Will the study of archaeology soon become a thing of the past?

[Oxbeast]

Interesting article, carrrickavoy, thanks for posting.

I've been saying things like this for a while, that far far fewer people are going to try and get into commmercial archaeology once they have a debt of 50K that starts going up at commercial rates. And the real game changer of the Browne review is to make the ecology of universities totally dependent on the decisions made by 17 year olds, though I'm sure certain languages will be protected for national security reasons . But I didn't realise this:

Archaeology has traditionally recruited heavily among 'core' students (often those from poorer backgrounds), and departments around the country are being caught by this. Highly selective universities now have a relatively small 'core', and little room for manoeuvre in mitigating short-term movements in demand among high performing A-level students. The intention is to allow such universities to grow, but it also creates an incentive for them to disinvest from disciplines with weak demand among applicants with high A-level grades. There is no corresponding incentive for other universities to take up that provision. A likely outcome of this is that there will be reduction in national capacity in archaeology, and particularly in expensive archaeological science. We will all be the poorer for that.

So archaeology is more at risk becasue there are too many 'poorer' applicants with good A level grades? Thats crazy talk, these are just the kind of people who deserve the first go at university...