Enhancing the postgraduate research experience: skills, employability and careers

The programme includes overviews and case studies from a range of speakers, and allow attendees the opportunity to discuss key issues in this area arising from the Higher Education Academy’s postgraduate research experience survey (PRES) as well as the Smith report ‘One Step Beyond’.

The event is free to attend and open to anyone who has an interest in enhancing postgraduate research provision within their institution, whether or not that institution has previously taken part in PRES.

The event will explore postgraduate research skills, careers and employability. The programme includes overviews and case studies from a range of speakers, and allow attendees the opportunity to discuss key issues in this area arising from the Higher Education Academy’s postgraduate research experience survey (PRES) as well as the Smith report ‘One Step Beyond’.

Skills and career development is a timely issue given findings from the three years of PRES as well as within the wider context of postgraduate education in the UK. The ‘Professional development and career’ scale of PRES had the lowest mean score across all scales in 2009, with only 37.1% of respondents saying that they had been encouraged to think about the range of career options available to them, and 39.9% responding that they had been encouraged to reflect on their career development requirements. The Smith report on postgraduate education, published in March, included amongst its recommendations that ‘HEIs should ensure that transferable skills are embedded as standard in the funding and design of all research programmes’ (Recommendation 7) and that stakeholders should work together to ‘establish employer needs for postgraduate skills’ (Recommendation 12). The event will address postgraduate research provision enhancement in the light of this context, allowing attendees to discuss and share practice with colleagues from a range of institutions from across the UK.
The event is free to attend and open to anyone who has an interest in enhancing postgraduate research provision within their institution, whether or not that institution has previously taken part in PRES.