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Abstract
Geography is firmly established as a separate discipline within British higher education, a position founded on its strength in the country's school system throughout the twentieth century. This position has enabled the discipline to prosper and it has been at the core of many intellectual developments. With changes in the nature of universities, however, that position has increasingly to be rethought.
Notes
1 The reference to Dublin (which became the capital of an independent Ireland after 1922) reminds us that any account of geography in the British system needs to take into account the broader imperial role of universities. Of course, as the main text briefly describes, the subject partly owes its consolidation in British universities to imperial needs. More widely British universities and geography therein had a global presence through Empire. In the case of the University of London, for example, not only 12 universities in England but also several in Canada and many in other Commonwealth countries (notably in East and West Africa) began life as associate colleges of the University, offering its external degrees under licence. In recent decades a post-imperial phase of ‘globalization’ has again seen British universities seeking to expand their global roles, not only through marketing to attract overseas students (who since 1979 must pay much higher fees) but also through joint ventures, links and external (including online) programmes.
2 In a number of cases, a geography department was based on one in a teacher training college (each separate local education authority had at least one until the 1980s) which offered BEd degrees and which was incorporated into the polytechnic.
3 Lancaster University, for example, established a geography department in the early 1970s (it already had an environmental science department, founded by a geographer) because it was advised that there was a plentiful supply of potential undergraduates (Johnston, Citation2003a, Citation2004a).
4 Because of the foundation of many geography departments in providing a degree-level training for intending school-teachers, geography has always attracted a relatively high proportion of female students: in 2004–2005, statistics produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency showed that 48 per cent of those enrolled on courses in ‘physical & terrestrial geographical & environmental sciences’ were male, whereas for ‘human and social geography’ the figure was 51 per cent. For ‘geography and environmental sciences’ as a whole, the percentage female is reported as 53. As is common in other disciplines, however, the number of women occupying permanent academic posts is smaller (although relatively large numbers occupy temporary research posts, one element of the casualization of the academic labour market referred to above).
5 UK universities are funded for research according to a dual funding system: basic infrastructure is covered by a central grant from the relevant funding council (e.g. HEFCE for England) according to a formula based on the RAE ratings of its departments: research grants are then obtained from a variety of sources for specific projects. The institutions that only became universities after 1992 did not obtain the infrastructural grant before then, and found it difficult to compete with the better-funded older universities through the RAEs thereafter.
6 Beyond specialist technical and vocational subjects, the graduate job market in the UK is relatively open. Graduates are recruited to management training and accountancy, for example, on the basis of aptitude tests, degree results and the reputation of their university, rather than on the basis of the subject studied. However, the skills imparted through a degree in geography (which requires a combination of analytical skills, numeracy and fluency in writing) mean that geographers fare relatively well in the graduate job market. There is little evidence that a geography degree per se is desirable for entry to certain professions (other than teaching and research in the discipline itself): it is very much seen as a general education providing the basis for entry into (further training in) a range of occupations and professions (see Johnston, Citation1990a, Citation1990b, Citation1990c).
7 In the USA, unlike the UK, there is no strong stream of undergraduate students wishing to read geography and many departments have identified GIS as a major transferable skill with substantial employment potential that can attract students to their courses; because UK departments have much less difficulty recruiting undergraduates they have not felt the same need to stress GIS and employability.
8 In addition, a small number of universities (such as Bristol and Southampton) have introduced four-year first degree courses (which lead to the award of a master's level qualification). These are strongly research-oriented, especially in the final year, and may bring recognition as providing the research training element for the four-year postgraduate awards now provided by the ESRC.
9 Inevitably, the relative success of geography in attracting a continued stream of undergraduates has been uneven, with some institutions and locations having much more difficulty, especially when faced with new forms of competition. In particular, the arrival of ‘new universities’ (the former polytechnics and colleges of higher education) in the early 1990s meant that some geography courses in established universities found recruitment more difficult. In one notable case (that of the otherwise pioneering department at the University of Wales, Lampeter), this culminated in the closure of the geography department in 2001.
10 Students resident in Scotland pay no fees at Scottish universities and moves are afoot to grant the Welsh Assembly similar powers to determine fee levels in Wales in the future.
11 In the 1990s, the Universities Funding Council (successor to the University Grants Committee) was replaced by four separate funding bodies for the main constituent territories of the UK—England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These have their own mechanisms for distributing the research money, but have combined to conduct the RAEs. Those, and the different arrangements for tuition fees in Scotland (see note 10), means that the trajectory of universities there may diverge more from those of the other British territories in the future.
12 In this way the dual funding system is being inverted: most infrastructural money will go to the institutions that earn most grant and contract income (Johnston, Citation2006b).
13 Tenure was formally abolished by the Education Reform Act, 1988, but universities have very rarely used their powers to make established staff members on permanent contracts redundant. RJ's letter of appointment from the University of Bristol (issued in 1995) simply states that ‘This is a permanent contract: prevailing conditions apply’.
14 The Times Higher Education Supplement (14 July 2006) reports on the extent of this ‘transfer market’.
15 See http://www.gees.ac.uk/
17 Recruitment of high-quality postgraduates is generally increasingly difficult because of the costs (for students who may have a substantial debt—of £20,000 or more—built up during their undergraduate years) and the diminishing attractions (pay and conditions) of an academic career. On the growing recruitment of non-geographers into geography departments, see Tysome (Citation2006).
18 The RGS/IBG and GA have recently announced a major funded Action Plan for Geography aimed at promoting the discipline at all levels of the country's educational system (Gardner & Lambert, 2006).