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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