Environment Dominates Geo-Schools
Annual Survey
A
strong emphasis in environmental geology and a "significant increase"
in the number of international graduate geoscience students at North
American institutions are revealed in the latest AAPG Status of
Academic Geoscience Departments report.
The newest
survey — the tenth conducted by the AAPG Research Committee, all
under the leadership of Barry Katz — was limited to departments
in the United States and Canada, and included departments without
graduate programs.
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A
strong emphasis in environmental geology and a "significant increase"
in the number of international graduate geoscience students at North
American institutions are revealed in the latest AAPG Status of
Academic Geoscience Departments report.
The newest
survey — the tenth conducted by the AAPG Research Committee, all
under the leadership of Barry Katz — was limited to departments
in the United States and Canada, and included departments without
graduate programs.
As
in past years, the survey was intended to help define academic trends
for geoscience departments. Katz said that the emphasis on environmental
geology at the university level is evident in two key areas, according
to respondents:
- It
was number one in the "department's academic strength" category,
replacing last year's winner, stratigraphy.
- More
students — by far — are finding jobs in environmental geology
than in any other sector. Environmental jobs accounted for more
than 55 percent of those responding.
Conversely,
the petroleum sector job market showed a "significant decrease,"
Katz said, coming in at about 13 percent.
The
report is distributed annually to AAPG's Executive and Research
committees, and is available on the AAPG Web site.
Other findings
include:
- There
has been a decrease in geoscience department size as measured
by both the number of faculty positions and students.
- Graduate
students account for about 38 percent of the student population.
- International
students account for about 29 percent of all graduate students
(and 36 percent of all Ph.D. candidates).
- The
top three reported academic strengths were environmental geology,
stratigraphy and hydrogeology.
- Only
six departments report petroleum geology as a strength.
Download Complete Report: 2003
Report on the Status of Academic Geoscience Departments (PDF
50kb)