September Postgraduate News Wrap-up
September has been marked by anticipation and – hopefully – a little cautious optimism as universities prepare for the start of the new academic year. Of course, the recent government COVID-19 announcements have us all pondering about the next 6 months. But there’re some reasons to be positive about postgraduate study in 2020-21: here’s a roundup of the postgraduate news this month and the opportunities they present.
Some more good news for international recruitment! As summarised here by The PIE, the new UK Student Route visa will open on 5 October 2020 instead of January 2021. Hopefully this will be in time to provide an extra boost for January recruitment, as international students will be able to apply through the new route. Remember too that this year’s postgraduates will also be able to benefit from new post-study work visas.
We’re launching our own ‘January is the new September’ campaign and dedicated hub on FindAMasters.com at the start of October – you can currently add your courses for free.
This report by British Academy, helpfully written up by the Guardian, highlights that those taking arts, humanities and social science degrees are as employable as their STEM counterparts. They also gain the kind of transferable skills that lead to professional adaptability and career flexibility – which is beneficial during the economic turbulence we’re experiencing.
This presents an opportunity for postgraduate marketing and recruitment teams to highlight how a Masters or PhD can provide these transferable or technical skills that graduates might be missing, preparing them to be more flexible in today’s job market.
This just misses the cut for September (having been announced at the end of August) but it’s so important that we wanted to include it anyway. From 2021, DTPs, CDTs and other UKRI-funded centres will be able to award up to a third of their studentships to international applicants.
This will be a huge opportunity for PhD recruitment. In fact, our resource for students has already been read over 10,000 times since the announcement.
This piece from the Guardian finds a positive message (albeit with caveats) in the recent IFS analysis of earnings returns to postgraduate degrees. The report as a whole reframes the traditional assumption of a ‘postgraduate premium’, revealing that the financial benefits of a Masters aren’t so clear cut when graduates are compared to their peers. At the same time, the IFS highlights the potential for students to improve their undergraduate outcomes by taking a Masters in a different subject and suggests postgraduates may benefit from better job security and employment outcomes overall.
Taken as a whole, these findings could prompt us to think more broadly about the benefits of postgraduate study for different audiences and the role marketing and recruitment messaging can play in addressing (and perhaps redressing) some of this.
If you’d like to discuss any of the above opportunities and how we can support you with your postgraduate campaigns, please contact your Account Manager or email [email protected]
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