Geographers bucked up

Geographers are "cautiously optimistic" following a meeting with the Higher Education Funding Council for England to argue against its plans to place the discipline on the lowest funding band.

A delegation including Rita Gardner, director of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers, Kenneth Gregory, warden of Goldsmiths College and chairman of the geography research assessment panel, and Ray Hudson, convener of the Conference of the Heads of Department of Geography, told HEFCE that geography should be graded as "part-laboratory" rather than "classroom-based" since it integrated both the physical and social sciences.

* HEFCE will review its classifications following talks with other disciplines, including psychology and archaeology.

andrew hasson