Afghanistan? Somewhere west of India isn't it?

For more than 10 years the senior co-author has been regularly testing tertiary journalism students on their "News Geography" - the ability to accurately locate on a world map 10 countries that had been in the news at the time, or with which Australia has or has had a bond. His co-author joined him in 1997 to compare results from two universities, Charles Sturt and Western Sydney. They joined forces again in 2002 to compare the geographic knowledge of first-year journalism students at Queensland University of Technology with that of senior students at the University of Queensland. The most surprising result was that despite "The War on Terror", and Australia's involvement, relatively few could accurately locate Afghanistan. For several years the senior co-author has also tested first-year journalism students' knowledge of a series of figures and statistics that give a barometer of the Australian and world economies. The latest monetary exchange rates, gold and oil prices and national and state unemployment rates are used to test students' knowledge of the various statistics journalists regularly rely on as indicators of economic movements. The authors also combined in 2002 to test students at QUT and UQ on this knowledge.<br />