Jeff Burley, Director, Professorial Fellow of Green College, Oxford Forestry Institute, Oxford, UK
The number of applications for professional and technical education courses have declined in the UK and the nature and image of the forestry profession has changed substantially in the last decade. A meeting of senior forestry educators and employers recognized the extent and likely impact of these changes, identified the major causes, and agreed on a number of responses to address them. These include broadening the scope of forestry education to include socio-economic aspects with the traditional biophysical subjects while at the same time reducing actual teaching loads by increasing self-learning methods and enhancing collaboration between universities and with employers. Forestry teachers must seek to enhance the academic status of forestry within universities and learn to interact with policy-makers, the media, the public and especially schools and school children to confirm the academic and applied natures of the profession together with the career opportunities available.
In the decade since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil during 1992 there has been global recognition of the concept and need for sustainable development. True sustainable development requires the balanced provision and interaction of environmental, social and economic factors to ensure human health and welfare. Within this forests and trees have been recognized as playing a major role but there have been large changes in the relative emphasis given to the three sets of factors with primary attention on social and environmental objectives rather than economic production.
Since 1990 significant changes in the dominant institutional features include:
In order to achieve the sustainable management of forests for all their benefits, a number of international institutions and initiatives have sought to develop criteria and indicators for the management and monitoring of regional forest types. These include:
In general these agree on the criteria of sustainable management including those related to social equity and participation. Forestry graduates have traditionally not been well informed of these issues but are needed to develop the indicators. Since the Second World War they have had to accommodate a number of changes in the nature and objectives of forestry itself which can be roughly categorized as follows:
In the late 1950s when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, two lectures in a four-year course were devoted to "minor forest products"; agriculture and forestry were more often in conflict than accord with differing colleges, government departments and land-use plans; one room in the Commonwealth Forestry Institute held the working plans of virtually all State forests in India and nearly all of these included the term "these forests are burdened with rights" and Forestry Departments were in frequent conflict with local people.
In addition to these institutional and conceptual issues, the forestry profession must recognize the challenges that face the forest scientists who support it; these include the provision of the following:
Firstly, of course, someone has to understand forest science and management including forest biology, ecology and all the subjects that professional foresters traditionally recognize as forest management (e.g. mensuration, inventory, yield control, silvicultural systems). The current devolution of control of forests from professional foresters to socio-economic specialists may lead to a global and national loss of integrated understanding of the forest as a system.
The graduate must be able to recognize the economic, environmental and social objectives, to value them and to manage forests as multiple use enterprises. The graduate must therefore also recognize the need for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving within forest management.
Graduates must also have the skills to collaborate with all the stakeholders in forests, to advise policy-makers and to inform the public including both media and schools. These require very different skills from those traditionally acquired by professional foresters.
EMPLOYERS
Despite common perceptions of lack of jobs, within the UK there are a number of institutions that employ professional and technical foresters. These include:
In addition many British foresters are employed by the international equivalents of these organizations.
UK SOURCES OF FOREST EDUCATION
Four universities have taught undergraduate and some MSc courses in forestry for a hundred years or more (Aberdeen, Bangor, Edinburgh and Oxford). In addition eight newer universities offer courses at MSc, BSc and HND (Higher National Diploma) levels; the principle of these are the University of Central Lancashire (which recently incorporated the Newton Rigg Forester Training School) and the Scottish Agricultural College, both of which produce large numbers of BSc and HND graduates. Together these 12 universities offer 27 courses with "forestry" in the formal title. In addition a large number of other universities offer short forestry modules in more than 50 courses in anthropology, development studies, environmental biology or science, and geography.
NUMBERS OF STUDENTS
My Oxford colleague, Dr. Nick Brown (2001), undertook a study of British university forestry student applications and acceptances for the Edinburgh meeting (and for his own diploma in teaching methods). He obtained data from individual departments by responses to a questionnaire and some from the national statistics of the Universities Central College Admissions system. Many of these are illustrated in Figure 1.
In the last decade the annual number of acceptances for BSc degrees have been approximately 100 for forestry, 1,000 for agriculture, 5,000 for biology and over 2,000 for geography. Forestry was more or less constant while the others grew throughout the period. Of these, the proportion of overseas applications and acceptances were very high for forestry (approximately 0.20 and 0.15 respectively) compared with agriculture (0.15 and 0.10); for biology (0.07 and 0.06); and geography (0.03 and 0.02). However, the number of overseas applicants and acceptances for forestry has dropped markedly since 1998 (Figure 2).
The number of applications for BSc and HND shown in Figure 3 reflects the fact that in the UK students apply to universities through a central mechanism and are allowed to name several courses for which they would like to be considered. These data (produced by Brown, 2001) include any forestry course listed by any student; thus the latest figure for 2000 indicates that 410 individual applications for a named forestry course were made. However, an applicant could make up to six simultaneous applications. The actual number of applicants is shown in Figure 3 for the BSc in forestry in the period 1996-2000.
The ratio of applications to acceptances has declined in all four topics implying lower selection pressures such that, in the case of forestry, there could shortly be fewer applicants than places available.
REASONS FOR DECLINE
There appear to be six major reasons why the number and quality of applicants has declined and it is imperative for the profession to redress these urgently:
THE CHAIN SAW IMAGE
In Britain and many other countries there is a common perception that forestry comprises nasty men with nasty chain saws cutting nasty straight lines of nasty exotic species (usually conifers or eucalypts depending on the country). Certainly within the UK the National Woodland Accord Scheme (which is an agreement on criteria and indicators by all stakeholders) recognizes the need for commercial plantations but encourages the use of irregular plantations of mixed species, ages and shapes plus the use of indigenous species where possible and the recreation of "indigenous" forest.
THE DUMB IMAGE
Many bright students see forestry (and often agriculture and geography) as easy options for less bright students. While not speaking for all universities in the UK, I can certainly vouch for the high academic standard, workload and examination system for forestry (and biology and geography) at Oxford.
THE UNEMPLOYMENT PERCEPTION
This common perception in the UK is belied by recent studies by the Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF) and Brown (2001). The increasing number of employers listed above has added to the numbers of individual jobs available. Further, the ICF study indicated that forestry salaries were not unduly lower than those in other professions although Brown's admittedly small sample suggested that they were significantly lower than those in blue chip companies.
THE DEBT THREAT
Despite the UK Government's wish to extend access to university education to a wider population, many potential students are not able or willing to pursue such education because they are unable to afford the fees and unwilling to incur debt (sometimes £8 -£10,000 or US $12 - $16,000). This is especially the case in forestry because of the perceived lack of jobs that could facilitate the repayment of debt.
THE DIRTY BOOTS IMAGE
A major threat to faculties or departments of forestry in many universities is the academically arrogant view of pure scientists that forestry is not an academic subject; this results in reduced priorities for forestry teaching and research resources. In the United
Kingdom this is intensified by the national system of grading all university departments quinquennially with heavy weighting on publication in peer-reviewed journals that are themselves graded; a development index is often applied that includes the time taken for acceptance of an article, time to publish it, time for it to be cited and number of citations in a given period. A more appropriate concept of a development index for forestry might include the number of people benefiting or the economic or environmental benefits from the research described.
THE GRUNT IMAGE
Many women students believe that forestry is, by its physical nature, for men only. As shown by Brown's data, the proportion of female applicants and acceptances in forestry has been below 0.2 in the last decade in the UK. This compares unfavourably with geography (0.45), agriculture (0.5) and biology (nearly 0.6) Figure 4.
In a paper to an IUFRO sponsored symposium on the role of women in forestry, Burley (1999, 2001) gave a male view of female issues within forestry and forest research, many of them supported by a female forester, Seeley (2001). These included:
However, it was recognized that many women are indeed owners, managers, machine operators and labourers in forests, nurseries, offices and laboratories.
THE GENERAL DECLINE IN SCIENCE SCHOOL-LEAVERS
It is a sad fact that the number of science students leaving school with university entry qualifications is actually declining thus leaving a smaller pool from which forestry students might emerge.
INTEGRATION OF DISCIPLINES AND SUBJECT AREAS
The UK Government's Quality Assurance Agency established a benchmarking group for education in agriculture, forestry, agricultural science, food sciences and consumer sciences; a consultation paper was released in July 2001 and will be finalized following comments shortly. This sought to identify commonalities in the various disciplines and considered the following groups:
The review identified the following important shared features in education for these subjects:
The benchmarking group considered that educational programmes should contain the following:
Further, the group considered that graduates should obtain the following abilities and skills:
These would be developed through the following learning and teaching methods:
DIRECT RESPONSES OF UK ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
The participants at the informal Edinburgh meeting recognized that their problems were shared between forestry departments and with the related disciplines. To enhance the standing of the forestry profession, the attraction of courses to students, and the academic status of the discipline, they recommended the following potential responses:
References
Brown, N.D. (2001). A critical review of forestry education. Ms. Oxford Forestry Institute, UK.
Burley, J. (1999). The importance and value of international networks: women in forestry research within IUFRO.
Keynote address. In: Procs. of symposium on "Women in forestry", Lillehammer, Norway, 12-15 August 1999.
Organized by Norwegian association "Jenter I Skogbruket - Women in Forestry", Arendal, Norway, pp 33-39.
Burley, J. (2001). Women in forestry and forest research. International Forestry Review 3(1): 64-68.
Sealey, J. (2001). Ibid. 69 - 70.
