I do know is that I had a great time there - the lecturing quality was
> excellent, teaching was very innovative, the courses up to date and
> constantly evolving. I know that I wouldn't be going what I do now if I had
> gone to a city type university (excuse the generalisation) with a high
> number of students and more limited contact time. The staff were always
> ready to help and easily found, which is something that makes a huge
> difference to students everywhere. What it lacked in size it made up for in
> culture.
>
> It may be too late to save small, marginal departments such as Lampter, but
> with geography being off the national curriculum as a core subject - after
> all, the world has been conquered, so who needs geography anyway?;-) - it
> seems likely that this is a trend that will continue unless something
> changes drastically soon. Is anyone prepared to stand up and argue anymore?
>
> I've been doing some research in schools recently and the pupils I have
> talked to don't like geography and don't see it's relevance to them. If
> this is the view from schools, there's no wonder that geography in higher
> education is losing out on investment. Playing devil's advocate, why invest
> in something when the trends show falling student numbers? Perhaps we
> should be aiming at a younger audiences to prevent this trend escalating.
>
> Helen.
>
> Helen Twidle
> Postgraduate Office
> Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences
> University of Wales
> Aberystwyth
> Ceredigion
> SY23 3DB
> UK
>
> Tel 01970 622610
>
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