Tag: Employability

Value in a PhD?

An interesting piece on the ‘value’ and employability of a PhD

Who would do a PhD? Who would willingly submit to spending endless hours, over three or four years, in the laboratory or library, racked by self-doubt and money worries, in preparation for a career for which vacancies were never more oversubscribed? …

But do doctoral students really feel prepared for life beyond the ivory tower? And how ready are they to embrace it? Here, we speak to five current and former doctoral students from a range of disciplines and universities about why they did their PhDs, what their experience was like and where they see their futures now.

Read full piece, with a couple of more positive responses 28/8; 11/9.

Tags Employability, phd, Teaching & Learning, THE, Value

Digital

Traditional Lecturers replaced by Online Mentors?

Post author By Digital Fingerprint
Post date September 28, 2013
No Comments on Traditional Lecturers replaced by Online Mentors?

I’m not sure if the following is dystopian or utopian… I really hope that universities still value the skills of their staff and reward appropriately – and recognise what works online and what doesn’t:

Traditional lecturers may soon be replaced by networks of online mentors working for several universities, a new study predicts.

In the report, titled Horizon Scanning: What will higher education look like in 2020?, the Observatory on Borderless Education suggests that academic staff are likely to be employed part-time by several universities – often working remotely via the internet – rather than relying on a single employer.

“Changes in job structures may come with the embrace of the online revolution,” says the report, due to be published on 25 September, which is based on interviews with senior academics and university leaders.

Read full article.

Tags Digital, Employability, Higher Education, Teaching & Learning, THE

Digital

Linked In Posts Employability Data

Post author By Digital Fingerprint
Post date September 15, 2013
No Comments on Linked In Posts Employability Data

An interesting use of data by LinkedIn:

LinkedIn, the social media giant, has started publishing details of what each university’s students do after graduating.

When users register with LinkedIn – a social network for professionals with more than 238 million members worldwide – they are asked to give information about their alma mater and their employment history. Now, these data are being aggregated and displayed on dedicated university pages that can be accessed by anyone.

When the service was launched in August, 200 university pages from institutions around the world went live, including 24 from the UK. The network has a goal of 23,000 over the next few months.

Read full article.

Tags Employability, LinkedIn, Teaching & Learning, THE

Academic

Consumerism of Higher Education

Post author By admin
Post date October 12, 2012
No Comments on Consumerism of Higher Education

Interesting article. Find the idea of students as consumers difficult to take on board, but it’s definitely a feeling that’s getting stronger & stronger:

Dr Williams – who will be discussing her views at the Barbican in London later this month at the Institute of Ideas’ Battle of Ideas Festival – said that during her own English degree, it was immersion in the subject that had made her “employable, and a different person”.

“That transformed me and gave me confidence, the intellectual struggle of having to confront challenging new concepts and coming out the other end having mastered that body of knowledge,” she said.

But today, she said, the stress on satisfaction and employability meant that academics were not pushing students hard enough intellectually.

“Students are likely to be unhappy if you ask them to read two books before next week, and happier if it’s one journal article you’ve already photocopied for them. Whether they will learn as much is another matter,” she said.

Although she applauded optional workshops in employability skills, Dr Williams said that she had no time for “specialised academics such as philosophers trying to teach employability skills”.

Read full story.