The Employability of Geography GraduatesAuthor(s): Allan JonesSource: Area, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1990), pp. 202-203Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002846 .

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202 IBG Annual Conference

Pittsburg and Cleveland, arguing that the new package represents little more than a sanitised image which confirms to international aesthetic standards and which is now being reflected in the new built forms of these cities. She was followed by two graduate students from QMW. Gillian Rose discussed the commodification of place in her paper' Imagining the East of London in the 1980s ' and counterposed the discourses of capital with those of local protest groups while Darrel

Crilley presented some of his work in ' The advertiser and the architect ' which focussed on the symbolic production of a docklands identity through place marketing and built form. Greg

Ashworth (Groningen University) asked the audience to consider the ways in which marketing science could be applied to the activities of public sector organisations in his paper ' Can places be sold? ', arguing that ill-thought out market planning will jeopardise the development of a genuinely new approach to the resolution of urban management problems. He was followed by 'Place marketing and competitive places ', given by David Sadler (Durham University). Sadler argued that the nature of place competition and the discourse of place advertising has created a chimera of economic development in the North-East and undermined the development of local political alternatives. Finally, Michelle Lowe (Reading University) presented one important strand of local economic regeneration in her case-study of the Richardson Brothers and the development of Merry Hill. Seizing the opportunities which are available because of the reluctance of inward-investors to look north of Watford, these 'Local Heroes ' draw on local image and local culture to justify their entrepreneurial activities.

The central aim of the programme had been to explore different discourses of the city and particularly, to focus on the ways in which different meanings are produced and consumed. The general interest in these issues was reflected in a reasonably large-and remarkably loyal audience-many of whom stayed right through until Saturday lunchtime.

Jacquie Burgess University College London

The employability of geography graduates The employment and other destinations of graduates is under increasingly intense scrutiny, principally because of the importance which can be attached to destinations as performance measures of courses, departments and institutions. Such indicators may be used by central government and within institutions for the determination of funding, and may also be used by a future financially conscious, fee-paying, loan-repaying 'market' of potential students in deciding what subject to study and in what institution. This conference session, convened by Allan Jones (Polytechnic South West, Plymouth) for the Higher Education Study Group, was a timely opportunity to take stock and look to the future.

The session fell into two parts, the first reviewing graduate performance both at the national and individual course level, making comparisons with other academic areas, and exploring the significance of the empirical information. Rick Ball (Staffordshire Polytechnic) used the results of a survey of Staffordshire geography graduates between 1985 and 1987 to examine some of the methodological issues surrounding the use of first destination statistics, looking at job type, location and salary and, in particular, at the short-term ' infill ' activities undertaken before entry into a main career. The advantageous flexibility of geographers was highlighted.

Mick Healey (Coventry Polytechnic) again drew upon First Destination Statistics to demon strate their application in transbinary inter-subject and inter-departmental comparative studies.

Although Coventry's sandwich degree students tended to move fairly quickly into permanent home employment, the comparison between geography graduates and all other graduates showed after six months a higher proportion of geographers in short term unemployment, unemployed and in what some regard as the traditional stand-by area of teacher training. There was evidence to suggest that the employability gap between polytechnic and university graduates was closing. Ron Johnston (Sheffield University), under the provocative title 'Why are geography graduates dissatisfied? ' used a national survey of 1980 graduates conducted in

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IBG Annual Conference 203

1986 to provide an answer. Key criteria for satisfaction were job interest, income and being a well-educated person. Graduates may not all have felt that geography got them an interesting or well-paid job, but they felt well-educated-a critical point for the future if they have to pay for their courses. Concern was raised over somewhat contemptuous attitudes towards 'generalist' courses expressed by some senior DES members. In the discussion which followed, it emerged that an increasing number of employers are far more cognisant of the value of geography degrees.

The second part of the session concentrated on the ways in which courses can engender a higher degree of employability in their graduates, particularly through the enhancement of personal transferable skills, partnerships with employers, and an increased awareness of employ ment opportunities and challenges. Peter Wright (Training Agency, Sheffield) was invited as guest of the HESG to discuss the Enterprise in Higher Education initiative which has already had an impact on some geography courses and will become more significant. This led into a two way discussion in which participants outlined their experiences to date. The focus of enterprise is on personal transferable skills-the area where needs are felt most strongly by employers in the most rapidly changing and progressive areas. John Bradbeer (Portsmouth Polytechnic) was unable to attend but sent copies of his paper outlining the skills programme in his department. Tim Unwin (Royal Holloway and Bedford, University of London) gave a provocative paper suggesting that personal skills were increasingly developed outside education and that the developing ethos of skills development was detrimental to the enhancement of scholarship. A lively discussion followed.

The two parts of the session were to have been chaired by John Briggs (Glasgow University) and Ron Johnston (Sheffield University), however IBG conference and presidential business respectively meant that this role was filled by the convenor. The session was well-attended and presenters left ample time for discussion. Overall the session suggested that while we might be rather cautiously optimistic we must give more careful consideration to future graduate employment.

Allan Jones Polytechnic South West, Plymouth

The military and political geography

The aim of the day's session was to look at geography through the barrel of a gun. It was intended to assess the role of military power in shaping the geography of nation-states. Geographical facts are created and destroyed by force of arms; the session's papers looked at the processes involved in theory and at a number of important case-studies in practice.

Paul Rodaway's (West Sussex Institute of HE) opening paper applying deconstruction to militarism illustrated, with particular reference to Gorbachev's world-view, the potential of a deconstructive approach to geopolitics; this reminder of the need for a systematic approach to values and meanings was a good start to a day's study of a field where words are used and abused in so many ways. One part of the world where the wordmongers of political geography are also the practitioners is Latin America; Les Hepple (University of Bristol) provided valuable insight into that transformation from concepts to policy and territorial control.

In the liberal democratic nation-state, the main influence of the military on geography is through the defence sectors of industry, much of it concentrated in just a few places and in the hands of just a few firms. John Lovering (SAUS, University of Bristol) looked at the implications of this in the UK, stressing the consequences of the predominance of (non-transferable) military over civil research and development; then Erik Swyngedouw (University of Oxford) dealt with similar issues in the very different economic and political environment of France and discussed the important regional implications of the decline of defence-related industries in the North East and their development in the South West-albeit with the continuing predominance of the Ile de France.

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