What can you do with a 2.2 degree ? Expert’s Opinion…

Let me begin by saying I still consider a degree to be a piece of paper. Albeit a costly one. Some of us get a 1st, majority get 2.1, few get 2.2 and the rest are not in my friend list so I don’t know who gets less than that.

A majority of employers ask for a minimum criteria of 2.1 at University level, so what happens to those with a 2.2 ? The Graduate Recruitment Bureau have put together this piece of information release looking at stats and views.

Dan Hawes, GRB Co-founder added, “Perhaps students don’t realise that unlike A Levels most universities won’t allow you to retake your final year exams so it’s really important to do your best possible attempt first time round. A 2:1 is a prerequisite for many graduate schemes but not all. In fact I got a 2:2 and it made me more determined so it’s not all bad you just have to be more creative in your job search.”

Read the full article here.

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Internships at University of Leicester ! HOT NOW !

Hello people. Not many of you would know that University of Leicester runs its own Internship scheme for its graduates (recent graduates).  This comes under the scheme Leicester Graduate Internship Programme and I have seen the work and met one of the previous interns. It is very valuable work-experience and has solid responsibility attached to it. I am sure you lot would enjoy it, so get on it and good luck.

Interns work on specific projects for 6-months and engage in training and development through a bespoke career development programme. Key factors in the success of the internship programme have been a wide range of departments offering different internship experiences and the support given to the interns.

If any of you want any help, then I am available to help you personally or direct you to the right person to speak to to get more knowledge and figure out which scheme is beneficial to you. Remember the guys looking at it are from Student Development, you can reach them easily and quickly on the second floor of David Wilson Library.

CLOSING DATE : 10 August 2011.

START DATE : October 2011

Internships Going Now –

• Communications Internship
• Employer Liaison Events Internship
• Prospect Research Internship
• Project Management Internship (Up to 4 posts)
• Employability Internship
• CLAHRC Implementation Theme Internship
• Geography Research Internship
• Community Volunteering Internship
• Learning Development Internship
• Widening Participation and Outreach Internship
• Research Support Internship
• BlackBoard Research Internship
• IT Services Internship
• IT Services Training and Communications Internship
• Press Office Internship
• Sports and Recreation Service Internship

You can find more information about the whole program here.

Goodluck and if needed give a shout out for help to me or hit the email contacts given in there…  this might just be the thing you were looking for… Just Saying.

For other careers related stuff maybe you want to visit the Student Development Blog ?

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UCU Strikes and 26 March !

 

University and College Union members have been on strike at various days in this month so far. University of Leicester has had members strike on 22nd and 24th of March 2011.

The dispute centres around attempts to raise the retirement age, increase contributions for members and bring an end to the final salary element of the scheme. UCU members in Scotland and Wales went on strike on Thursday 17 March and Friday 18 March, respectively, and their colleagues in Northern Ireland are taking strike action today (Monday). There will be UK-wide action on Thursday 24 March.The union said today that it shared students’ frustrations that the employers were refusing to come back to the negotiating table and that the strike action now looked inevitable. The National Union of Students has written to the employers urging them to join UCU for talks and to try and avoid strike action. Read more information here.

Now, I haven’t found the time to go through the justifications and points of debates in detail. And to be honest, I only decided to write this blog after becoming aware of the amount of traffic with regards to the strike on twitter. I have collated some of them, but you can find them on twitter with the hashtag ucustrike.

One of the top tweets for the day was by a certain Aaron Peters (not Porter chap!) and I quote “Inflation 5.5%. Pay rise 0.3%. Pension cuts >20%. Student fees, up 200%. University economics – Priceless.” 

If those numbers baffle you then it’s about time you looked into what’s going on where! As a wise professor once commented – If higher education has to pay for mistakes of the bankers, something has definitely gone wrong in this world !

Related articles

• College staff strike in pension row (mirror.co.uk)
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• UCU Members Vote For Industrial Action (ucuatbsu.wordpress.com)
• Lecturers plan first UK-wide strike in five years (liberalconspiracy.org)