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Steve Hinchcliffe is absolutely right to raise this matter. Essentially what is happening is that HEFCE have, on the basis of surveys of expenditure by several departments in different Universities, come up with a formulea for funding the different subjects. Humanities is the base at 1.00 at £1,907 per FTE student per year. Clinical medicine and dentistry at the other extreme rank at 8.03. Geography has come in at a remarkable 1.43 which, for those departments which are strongly physical and laboratory based, is little short of disasterous if Universities pass this on as the funding base. The RGS-IBG knew about this immediately and, following discussion with several people, sent off a strong letter to HEFCE spelling out the consequences of this action for British Academic Geography. The RGS-IBG letter is being followed up by a meeting of the Heads of British Geography Departments which, fortuitously, takes place this coming Monday. I assume that a barrage of complaints will be unleashed on HEFCE. The RGS-IBG was therefore in the front line and responded immediately. Make no mistake, if this proposal goes through, without change, we will not have much time to spend sending messages to and fro this forum as we could face budget and staff cuts of major proportions in some departments. The allocation of subjects to 'Price Groups' is preliminary, and it may be possible to change it but it will require the strongest co-ordinated campaign by British geographers to save the subject in its current form and staffing levels. Chris Hamnett %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%