Last week I attended a webinar hosted by HEPI and Kaplan Pathways, led by Nick Hillman, HEPI’s Director, Linda Cowan, Kaplan’s Managing Director, Robin Mellors-Bourne, Career Research and Advisory Centre’s Director of Research and Intelligence, and Meshack Odipo, a student from Kenya.
The webinar largely focused on employability for international students, with great insights on what are the thoughts of international students regarding their experience at the UK’s higher education institutions. Linda highlighted the importance of career support for students in university and wants the UK to be the country you go to for career and employability.
Robin dove into the topic of work experience for international students, with research finding that international students feel there’s a big gap between the support from universities they expected and the support they got. Research also found that a lot of international students felt it was harder for them to get a job than it was for home students, while ¾ of them wanted to stay in the UK after their studies.
The common thread throughout the discussion was that there was a lack of parity between international and home students, and an additional finding was that employers were unsure if they would hire someone on the newly introduced graduate visa.
The research presented is all along the lines of the research I’ve also conducted, and although some of the data is quite negative for international students, it was reassuring to see that there are multiple parties with the same research at hand. I’m looking into contacting the webinar hosts and hope they are willing to collaborate and do something about helping migrant students when it comes to working in the UK.