Jeremy Ridgman - Strengths and Employability 2

I would say the strengths of our department are three-fold. First of all, the strong academic quality that underpins everything that we do. We are one of the strongest research departments in the University, so the research background which informs all our teaching is very, very important.

The second, as I suggested, is the relationship between academic and professional input into the courses with a number of people, with experience outside in the world of work, who have contributing to our courses. So they have a strong practical dimension, as well an academic dimension in our programs. Thirdly, a strong commitment to community engagement with engagement outside the world of the University; so our students are working with clients outside the University; they're getting real life experience. They're putting their knowledge into practice, in a very dynamic sort of way.

The sorts of careers that students might go on in to after having gained an MA qualification or perhaps even a PhD qualification, would depend very much on where their interest lies. Sometimes they will already know what they want to do. They want to move into an academic career or they want to stay within the same career structure, but move on up through the organization.

But obviously, what we’re trying to do is to provide a number of our students with the opportunity to move into things like advertising, into corporate communications, and into areas of journalism, but not just journalism because journalism is a very restricted field. There are a number of areas that aren’t just only related to journalism; to do with communication in a range of different contexts; applying writing skills in a range of different contexts that we would see our students moving into.