Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

the handful of disciplines that has the largest relative number of students and facultymembers and produce candidates that are rather sought after in the labour market.Seen from abroad the US geography is a large enterprise with more than hundredinstitutions offering MA degrees and more than 50 offering PhDs in the discipline.American geographers are often the ones invited as keynote speakers and the productionof textbooks and scientific publications are quite large. BUT. Compared to otherdisciplines US geography is small and marginal. The geography departments in theIVY-league private universities have almost all been closed down. As guest professorin Seattle in 1985 I witnessed the struggle to save the department at the Universityof Chicago. Many departments have a steady fight for survival, and if you are out itis pretty difficult to reintroduce the discipline. If you do not attract enough studentsor produce enough science you are threatened. This is of course gradually also thecase in Europe, but still in a milder form of educational market economy. When inthe USA, you soon see one striking difference to European departments: There isnot an intention for a department to cover the broad canvas of the discipline, physical– ecological – human geography. At the University of Washington, the focus wason economic geography – regional development and cartography – GIS when I wasthere. But on the margins some peculiarities survived, as a course that was givenevery year by one staff member on the history of the ‘great discoveries’ from MarcoPolo and the Vikings to Stanley and Roald Amundsen. This course survived becauseit attracted every term a number of students. We know of course also from Europethat students may choose a course because it is ‘easy’ to get those ECTS grades orbecause the lecturer is rather good and popular. But then we need to ask: Is this typeof educational market system the best to lift the quality and ability of candidates?US geography departments are thus struggling for survival, whereas just north ofthe border, in Canada, the discipline is rather strong and the closing of departmentsmuch more unlikely. This is more or less the case in most of the countries that oncebelonged to the British Empire. In the UK, as far as I know, geography still is amongthe most chosen disciplines by the enrolling students. In most universities geographyhas larger staff and more students than other social sciences. In Germany and theNetherlands the discipline is also rather strong; in both countries ‘Diplom-Geograhie-Studenten’is provided an applied geography education primarily opening upfor jobs in planning. Many departments across the world, struggling to find theirlocation in either the Faculty of Social Science, Faculty of Natural Science or Facultyof Arts, they envy the situation at Rijksuniversiteit in Utrecht for its ‘Fakulteit derGeowissenschaphen’! In some countries in Europe the discipline is on the other handon the verge of extinction (Italy).In the former state-socialist countries in East and Central Europe geography ingeneral seems to be in a relative strong position. Traditionally most departmentsare attached to Natural Science faculties, and often have larger part of the staffin physical geography, landscape geography and cartography than for instance ina human geography working on more critical analyses of planning and locationalissues. The change to a market economy makes a new approach to planning andlocational analyses necessary and geography is well suited to provide this if it gets138