Grand Experiment
Since 2000, many institutes for geomatics education have struggled to survive because of a low influx of new students (see the series on ‘Developments in Geomatics Education’ in GIM International between March and August 2007). One of the effects of this global trend was the demise of the BSc in Geomatics in The Netherlands by 2005, after which only an MSc programme remained. As a general rule of thumb, a minimum annual influx of 20 students is required to ensure a sustainable MSc programme. However, such a stable number has never been reached. Why not?
Two main causes of poor influx can be pinpointed. Firstly, for two consecutive decades, technical studies ranked consistently bottom of high-school students’ subsequent study programmes, if it featured at all. Instead, young people opted for business, banking and bookkeeping; businesspeople and managers became icons for at least one generation. As soon as they had completed their studies, brilliant physicists and mathematicians were enticed by investment banks to develop innovative financial products based on confusion between value and price, leaving their brains unexplored for helping to produce tangible products which could alleviate poverty or contribute to a sustainable future for all. The rise of the financial crisis has demonstrated that bankers are not wizards possessing the stones of wisdom for everlasting prosperity. As a result, we are now starting to see a reversal of the trend: high-school students are increasingly shunning business, banking and bookkeeping in favour of learning how to create something real and tangible.
但是，地理专业远非有形，因为它产生和使用数据和信息。这是涌入不良的第二个原因。测量师早上到达现场，放置他们的乐器或看显示器，当他们在晚上再次离开时，什么都没有改变，或者可能最多可以将某些指甲锤入沥青中。如果没有令人印象深刻的产品和吸引人的图标，如何促进专业？吸引学生成功地要求良好的营销，以简单，一致且清晰的信息，以解决特定的，有针对性的受众。但是具有理学学士学位的学生可以从三个不同的一般方向输入MSC地理课程：（1）应用领域，例如土木工程域，其中一个人使用GIS和GEODATA来解决交通拥堵，例如（2）ICT领域，其中一个人管理着地理信息。，专门研究数据库，Web技术等，以及（3）数据收购方面 - 测量，摄影测量，遥感，导航等。如何充分解决这种潜在涌入的多样性？
荷兰的代尔夫特技术大学采用了独特的解决方案。从2012年9月开始，具有应用领域或ICT背景的本科生可以加入建筑学院主持的建筑环境中的地理学硕士学位，而对于那些希望专门研究数据获取的人，土木工程和地球科学学院的地理位置地球科学和遥感中的MSC轨道。这是一个围绕学生的兴趣和社会需求的宏伟实验 - 让我们跨过它将成功的手指。
