Tired of a £27k degree??
That’s about the total cost of a three year degree in the UK… so if this really represents the actual cost, can you go anywhere else that’s cheaper? The answer is an emphatic yes! Germany has abandoned tuition fees, whilst fees are very low in the Netherlands. Are they any good? OK, that might seem a little snobbish, but if you don’t know the “HE map” then it’s a fair question. The answer is a big YES - whilst you might question the metric, the sheer internationalness of the Times Work University Rankings shows the lie of the land. So - MILLION dollar question. Do you speak the lingo?? Yes, if you are English!! Those top international universities are now realising that there is a big international market (of talent and/or money!) and English is the international language. Check out StudyPortals for a list of universities and courses (on a map of course!!) at UG and PG level that teach in English.
Like the nature of the Dutch and the 40min hop from Stansted to Schiphol? Then study a BA in Archaeology at Leiden. Want to take advantage of no fees in Germany, travel and get in some mountain sports? Try an MA in Physical Geography at Leipzig, It’s fair to say there are many more PG courses currently available across the board, but this will change quickly. And the Dutch and Germans are particularly well placed given they learn English from an early age. A burgeoning sector to keep an eye on particularly if you are looking to avoid paying fees.
101 Top Tips for PhD Students
101 Top Tips for PhD Students gets some good reviews over at Amazon, along with one in the current Sensed (although you might have to wait to see the back issue). My PhD student James O’Connor liked it and commented his favourite tip was:
You can get drunk at conferences, just not the most drunk!
Clearly sage advice, although I might edit that to
You can get drunk at conferences, just check who you should be less drunk than!
So, buy a copy and help support poor, under paid, academic staff!!
OS Maps Mars
Yes, the OS Maps (some of) Mars in their own inimitable style… great bit of PR!
GISc RG Dissertation Prize
Great news for one of my MSc dissertation students last year, Jen Rozier, as she has just been awarded the RGS GISc Research Group dissertation prize. Her project Vegetation Response and Recovery in the 20 years following the 1982 eruption of El Chichón volcano: A Remote Sensing Approach looked at effects of vegetation recovery following the El Chichon eruption and correlating them with potential topographic effects and proxies using multi-temporal Landsat data.
This has also now been summarised in a short article for Sterling Geo (the UK reseller for ERDAS Imagine) titled El Chichón: Vegetation Response and Recovery Following a Volcanic Eruption.
Journal of Maps Best Maps
The Map Room highlighted the Journal of Maps Best Maps today in this blog post. Our Best Maps are freely available, but since being published in partnership with Taylor and Francis we have become subscription based which means everything up to 2012 is open access.
FYI, and I’ve written about this in my editorials on several occasions, publishing a journal is not a “no-cost” opration. Increasingly, in order to meet the expected standards of readers, authors, funders and the general public, there are a number of quality requirements. So, in short, someone, somewhere, at somepoint, has to pay for publication. That can be the reader (subscription), the author (open access) or some hybrid (cross-subsidy!). It’s something we always keep under review at the Journal of Maps - unfortunately no model suits everyone.