The challenges for geography in higher education in European universities

Abstract

This article reports about a joint EUGEO/EUROGEO/IGU panel discussion at the EUGEO Congress in May2019 in Galway, Ireland about the challenges for geography in higher education in European universities. Although the situation is different in the various European countries, the geography departments are facing several common challenges, such as limited budgets for teaching, university managers, politicians, employers and the general public that do not know what geography is and a gap between geography in primary and secondary education and in higher education. The article concludes that communication about the discipline of geography is a key factor and gives some examples of successful ways of communicating in order to make geography more visible.