Chinese New Year this week (2nd February), heralded the year of the Rabbit – said to be a more relaxed prospect than last year’s Tiger. But most economists believe there will be no relaxation in the great Chinese expansion, possibly surpassing the US in dollar terms in a few decades and offering many career opportunities. Two-way traffic in students is thriving between China and the UK, and shows no sign of slowing – every year more UK students set off to study in China while large numbers of Chinese students want to come to UK institutions.

Finance can be tricky of course, but even if your own university or college cannot offer you any help for Chinese study, there are other possibilities. Many grants and scholarships for British students in China and Chinese students in Britain are available from institutions such as the British Academy, the British Council, the Royal Society and others – details are available on the Great Britain China Centre website.

For postgraduates who want to study the Chinese language, the GBCC Educational Trust awards its own Chinese language scholarships, normally up to £2,000 each. They consider applications twice a year and the next deadline is 11 April 2011.

If you want to read about a young man who has begun a great career based on his Chinese studies, see the Complete University Guide profile of David Young

Many people now see China as the burgeoning new land of opportunity, especially for western graduates. David Young decided to go there for his gap year in 2003, before taking up a Politics degree course at Bristol University – now he’s got a job in London organising training events and conferences with top Chinese firms and using his fluent Chinese every day. 

David explains why he fell for China and what his experience has been.

After completing my A levels in 2003, I decided to go to China and teach for a charity (via GAP activity projects, now known as LATITUDE), rather than do the conventional gap year. I found it eye-opening – based mainly in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, but also travelling in the countryside and in Shanghai. I was enthralled by the country, the culture and the language. I and a friend found work just by knocking on doors and talking to people – and we practised our Chinese by reading menus in the evenings. We used a digital camera to take pictures of the food we liked, with a nightly process of trial and error trying as many dishes as possible until we found the food we enjoyed!

China opening up

I was immediately struck by the way the country was starting to open up, and by the sheer number of opportunities open to young westerners in China. In the fast growing service sectors, the business world in general and particularly in the fields of travel, hotels, nutrition and medicine, the chance to forge an individual career was so much greater than at home – as well as being more rewarding financially. So, although I came home to take my degree at Bristol, I was going back to China every summer holiday, working and learning more of the language. After graduating I applied for a year’s course (2007–8) in Advanced Mandarin at Nanjing University, which I financed myself with quite a variety of jobs – including teaching, and being an au pair, as well as setting up my own party-organising company. That was great and I did come back to the UK to take an MCD in Advanced Mandarin at Oxford (financed by teaching English as a foreign language at a local secondary school), which was good for formal knowledge of the language and gave my CV a boost too.

Try for a scholarship

Now I think many more UK universities and other institutions/organisations are prepared to offer scholarships for China – so most students might not need to be quite so inventive as I had to be in finding well-paid work! Still it really stood me in good stead learning the language.

I didn’t take languages at A level and don’t consider myself a linguist, but daily practise is definitely the key – my personal opinion is that you get much more out of studying at Chinese university at an advanced level rather than as a beginner. Chinese nowadays has its own standard form of Mandarin – a bit like we have ‘RP’ English – which is understood by almost everyone in China, certainly those under 50, and is taught at all Chinese universities. This is still an unknown land to most people in the west – yet there are 10 cities in China bigger than London and I’d say the universities in the north, where everyone has the standardised Putonghua accent, are particularly suitable for westerners.

David, how do you see prospects for future graduates?

Since I first went to China in 2003 the openings for western graduates have only grown greater – even as they have begun to decrease here at home. I can see that commercial opportunities will multiply as China develops – in a few years, for example, I’m certain that someone setting up a skiing holiday operation in the north-easterly mountains (they rival Aspen in Colorado) would be on to a winner.

So it doesn’t matter if you are not a specialist linguist, or what your degree is in. Degrees in business studies or economics would certainly be a plus, but there are plenty of other ways of making a career with your Chinese. You don’t even have to be in China, since Chinese people now increasingly come to other parts of the world and there is great demand for people who can facilitate their work or study – everywhere from the UK and USA to the south of France! I’m now working in central London, but I’m using my Chinese on a daily basis, talking to Chinese firms, setting up events and making contacts. Because I now have a Chinese name as well as an English one, the sheer surprise of senior business people when they realise they are actually talking to an Englishman is always a good starting point. The important thing to remember is that Chinese people are actually really warm and friendly once you break the ice – so make some jokes!

I’d say, if you are coming up for your gap year, or deciding what your future might be, think about going to China. Try it out, see what’s going on and how you could find a role – and try to be bold, knock on doors and talk to people.

David Young works in London for a conference company producing events in London, New York and China. He lives in central London, enjoys cycling to work and writes a weekly column for Vhcle magazine.

 

 

Had you thought about starting your undergraduate course now or in the next couple of weeks? More and more are, it seems. The January/February (or second semester) start is turning out to be a highly popular option, and is being offered by a growing number of universities on a large number of degree courses.

A quick trawl around university websites will bring up plenty of examples of courses recruiting for a start in January or early February. On Bolton University’s website a box of delights called ‘Do Great Things Now’ encourages you to start a course in January. The choices run from a BA in film and media studies, a BA in regeneration and sustainable communities, to a BSc in mathematics. In total, there are 140 places on Bolton’s full-time degrees starting in the first week of February, and around 1,000 places on part-time courses, including foundation degrees in health and social care and HNDs in computing.

Many of the courses recruiting for January/February starts are for vocational areas – eg, nursing degrees, at several universities including Thames Valley, Sheffield Hallam, and West of Scotland. At Middlesex University, the winter start courses are mainly in the departments of business and engineering and information sciences, and are proving highly popular with students from abroad.

Margaret House, deputy vice-chancellor at Middlesex explains, ‘Firstly they may have had problems getting visas in time for a start in the preceding September; and second it, in effect, saves them half a year’s living costs.”

Nigel Hill, director of marketing at Bolton, suggests students may feel they are stealing a march over their contemporaries aiming for university entrance later this year. He also points out that these students won’t feel ‘behind’ those who began last autumn, because they are on modular courses and each module is self-contained. He says, ‘They go through the modules in a sensible order and, assuming they pass everything along the way, finish in February in three years’ time.’

If the winter start appeals to you don’t delay – places are filling up fast, and though the range of options is huge some will take relatively small numbers. So, before submitting an application for a specific course, contact the university to ask if places are still open.

Full story in the Independent.

The University of Canberra is the latest University to
introduce a total ban on bottled water from its campus.

It’s believed to be the largest ban of its kind in Australia
and the first across a university.  Organisers
say the ban will stop 140,000 plastic bottles from being sold annually.  Instead, students will have access to free
water bubblers of the same kind which have been installed in the New South
Wales town of Bundanoon, where water bottles have been banned since 2009.

“By supplying free water and cheap, chilled water, the
university will be helping students to break a bottled water habit that’s
costing Australians half a billion dollars a year,” the founder of
environmental group Do Something, John Dee said in a statement.

The ban will be phased in. Sales of water on the campus will
totally cease by late March.

There is a steady (if slow) move across Universities worldwide
to initiate a ban, surprisingly there are more US universities on board than in
the UK and Australia.

Leeds University leads the way in the UK, in late 2008 a
referendum at Leeds University voted overwhelmingly to phase out the product by
the end of 2009, becoming the first in the country to ban bottled still water
from all their bars, cafes and shops, sacrificing annual profits of £32,000.

“It’s a measure of concern about the environment,
putting sustainability before profit,” says Tom Salmon of Leeds University
Union, which saw 4,000 students vote on the issue – an exceptional turnout.
“We’ve got to pull bottled water off the shelves by 2010 and bring in new
lines of affordable, reusable water bottles instead.”

According to the Ecologist “Banning bottled water makes a
lot of sense. For a start, it’s better for the environment.

In their decision to stop selling bottled water, LUU will
not sell the 180,698 bottles of still water that it sold in the academic year
2007/8.

As a direct consequence, there will be 146,365 fewer plastic
bottles in landfill sites (based on the British Plastics Federation’s estimate
that 81% of plastic is not recycled).

There will be 632,443 litres of water saved (based on
Pacific Institute’s estimate that it takes three litres of water to produce one
litre of bottled water). And 22,587 litres of oil won’t be used to make new
plastic bottles (based on Pacific’s Institute’s estimate that for every bottle
of water produced, enough oil is used to fill a quarter of the bottle).

These are significant savings for a world threatened by the
impact of excessive and needless production.” (see the full article Universities banning bottled water)

For inspiration see how an Australian town, took things to their own hands and banned
bottled water through the whole town (See Bundy On Tap).

 

Other Universities to ban bottled water:

• University of Canberra (see University Bans bottled water)
• Leeds University (see Leeds
  Students ban bottled water)
• University of Portland, (see University
  of Portland makes a statement and halts bottled water sales)
• Seattle University (see Seattle
  University bans bottled water on campus)
• Washington University (see Washing ton University in St
  Louis ends sales of bottled water)
• University of Winnipeg, (see University
  of Winnipeg bans bottled water!)

Top accountancy firms - Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and PwC, for example – are saying they are looking to take on new graduates, showing they feel confident that the economy is now on the way to recovery. 

Opportunities are there across the board – from the early stages of graduate hiring, setting in train the three-year training of future professionals, right through to those who have newly qualified, as well as more experienced staff. The areas of tax and audit, advisory, financial services and regulatory functions are all reported to be strong in recruitment terms.

The big firms told the Financial Times that they continued to try to recruit during the economic crisis but actually found they were getting fewer graduates applying, especially women.

Ernst & Young, for instance, plans a UK graduate intake of about 750 this year, and report that so far they’ve had more applicants than at the same time last year.

Students just ‘didn’t believe last year that we had vacancies,’ according to Stephen Isherwood, who heads recruitment of graduates for Ernst & Young for the UK and Ireland. His opinion is confirmed by others, who say young people seem to have been put off by headline news about the recession.

If you are interested in a first hand account of accountancy options, read what Joseph Fernandes has to say to the Complete University Guide - Joseph is in his final year at Lancaster on an EY Accountancy, Auditing and Finance Degree Scheme.

Applications
are now open for Imperial College Business School’s new MSc in Strategic
Marketing – an academically rigorous one-year course aimed at recent graduates
with business-related degrees.

Programme
director Colin Love said: “Our new postgraduate course which begins in October
2011 is a direct response to conversations we have had with business leaders
over the last year or so.

“They
all feel that there is a need to raise the game in marketing education in the
UK which has lagged behind the US. This new course will equip those who already
have a business education to gain a deep understanding, not only of the
mechanics of marketing, but its increasing importance in the global business
landscape.”

The
course will also draw on the School’s and the wider College’s strengths in the
digital economy. Explained Colin: “Understanding how to influence audiences
through online and social media is central to the future.”

Imperial College London is a
science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and
research that attracts 14,000 students and 6,000 staff of the highest
international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the
interface between science, medicine, engineering and business, delivering
practical solutions that improve quality of life and the environment -
underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture.  www.imperial.ac.uk

 

We’ve plenty of graduate opportunities say one of the ‘Big
Four’ professional services companies

You might think that the recession has wiped out hope of a career in
business and finance, but accountants will have key roles in helping to get
business back on its feet, says the Association of Chartered Certified
Accountants (ACCA). And the journal Accountancy Age reports that at least one
of the ‘big four’ global professional services firms, Ernst & Young,
confirmed this view by announcing plans to recruit 1,000 people, at
every level from partners to graduates, to its advisory
arm. They are finding a growing client demand.

E&Y are encouraging university students or those in their final
school years to consider a career with the company, whatever A levels they plan
to do.  There is a wide variety of options, from the special EY
degree course, developed in partnership with ICAS (The Institute of Chartered
Accountants Scotland) and the University of Lancaster Business School – one of
the best places in the UK to learn about business – to the EY Scholarship, with
lots of internship experience and sponsorship of £1,000 for each of your three
years at university. Students on these programmes, who do well, and
who decide Ernst & Young is the place for them, have
a strong chance of a graduate job offer as they enter the final
year at university.

Young people who want to know more should apply to go on
an EY Insight Day – a one-day experience at various locations around
the country. You’ll find out what people do day-to-day, what joining the
firm can lead to further down the line and the kind of qualifications you
could need, to work in different areas of the business. For more information on
EY opportunities see details on the Complete University Guide’s special feature
page.  For the full news story on
EY recruitment see Accountancy Age.

For a first hand account, read what Joseph Fernandes has to say, Joesph is in his final year at Lancaster on an Accountancy, Auditing and Finance Degree Scheme.

Podiatry (the term is often used in place of chiropody in professional usage) is the medical discipline dealing with the feet and lower limbs in both health and disease. Professionals working in this area aim to prevent the development of foot and lower limb disorders. Podiatry is a rewarding career with excellent prospects.

The Institute of
Chiropodists and Podiatrists was founded in 1955 especially to facilitate,
support and advance the profession of chiropody and podiatry by means of
education, continual professional development and a strong support ethos for
its members. 

Membership of the association gives access to professional insurance, business support, a
bi-monthly professional journal, professional development, access to further
education within the Institute or within the university system, discounted
rates at many conferences and professional events and discounted membership of
the Royal Society of Medicine.

The Institute’s Mission Statement

• To provide the best private
  education available in foot health care, and assist students in developing a
  career pathway that fulfils their needs and aspirations.
• To assist members in gaining
  entry, through our programmes, to university degree courses.
• To provide support to
  private foot health care professionals, by delivering up to date professional
  development.
• The Institute is committed to their members, their education, development and support.
• The Institute offers over fifty years of
  dedicated service supporting members as they grow and develop to reach their
  full potential.

Visit the Institute’s website for information and advice from dedicated professionals >

The following universities offer a Bachelor of Science (BSc) Degree in Podiatry:

University of Brighton
UWIC, Cardiff
University of East London
Glasgow Caledonian University
University of Huddersfield
University of Northampton
University of Plymouth
Queen Margaret University
University of Salford
University of Southampton