Carla Morris - Employability and Applicants

In terms of employability, our students obviously mostly go abroad back to their own countries to work. A large number of them, perhaps, already come from families where there are businesses run from within the family, and they are going to go back to fit in with their family and to work at home with the business. However, other than that, we have students who are maybe going back to their own countries for a variety of different reasons and going into different industries.

If they're going on to taught courses, they may at that point decide to go back to their own country to follow a PHD. course. However, if they're going to be with us for a number of years they learn a lot about the possibilities of working in this country, for example, if their Visas are going to allow that. Otherwise we give them as much support as we possibly can in terms of the employability that they may need, the support they may need, to get a job back in their own country.

What we look for in our post-graduate applicants is somebody who is really dedicated to what they want to do; we are keen to find students who are prepared to cope with the work that they will have to do to prepare them for their post-graduate course. The courses are intensive, the students have to work quite hard and our standards are quite exacting.

While we do give them a huge amount of support to get them through, we do need students who are prepared to be self-motivated and be able to apply themselves to the kind of work that they will be expected to do to study. It's very difficult for our international students when they come here, because they don't only have to deal with working in a different language, but from the cultural aspect as well they need to be able to fit in and play their part in terms of acculturating and becoming used to what is expected of them in a British University.