3.1 Archaeology Students and Career Goals

Latest Data: 2020

This page reviews the demographic profiles and responses received from archaeology students in the 2020 Profiling the Profession survey.

Highlights

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For the first time, in 2020, the Profiling the Profession survey included questions for those studying archaeology and actively targeted students. 152 responses were received, a third of which were from current professional archaeologists that were also studying while working.

This sample included students from over 40 universities, including almost every UK University currently teaching archaeology degrees. As discussed below, for some demographic measures this sample is representative, but postgraduate and part-time students are over-represented. For most results there was not a significant enough difference in responses between undergraduates and post-graduates, or between part-time and full-time students, to weight the results so they better align with HESA reported demographics.

Demographics of respondents

The Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) collects data on staff and students in higher education in the UK. These data were compared against the survey data to understand how representative the Profiling the Profession sample is. Archaeology is included in two different categories in the HESA data; 20-01-03 Archaeology and 07-03-04 Forensic and archaeological sciences. As discussed in the 2012-13 Profiling the Profession report, a lack of detail in the HESA reporting makes it impossible to accurately separate out archaeology students from forensic science students in 07-03-04 Forensic and archaeological sciences – a best estimate is that archaeology makes up 10% of the students in this category, no more than 20%. Give that the 20-01-03 Archaeology category represents the majority of archaeology students, this category is used for comparison in this page. HESA rounds and suppresses data so all of their data are rounded to the nearest five and do not always match each other – see their full strategy here.

The Profiling the Profession results show that this survey had a much larger response from part-time (Table 3.1.1) and postgraduate (Table 3.1.2) students than the HESA figures, but with roughly the same ethnicity composition (Table 3.1.3), rates of disabilities (Table 3.1.4) and gender balance (Table 3.1.5) (there were ‘other’ genders reported but for data protection reasons we have not posted those). There was a higher proportion of EU citizens responding to the Profiling the Profession survey (Table 3.1.6) and the respondents were also older (Table 3.1.7), in line with what would be expected from this sample which had more part-time and postgraduate students. This means that in some respects the sample is representative of the student body and in other areas it deviates.

152 people responded as students to the survey but not all of them answered every question. Respondents could enter more than one citizenship. All HESA data are based on UK domiciled students.

Table 3.1.1: Full-time and Part-time students by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20.

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Table 3.1.2: Degree course enrolled in by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20.

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Table 3.1.3: Ethnicity by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20.

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Table 3.1.4: Disability rates by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20.

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Table 3.1.5: Gender by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20. Due to low numbers other genders are excluded to avoid identification.

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Table 3.1.6: Citizenship by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20.

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Table 3.1.7: Age and type of study by survey respondents and HESA 20-01-03 Archaeology category. 2019-20.

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Careers

Respondents were also asked a series of questions about their career goals in archaeology (or not) and about their knowledge and use of career resources.

NOTE – as described above, while the sample if representative in some areas, it is not in others. All results should be treated with some scepticism until further confirmatory work is undertaken.

Respondents were asked why they chose to study archaeology, and overwhelmingly this was to pursue a career in the discipline (Table 3.1.8).

Table 3.1.8: Answers to the question ‘Why did you choose to study archaeology?’, 2019-20.

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Comments left on this question:

• Interested in the topic and wanted to switch from fieldwork to academic research
• Career advancement
• Was employed as xxxxxxxx and wanted to get a masters
• Interested in it, had no idea what career I wanted
• I had a career as commercial archaeologist before starting the PhD. This will help me to potentially take new directions within the field.
• I was very interested in the topic but unsure as to whether I wanted a career in it or not.
• Interested in the topic but still unsure as to making it a career.
• I am in a very lucky position to be able to combine my day job with a personal interest in archaeology
• I wanted to achieve a degree and had an interest in archaeology.
• To combine digging and lecturing
• Interest and potentially working in archaeology, but not suited to some jobs as I have [disability]

Students were asked whether they intended to pursue a career in archaeology, and there was very little difference between the numbers that started studying archaeology for career reasons and those that were still wanting to pursue a career after starting their studies. This correlation is even stronger for undergraduates (Table 3.1.9).

Table 3.1.9: Answers to the question ‘Do you intend to pursue an archaeology career?’, 2019-20.

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The experience of undertaking fieldwork training did not change many minds on pursing a career in archaeology, though it did change what type of archaeological work many would like to pursue (Table 3.1.10). This question was inspired by Croucher, Cobb & Brennan 2008 report – Investigating the Role of Fieldwork in Teaching and Learning Archaeology which asked a similar question and found similar results. A survey by Jackson & Sinclair (Archaeology Graduates of the Millennium: a survey of the career histories of graduates) of 710 recent graduates (at that time of that report in 2008, the respondents had graduated between 2000 and 2007) found 63% of respondents’ career choices were influenced by undertaking fieldwork while studying, though the report does not specify the direction of that influence, other than identifying it was positive for the majority.

Table 3.1.10: Respondents that have had fieldwork experience and how that influenced their career decisions about archaeology, 2019-20.

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Respondents were asked if they were still interested in a career in archaeology after experiencing fieldwork – 80% did, 6% did not and 14% were undecided. The 2008 Archaeology Graduates of the Millennium survey found that 55% of the graduates reported that they wanted to pursue a career in archaeology upon starting their degree and 57% did upon graduating. Overall, degree courses appear to have little impact on the relative number of people looking for careers in archaeology.

For those that were interested in a career, respondents were asked which areas of work in archaeology they were interested in pursuing. Academia was the most popular (respondents could choose more than one), but this is partially inflated by the high number of respondents with PhDs, with almost 90% of them wanting a career in academia (Table 3.1.11).

Table 3.1.11: Sub-sectors respondents wanted to work in, 2019-20. All n = 106. PhD n = 36.

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In order to assess how realistic their career expectations were, respondents were asked how much they believed their starting salary in archaeology would be. The results showed the respondents had a strong grasp of what pay conditions were like in archaeology. The median result was £20,000 annually, which is what most entry level positions pay. The lowest was £10,000 which is also realistic (for a part-time position) and the highest was £38,000 but that was from an individual that was already working in archaeology at that wage. In fact, most of the higher wage expectations came from people already working in the sector. The respondents were well informed about their likely starting wages in archaeology.

Table 3.1.12: Expected starting salary in archaeology.

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Respondents were asked about their ability to relocate for work. 43% felt unable to relocate more than an hour away. Given the geographic distribution of jobs in UK archaeology this is a significant constraint on the potential workforce if most sub-sectors only attract little over 50% of the students wanting to work in them. Essentially, while many respondents are interested in an archaeology career, the intersection of the type of job and access to jobs means that most employers may only have about a quarter of graduates available to recruit from, or less.

Table 3.1.13: Ability of respondents to move for work.

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Respondents were also asked about what sort of career advice they had used and about which of a selection of resources / skills qualifications they were aware of. Very few had taken any sort of formal module in careers. A high number of respondents were aware of CIfA but not of the weekly jobs bulletin that they issue (Table 3.1.15). Jackson & Sinclair’s 2008 survey found a much higher number of students (47%) visited their university or college’s careers service.

Table 3.1.14: Prevalence of sources for career advice for a few select choices by students, 2019-20.

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Table 3.1.15: Knowledge of a few select resources and qualifications for students, 2019-20. n = 134

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Representative?

This survey’s small sample and response bias could account for why respondents here were roughly 20% more likely to want a career in archaeology than the other surveys of students. But it is possible that this survey is accurate and representative of students at the time of the survey. The other surveys captured respondents in the early 2000s and since then the composition of archaeology has changed considerably.

Over the last twenty years, there has been a significant change in people taking undergraduate qualifications with a near complete collapse in the numbers of people studying for non-first degree level qualifications e.g. foundation degrees, diplomas in higher education, National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) / Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) at NQF levels 4 and 5, etc. (See HESA for full definitions). Many of those students would have been following continuing education courses. There has also been a significant change in the numbers of part-time students (both under- and post-graduate) dropping significantly. In 2002-03, 49% of postgraduates were studying full-time; in 2019-20 the figure was 69% (Figure 3.1.7) and the proportion of undergraduate students studying full time increased from 47% to 88% over the same period (Figure 3.1.6) (mainly driven by changes in non-first Degree qualifications). Part-time students tend to be older, with 70% over the age of 30 (both undergrad and postgrad, HESA). The student body has become significantly younger, with a significant loss of non-traditional students, such as undergraduates who took courses out of an interest in the topic, not always to pursue a career.

Moreover, as the majority of archaeology students now expect to pay significant fees (in comparison with the opinions captured by the other surveys between 2000-2007) and that could potentially be affecting views as well. While more work is needed to confirm this, it could be that the results of this survey represent the current career goals of archaeology students in 2020, with the impact of fees changing the profile of the archaeology students overall leading to ‘traditional’ students being more career-focussed and the elimination of many non-traditional students who took courses to learn more, but not to pursue a career. Such dramatic changes to the student body could account for the ~20% difference in career goals seen between this survey and the earlier work.

Further details and discussion

The data on the changing student body over time from HESA (Table 3.1.16) covers just the students listed under the Archaeology category, as discussed above, the data on Forensic & Archaeological Sciences are not granular enough and only represents up a small number of all archaeology students so their exclusion will not alter these results significantly. These categories came into use in 2002-3 and so the results are from then onwards. The data for other Postgraduates appears to have been discontinued but it could just been it fell below the threshold for reporting by HESA. All numbers are by primary areas of study so there may be more archaeology students on joint honours courses that are counted under different subjects.

While these trends have been fairly constant, there has been several events that have accelerated them – almost all driven by decisions on education policy in England, where the overwhelming majority of archaeology students in the UK are taught. The introduction of higher fees in 2006-08 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales accelerated the loss of non-traditional students (other and part-time) (Figures 3.1.8 & 3.1.9), though the later increase had much less of an affect. The lift of the cap on student numbers in England (2015) saw a brief jump in student numbers but that has fallen back since. The Great Recession of the late 2000s saw an increase in Masters students, potentially as people looked for degrees to improve their employment prospects. Despite all of these influences, student numbers have stayed fairly level over time, with the number of postgraduate students enrolled in archaeology having fluctuated within a fairly narrow range between 1370 and 1730 over the previous two decades.

Table 3.1.16: HESA data on Postgraduates, Undergraduates, Part-time and Full-time, for Archaeology, 2002-20.

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Image Credit

Outdoor Classes by Tulane Public Relations, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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