Archaeology at uni - 2025 entry

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Username and thread title says it all really! DD2 has been mulling all sorts of options for uni applications for next year. Taking A levels in History, Politics and Biology and has been looking into Law, History, Politics, International Relations and Archaeology. The latter is currently the favourite option as it covers practical aspects, history and science which are all of interest to her. I would just like to hear about others who have had their teens go down this route, info on contact hours, good and bad things about their courses and unis, advice etc etc please!
She has lined up some museum work experience for the summer which is good. She also likes the look of York uni at the moment, but is on with investigating others.

My point wasn’t clear. What I should have said is your degree affects your entry point in the job market. I had to start with a very basic admin job post Archaeology MA. Had I done a more vocational degree- e.g Business/ Finance/Marketing/ Engineering- I could have started at a graduate level. I got a grant. I wouldn’t want to be 50K in debt and still have to take a minimum wage job, when I could have done that from school and saved myself the money. My degrees have always been a great icebreaker at interviews though!
Thats just my view having done a degree and MA in it.

I can well imagine many Archaeology students thoroughly enjoy their degree, with its mix of science and humanities and practical and theoretical.

Whilst there are directly related career paths, a bit like Psychology, these roles are greater outnumbered by the students studying that degree and often require further expensive study and/or are not necessarily that secure or well paid.

So, I think it is important to embark on such a degree being open minded about alternative post-uni career paths and building up non-arch skills and experiences (eg using uni careers service, general work experience, sports and society positions) in parallel at uni from the outset. Perhaps consider archaeology courses that allow placement years and be willing to consider non-arch placements.

As to BA v BSc, the latter would at least signal a quantitative element is maintain throughout the degree but I can also see there tends to be limited actual differences; so a BA, say, at Durham or U of York might give more leverage than a BSc at a uni with a lower entry tariff.

I have to disagree with that - your choice of uni and degree classification matters more than your degree subject in my experience; I am an archaeology graduate from a russell group uni and people from my cohort with 2:1s and above went into prestigious graduate schemes with no hinderance due to their subject. Archaeology has great transferrable skills from all aspects of project management to more specialised research skills. I never really see the point of people doing Business Study degrees as those are skills that can be learnt on the job or in CPD situations, so why not broaden your mind following your passion for your degree course?

I studied archaeology many moons ago and it was brilliant. The jobs are hard and physical (why I had to leave sadly) and you mostly work contract to contract giving you the opportunity to travel all over the place. As you progress you can move to more desk based work and management or academia. If she goes the bsc route there will be lab and research jobs. A warning though there are expectations of unpaid work experience during the summer often required to progress to the next year.

Lots of people used the skills learned from having a degree to do other things afterwards. Loads went to computing science and grad schemes so she isn’t stuck being an archaeologist forever.

I graduated cardiff with a bsc in archaeology in 2016. I was fortunate to dig at home and abroad although I haven't worked in archaeology since and actually ended up retraining entirely.
Happy to answer questions but I'm of the opinion that uni is only useful if you need the degree for a specific job such as dentistry or a lawyer

I went to York and did Archaeology, had the best time and the University and department were fantastic. Im not an archaeologist but plenty of my friends from my course are. Some have gone into commercial Archaeology which is definitely the better paid end of the sector! I really enjoyed my course and there were some fantastic modules that also gave me some great "professional skills" that I use now in my fairly unrelated job. I only left 10 years ago so I'd like to think my knowledge is still "current" happy to answer any questions ☺️

Commercial archaeology is very much not the better paid end of the sector, especially at entry level - consultancy, local authority/government and academia are all better paid than your average digger (who generally earns less than the construction staff they are standing next to). There is quite a lot of discussion about this in the sector at the moment. [edited for typos]

In case it's of interest to anyone here - University Archaeology Day will be at the British Museum and online on Saturday 13th July (earlier than usual this year, normally it's in October!). Most of the archaeology departments across the UK will be there and there will be some panel sessions discussing various aspects of the subject (including careers options!). All details and booking links here: University Archaeology Day. Good opportunity to speak to a lot of different departments in one place!