School leavers opt for practical courses in the hope of avoiding long-term student debt

QS university courses have dodged the drop in overall undergraduate numbers that has hit other courses due to hefty top-up fees this academic year.

Universities with QS degrees such as Kingston, the University of Centre England (UCE) and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) claim to have beaten enrolment targets set for this year.

LJMU is expecting 56 full-time undergraduates and 27 part-time students to start its first year QS course, ahead of its respective targets of 50 and 25.

LJMU head of construction studies Brian Greenhalgh said school leavers were tending to choose practical courses rather than more esoteric ones. “It makes more sense to go for something practical when you are coming out of courses around £20,000 in debt,” he said. “We are doing really well in terms of numbers.”

The UCE’s School of Property, Construction & Planning, which includes QS, building surveying and construction management courses is expecting the number of full-time students to increase by 30%. Director of sales and marketing Tony Kelley said: “It’s still an upward trend for us. We are positive in terms of the numbers.”

Kingston University also claimed its QS course had “bucked the national trend”. Professor Sarah Sayce, head of the school of surveying, said: “In our built environment department, quantity surveying is quite promising. It has still not reached the numbers seen before the 1990s slump, but recruitment is going well and there’s more collaboration with employers compared to last year.”

LJMU’s Greenhalgh did raise some concern over the lack of technical staff within university construction departments to cope with increasing numbers of undergraduates. “We can’t compete with the industry in terms of salaries,” he said.

Ex-Kingston University QS degree student Natasha Musandu, who appeared on the cover of QS News last year, has recently joined Davis Langdon.

She joined the firm’s London office two weeks ago, following her fourth and final year after a 12-month placement with Bruce Shaw Partnership. She joins the education division as a graduate QS, and applied for the job through the university’s recruitment programme. Natasha graduated with a 2.1 in June, which was followed by two months travelling in Southern Africa. She plans to sit the APC next November.

James Corrigan, another student we talked to, was offered a job at Turner & Townsend, where he worked during the summer and his sandwich year.

Source

QS News