Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Degrees in Geography can be studied in Castile and Leon at the three public universitiesof Leon, Salamanca and Valladolid. These each have a syllabus that has recentlybeen revised (in 2001, 2000 and 1998, respectively). The programmes include theusual traditional Geography subjects, but also more professionally-oriented courseson topics such as Geographic Information Systems, Urban Planning, Local Development,Regional Policies, Geography of Natural Risks, or Environmental ImpactAnalysis. The inclusion of these in the syllabus was as a replacement for other,more general, subjects like History, Education, or the Humanities. In fact, universitydepartments in Castile and Leon, like those in other Spanish regions, designedtheir new syllabuses to train geographers so that they could work professionally asspecialists in planning and administration of land use, rather than as Geographyteachers of various educational levels, as was the case until recently. With respect toMaster’s qualifications, the only university that offers the possibility of undertakingthis type of specialized study is Valladolid, although of the two courses developedthere, one is related to Urban Planning and the other to GIS, but they have not beenrun continuously.This radical alteration to the objectives of university degrees was not initiallyaccompanied by any similar change in academic personnel, because in most universitiesnew degree courses in Geography had to be put in place on a “no cost” basis,without the appointment of any new staff. Hence, the changes that students couldsee in the first few years were in some cases purely formal, being no more than thereplacement of an old title for a course with a new name, and not achieving the generalaim of training specialists in territorial planning and administration that appeared inthe syllabus. During the 1990s and continuing up to the present, however, there hasbeen some increase in the staffing of Geography departments, with new academicsgenerally having a vision of Geography diametrically opposed to more traditionalviews. Furthermore, over the course of these years, many members of staff haveperformed their educational duties in parallel with professional practice in consultancyfirms or multidisciplinary teams in companies and firms, passing on in theirclassrooms the experience they have acquired in the private sector. Nevertheless, inSpanish universities it is still possible to see a mixture of two teaching tendencies,one that might be defined as generalist-humanist and another that could be termedprofessional-vocational.Over recent years Spain has suffered a major drop in the number of universitystudents, both as a consequence of a declining birth-rate and because of an increasedproportion of young people who decide to not enter university studies. This drop hasbecome particularly critical for those qualifications that either do not already havea long-established university tradition as a major, or single honours, subject nor canthey offer a clear professional or vocational outlet, as is the case for the disciplinebeing considered here. In the academic year 1998−99, there were in total 7,781Geography students in the 26 Spanish universities that offered such degrees, whilein 2003-04 the figure was 5,043, a decrease of 35%. In respect of Castile and Leon,the 1998−99 academic year saw 113 new student enrolments in Geography, while for2003-04 the number was only 39, a 65% decline (Figure 1). Logically, these decreases219