Wednesday, February 16. 2005

Geography Professor - An Endangered Species?

In this week's Time Magazine, they reviewed a book by Jared Diamond entitled "Collapse" that tries to answer the question of why civilizations die out while others survive. But the article began by introducing Diamond as a geography professor from UCLA, "surely an endangered species itself" the article claimed. Is that true? Are geography professors or for that matter geography departments "collapsing" or going toward extinction? In the U.S. my "guess" is that geography is just not a highly regarded major. In the UK, I understand it is the third most elected major by college students. So, what's wrong in the U.S? Unfortunately, we are not educating our college students with one fundamental truth: there are JOBS to be had with a solid background in geography and geographic informations systems technology. Perhaps it would be better to "absorb" geography departments into other disciplines, because, after all, isn't that what is happening to GIS. It's an enabling technology that applies to many disciplines such as urban planning, environmental sciences, geology, real estate, risk mitigation, logistics and transportation. Let's hear from geography professors on this one

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