University of Wales Lampeter

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by chrislarsen, Mar 11, 2009.

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  1. chrislarsen

    chrislarsen New Member

    Given the recent thread on the utility of a UoW degree, I am curious about the reputation of UoW Lampeter. I know the university will be merging with Trinity in the near future due to financial considerations. However, how is the school currently regarded academically? My impression is that the Theology Department is world class. What about the other programs at Lampeter??
     
  2. Magister

    Magister New Member

    Hi chrislarsen!

    If ranking tables mean anything to you, the University of Wales, Lampeter is:

    1. ranked #70 (overall) out of 113 universities on The Times Good University Guide 2009 and its Theology (& Religious Studies) is ranked #26 out of 35 universities;
    2. ranked #115 out of 117 universities on The Guardian's University Guide 2009; and
    3. ranked #101 out of 113 universities on The Independent's Complete University Guide 2009 and its Theology (& Religious Studies) is ranked #23 out of 34 universities.

    Hope this helps!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 12, 2009
  3. chrislarsen

    chrislarsen New Member

    Do league tables complied by the popular press have any validity?? Here in the states we have the hideous US News and World Report whose ranking system seems byzantine at best.

    I ask about Lampeter since I might do their DL MA in Anthropology at some point.
     
  4. warguns

    warguns Member

    league tables, Lampeter, and anthro

    You're quite right to suspect these ratings of universities; however when three independent sources have similar ratings, there's probably something to it. (Disclosure: I am a graduate of a UK university that always ranks among the top 5).

    As I've said before, all the Wales colleges are very friendly places with very loyal alumni. However, none are considered to be really first-rate although Cardiff and Swansea are pretty good. Lampeter, or St David's is a special case. It's incredibly tiny with only 900 full-time students. It claims a total student body of 10,000 but most of these are apparently in "partnership" programs where Lampeter does little more than generally supervise and collect royalties. British universities have lots of prestige in Asia where most of these partners are.

    As for getting an anthro MA, my first question would be "what kind of faculty is there?" I can't believe that Lampeter could support more than 4 or 5 anthropologists. Not really enough for a graduate program.

    I don't know what alternatives there are in anthro but I would think you could do better.

    Here's a distance Masters in social anthro that's FREE

    http://www.du.se/Templates/ProgrammeWebPage____4400.aspx?epslanguage=EN

    Note that while the web site is ambiguous, I've contacted the program director and he assures me it can be completed totally distance. You should check yourself of course.
     
  5. Woho

    Woho New Member

    @warguns: Thank you for making me aware of the social anthro master at du. I really like their straight forwarded, very research oriented approach.
     
  6. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I live in California and all that I know about Wales is that they are giant fish or something. Nevertheless...

    From what I hear, Wales Lampeter is the oldest higher education institution in Wales. Apparently it devoted itself to training clergymen for its first century, then branched out to a variety of humanities subjects.

    The thing that strikes me about it now is that it's perhaps Britain's most DL-centric university. It looks like some 90% of its enrollment is DL students and just about every department has DL programs. Lots of taught masters degrees and many seeminglyly DL-friendly MPhil and doctoral programs.

    The Archaeology and Anthropology Department is here:

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/archanth/

    The department's DL page is here:

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/archanth/distance.htm

    Research activities here:

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/riaha/

    Regarding rankings/league-tables, Lampeter's large Theology and Religious Studies department is proudly boasting that it came in 9'th in the UK in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/trs/news_events/2008/rae08.html

    I'm not entirely sure what to make of that or how much to believe it, but it would put them ahead of many British schools that are noted for religious studies over here in the the Outer Darkness.

    All in all, I like Lampeter. It offers DL programs in subjects of interest to me that aren't widely available elsewhere. (Some programs are pretty unique.) It's probably about as strong as a school that does as much DL as they do is likely to get.
     
  7. warguns

    warguns Member

    anthro at lampeter

    If you read carefully, there's only two anthropologists and two that are archeology/ anthropology.

    IMHO, a department with only four faculty is too small to offer a Master's degree.
     
  8. warguns

    warguns Member

    Högskolan Dalarna

    I've found that Swedish institutions are very welcoming.

    What a cool degree you get: "filosofie magisterexamen i huvudområdet socialantropologi"

    Some might be confused over the name "Högskolan Dalarna".

    The best translation of högskolan would be "university college" (UK) or liberal arts college (or technical college) (US). These are institutions that offer university level education but emphasize teaching rather than research.

    Good luck.
     
  9. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    It looks like there's five. Katherine Smith seems to be a social anthropologist.

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/archanth/staff.htm

    It's a legitimate point though. Lampeter's Archaeology and Anthropology Department does seem to be weighted towards Archaeology which appears to be its strength, perhaps with an ancient Britain and medieval emphasis. It might help if archaeology students live in the UK within range of Lampeter. I do get the impression that some of the university's religious studies people have overlapping interests with this department. In fact, it's precisely that anthropology of religion (in the broadest sense) aspect that makes me interested in this.

    But yeah, I think that students should always examine the faculty lists of programs that they are considering and look at what professors' academic interests are. It annoys me sometimes when Degreeinfo suggests programs without even thinking about such things. Different programs have different emphases.

    I'm not sure if the list includes adjunct-type lecturers. This might just be their full-time, on-site core there in Lampeter.

    The school does get a little notice in anthropology on .edu websites on this side of the Atlantic, so they are apparently doing something.

    There's even a faculty star. (It's hard to write that in this case without it being a pun.) Nick Campion is internationally known in his niche.

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/archanth/staff/campion.htm

    Three faculty members seem to have special interests in cultural interactions with animals, which looks like a strength of this department and the subject of the unique ('blended', not entirely DL) MA in Anthrozoology that they are rolling out this year.

    http://www.lamp.ac.uk/archanth/postgrad/anthrozoology/
     
  10. warguns

    warguns Member

    St David's Lampeter

    In the higher education biz we say there are only two types of schools: the big university with all the advantages of a small college, and a small college with all the advantages of a big university. If Lampeter is what you like, I'm certainly not going to argue with you. Lovely little place. Almost everywhere in Wales is hard to get to (from London, which is how all things are measured in Britain) but Lampeter is extraordinary. Out in the middle of nowhere just like the monastery it once was.

    However, in my opinion 5 (or 6) anthropologists are not enough for a school to offer advanced degrees, especially the range that Lampeter attempts.

    Anthro is just too broad and contentious a field for such a small faculty to represent it. Five isn't even enough to sustain a good feud - - s0omething no anthropology department is without.

    I dunno much about archeology except that they're promiscuous. I saw a bumpsticker that read "Archeologists will date any old thing".
     
  11. chrislarsen

    chrislarsen New Member

    Thanks

    Thanks for the varied opinions and all the info. That Swedish program looks interesting .. and its free?? I am currently attending Fielding working on a Ph.D. in clinical psychology so free is VERY attractive. I am increasingly dissatisfied with psychology's feeble attempts to integrate a multicultural perspective. Psychologists just don't "get" culture even when they try to. I am planning on doing an in-depth reading of the literature in anthro after I graduate with my Ph.D. This is mainly for self enrichment but if I could do something in a more structured way that I could add to my CV, so much the better. Hence my interest in getting a DL MA degree at some point in the future.

    On this side of the pond we Americans pretty much conceptualize universities in Britain into two categories: Oxbridge and the University of London in one category and everybody else in another category. The concept of league tables for universities in a novel one to me. What I found interesting is the RAE assessments that indicate that Lampeter's research is reasonably high quality. I suppose the league tables take many other things into consideration. Certainly Lampeter has a variety of interesting and somewhat unusual degree offerings ar the post-graduate level (M.Th. in Orthodox Studies!). Plus ... well ... I mean Celts of every strip are just so cool!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 12, 2009
  12. warguns

    warguns Member

    London and Camford

     
  13. warguns

    warguns Member

    free??

    Yes, free. Almost all higher education in Sweden is free for Swedes and anyone else. There is constant talk of charging foreign students. Might change any time.
     
  14. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I'm inclined to think that if somebody plans to make a career in a scholarly field, then they are probably best off being a full-time on-campus student in a strong doctoral program. But for people like myself, people whose motivation is more towards continuing education and personal interest, DL is absolutely wonderful. My main question is whether or not a program offers me what I'm looking for. If it does that, then I'm usually pretty confident that I can justify enrolling in it and will be able to defend its basic credibility. In Lampeter's case, I wouldn't anticipate any problems in that regard.

    We see the same disconnect here in the United States with the USNews rankings.

    Schools drop down the tiers if they have relatively easy undergraduate admissions, lots of part-time students or high drop-out rates. Too much DL will pull a university down in many cases. I suspect that Lampeter suffers from some of those characteristics and that the British rankings are picking up on it.

    But the fact remains that some of these lower tier schools do achieve distinction in ceertain research specialties. My 2008 'America's Best Colleges' shows the University of Alaska at Fairbanks in the fourth tier. But UAF manages to be #10 in the world institutional citation rankings in volcanology, ahead of UC Berkeley and MIT. It's an international destination for people who study volcanos and geologists know this. UAF is probably a good place to study Eskimo anthropology and arctic ecology too.

    I'm rather attracted to Lampeter's MA in Religious Experience. Their connection to the Alister Hardy Trust is very interesting.

    Check out their impressive DL MA in Arthurian Studies! What could be more Welsh than that?

    I'm very interested in medieval history, particularly medieval culture, philosophy and history of ideas, and this is is a real strength at Lampeter. The Arthurian studies thing is an illustration of it, as is the Archaeology and Anthropology department's research emphases. The history department has an MA in Medieval Studies. Theology and Religious Studies has its own MA in Monastic Studies.

    This illustrates another thing that I've noticed about British higher education. Here in the United States, we more typically see broad degree titles in things like 'history' or 'literature' or 'philosophy' or 'religious studies'. Things like monasticism, religious experience or the Arthurian tradition are typically addressed as particular emphases within these broader majors. In Britain we are more likely to see degree programs with more precisely defined aims and focuses. I guess that there are both advantages and disadvantages in that.
     
  15. chrislarsen

    chrislarsen New Member

    Lampeter and League Tables

    Bill

    I agree that a Lampeter degree is credible. Frankly on our side of the pond its place on the league tables probably doesn't have any meaning. However, I found the Times league table and the raw data are very interesting. It rates Lampeter's research as a 4.4. This puts it light years ahead of the other schools ranked near it in terms of research quality. The schools ranked immediately ahead of UWL are Queen Margaret Edinburgh with a research rating of 1.5, Glasgow Caledonian with a research rating of 1.2, Staffordshire with a research rating of 1.1 and Winchester with a research rating of 1.5. Indeed, a score of 4.4 in terms of research quality puts Lampeter close to Kings College London with a 4.7, Glasgow with a 4.3, Queen Mary London with a 4.7 and above the University of Kent which has a 4. For someone interested in DL and who looks at research as primary indicator of quality, Lampeter seems just fine.

    Also its student satisfaction number is quite high. Looking at the table it appears that what brings it down in the ratings is money spent for services and facilities per student. Also its selectivity appears somewhat lower than many other schools and this may be bringing it down in the tables. This may be a function of the # of applicants rather than the quality of the programs.

    Even more suspicious, there appear to be some methodological flaws with this approach. This is a rank order table. They appear to have done is given Oxford a score of 100%. Then all the other British institutions are ranked in relation to Oxford. Methodologically this is rather unsound and dodgy, or as the Brits would say barmy. A vastly more sound methodology would be to create an independent standard and then rank each school in relation to that external standard. A rank ordering system such as this really does not provide one much information.

    I also agree with you about the differences between the American system and the British system. As one progresses through their system there appears to be a progressive specialization at the postgraduate level until one reaches the dissertation/thesis which is a highly specialized piece of academic work.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 14, 2009
  16. chrislarsen

    chrislarsen New Member

    More data

    If one searches the Times Good University Table at http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tol_gug/gooduniversityguide.php by subject, for anthropology Lampeter is rated 9th in the UK ahead of Goldsmith's U of London, the School of Oriental and Asian Studies U of London and Aberdeen and right below the University of Kent. I am not sure if I agree with the methodology but I guess I have found my answer!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 14, 2009
  17. jfosj

    jfosj Member

    Anyone knows what's happening with the University of Wales Lampeter after the merger? I emailed several times, left messages and requested information about one of their DL programs and never got a response. It's been over a month since my last attempt.
     
  18. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    What is it, specifically, that you want to know?
     
  19. jfosj

    jfosj Member

    I'm interested in their DL philosophy program. Basically how to apply, deadlines, etc.
     
  20. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

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