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.
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.