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Year's
delay for college's flagship archaeology course
Orkney College’s new post-graduate course in archaeology – highlighted as one of the establishment’s flagship initiatives – has been postponed at short notice because of administrative delays within the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute (UHIMI). The postgraduate MA in Archaeological Practice was due to start at the beginning of February, but it’s been put back for a year because it has still not been validated by external assessors from the UHIMI. This should have been done by the end of November. However, only three people had signed up for the course so far and speaking this week, college principal, Mr Peter Scott, said he hoped two, if not all of the students, would be offered alternative courses. The need for archaeology courses was cited as one of the main reasons for a £1.3 million extension at the college – currently being built – which will house an Institute of Archaeology. An archaeology lecturer Jane Downes was also appointed at the college two years ago and she had written the post graduate course in time for the February start. She said this week she was very disappointed by the news. “It is not particularly good for the college management to have to face this delay and not good for me either, but we have put together a package of developments and applications for grants to cover different parts of the year in different ways. It has been a crisis which we hope we have got under control.” She stressed that there shouldn’t be any problem in getting the final validation because the college had complied with strict conditions, but she said they couldn’t start the course before getting the official go-ahead. Mr Scott said the delay was due to a member of the validation team being ill. “There has been a delay because the team who who did the external validation have to come to do a revisit,” he said. “Unfortunately that could not happen until February because one of the people involved in the external validation team has been off ill for sometime and this has caused the delay in getting the revisit to take place.” The course was due to start on February 4 and the panel are due to visit only three days later. “It is an unfortunate turn of events, but one that is beyond our control,” said Mr Scott. He said it would be difficult to start the one-year course later next year because a lot of outdoor practical work was involved and the decision had therefore been taken to postpone it until February 2003. “If we started the course in May or September they would be doing the practical part of the course in the middle of the winter,” he said. Mr Scott said it was hoped that an alternative BPhil course could be offered instead. Commenting on the low numbers of students signed up for the course, Mr Scott said that if it had got final validation by now, the college would have aggressively marketed it. “We were never going to take more than eight,” he explained. “There were not huge numbers. It is post-graduate. You would never expect to get huge numbers on a post-graduate course, but once it is up and running we would hope to attract 12 to 15 on it each year.” One of the people expecting to start the course in February, John Wombell, told The Orcadian: “I was fully aware that the final validation was still to take place at the end of November, but I expected this to be a formality. “This news is a huge disappointment for the students signed up for the course and surely an inexcusable waste of public money.” He added: “I should add that Jane Downes has been most helpful throughout and I doubt whether any of the blame lies with Orkney College.” myles.hodnett@orcadian.co.uk |
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© The Orcadian Limited, Hell's Half Acre, Hatston, Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland |
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