by Sarah Marten Professor Simon McGrath Professor Simon McGrath worked in Pretoria, South Africa for the South African Human Sciences Research Council, which is a government research agency. His work as Director of their Human Resources Development Research Programme combined managerial and research responsibilities. Simon was also Visiting Professor…>
Career Development
Senior Lecturer/Course Leader at the University of Central Lancashire, based in China
Richard Hewitt is a senior lecturer and course leader for the BA Hons degree course in International Business Communication at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in Southwest China. He is also a lead module tutor for the BA Hons course in International…>
Academic Roles: What does an Admissions Tutor do?
Most academics in permanent positions are asked to take on an extra role within their department within the first few years. Depending on the size and structure of the department you may have to do this role indefinitely or for a fixed period of time. This article explores why you…>
Career Opportunities in Private Tutoring
Postgraduate students, researchers and lecturers all have the skills necessary to make an excellent private tutor. While it is not possible to teach in state schools in the UK without a PGCE qualification, you can offer your services as a personal tutor – someone who offers in-depth one-to-one tuition to…>
Challenges in Overseas Student Recruitment
For international student recruiters, the quest is to find a rich vein of students from across the world, which will not only enhance campus diversity but also bring in much-needed tuition revenue and also burnish a university’s reputation abroad.
Why Personal Development Planning (PDP) Matters
At a meeting with students from various departments at a Midlands-based university, a senior lecturer wanted to know if the students had been using Personal Development Planning (PDP). None had, and only one student had even heard of PDP. This ignorance is indicative of the way many British institutions have…>
Working in Higher Education FAQ
University students often fail to realise that it requires an enormous number of employees working in a huge range of jobs to enable a Higher Education institution to function. More than 300,000 people currently work in HE in the UK across more than 170 institutions. Some of these workers are…>
The Challenges Facing Academic Staff in UK Universities
Everyone who has featured as a case study in our Career Development pages agrees on one thing – they really enjoy their jobs, and have no plans to move on from the university sector in the foreseeable future! Most echo the feelings of Professor Martin Shepperd from Brunel University who…>
Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Australia
by Sarah Marten Dr Karl Cox Dr Karl Cox has recently returned to the UK after working in Australia for over six years, initially as a Senior Research Associate in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. He then…>
Life After Redundancy
This article is about people and life after redundancy, how they have fared since being made redundant and the advice they would give to anyone in the same position. Interviewing people who have come through redundancy has reinforced my opinion that there really is no best way to deal with…>