Home' The Good Universities Guide : The Good Universities Guide 2014 Contents SURVEYING 219
What majors can I study?
The following are just some of the majors you can study in this
What you’re in for
This is a field with a clear focus: ‘the determination and
identification of the shape, contour, location and dimensions of
land or water masses and their features, or planning and
designing maps’, says one definition. Career versatility is a key
selling point in this field. According to the Surveying and Spatial
Sciences Institute (SSSI), modern surveyors ‘help police at crime
scenes, they predict earthquakes, they use computer imaging
and satellites to monitor environmental change, they map the
ocean floor... and of course, they tell you where your land ends
and your neighbour’s begins’. This means that employment
prospects are excellent.
Try to talk to someone who does this sort of work to get some
more knowledge of what jobs in surveying are like: ask the
coordinator of any surveying course you are considering for
names and phone numbers of employers; ring the human
resources department of a mining company; or perhaps even
contact the state or federal government environmental
department. You could also visit the SSSI website at
If you are still shopping around for the right field, you might
find other courses of interest in the sciences area (especially the
earth sciences), agriculture, architecture, built environment,
environmental studies, and engineering and technology.
Courses and specialisations
In universities, courses might be found in surveying, engineering,
spatial sciences, geomatics or a range of other academic areas.
If designing maps interests you, you should look at cartography.
The various traditional surveying specialisations (cadastral,
marine and mining) now sit alongside a host of other
geoinformatics sub-fields such as geographic information
systems, spatial information systems, global positioning and
photogrammetry, all of which exploit high-level technology to
collect, analyse, display and manage geographical and spatial
information. That’s one of the good things about this field:
technology knows no bounds. Even cartography courses have
enjoyed a facelift lately, with titles like multimedia cartography
making it to some course lists.
Some courses are named specifically after one of the above
fields (a bachelor of surveying, for instance), but if a geomatics
specialisation is your preference you will often find it within a
general science, applied science, engineering or technology
degree, so it pays to do your research.
Where to study
Degrees in surveying and its many specialisations are offered at
a number of universities around the country — just remember to
check course handbooks to ensure that the course covers the
field in which you are looking to specialise. To compare entry
difficulty and the cost of Commonwealth Supported Places
(CSPs) at different institutions, see ‘What’s on offer and who’s
there’. Note that public universities only offer CSPs.
49% $48 322
Is it worth it? (continued)
WHAT GRADUATES SAY
GETTING A JOB
For an explanation of abbreviations, see page 587
To find out which higher education providers have courses with these
specialisations, use the Index on page 562.
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