My name's Rob Mackenzie, I'm the Director of Graduate Research for the College of Life
and Environmental Scientists, so one of the leaders of postgraduate research at the university
and today I'm welcoming you on behalf of the whole university and on behalf of the University
Graduate School.
So I'm going to try and give you a feel for why postgraduate study at the University of
Birmingham is a very good idea, in my opinion.
The question that I hope is at the front of all the minds in this room that are contemplating
postgraduate study is something along the lines of one of these.
So what is it that is really motivating you to look at postgraduate further studies and
a postgraduate degree?
Is it that you want to kind of continue what has already been a very exciting intellectual
journey for you at undergraduate level?
Do you feel there's a set of skills that you know you need for your chosen career and that
you haven't got from your undergraduate career?
Do you have that longing to study a particular subject in real depth or do you want to take
a bit of a sideways move and get some extra skills or study something new?
Do you need a particular qualification for a particular career path?
I guess the classic professions are in our minds when we think about those but there
are an expanding number of places where you need a particular qualification to do a particular
thing.
And of course a lot of this is driven ultimately by the realisation that we are all of us in
competitive job markets and these markets for the jobs that we want are incredibly intense
and they are by and large global now, especially for the kind of jobs that everyone in this
room who's considering postgraduate study will be considering.
So that global competition means that we need to think about how we can set ourselves apart
from those people who are looking to get the job that we want.
So we're very conscious of those reasons for you doing postgraduate study and we want to
make sure that the portfolio of postgraduate study that we offer you in Birmingham fits
that agenda.
So what do we have to offer you all?
Clearly we think we have a prestigious offer to make to you because we're part of the UK's
prestigious group of universities -- the Russell Group.
We are ranked highly in the world rankings of universities.
These things you have to take with a pinch of salt but if you look over enough of these
rankings and for a long enough period then you begin to get a sense of where the quality
lies.
We've just undertaken -- and a lot of my last two years here has been taken up with doing
the latest research excellence framework assessment which is the replacement for what's called
here the RAE; that's the Research Assessment Exercise, and that's where every university
in the country, every higher education institute in the country that does research puts forward
its best research to be assessed by its peers and in the last ranking, as you can see, 90%
of the university's research here was assessed by our peers to be 'world-leading' or 'internationally
excellent'.
So we think we have a position in the UK at the front rank of UK universities and in the
leading edge globally.
So you will be taught by and you will work with world leaders in your academic field.
How can you encapsulate a university like Birmingham?
I'm still working on that actually when people ask me.
I've been at Birmingham for nearly three years now.
People ask me what it's like and I still haven't got the one sentence answer.
This is the one slide answer.
We are a civic university, in existence through the 20th Century and now into the 21st Century,
we are a large civic university, a metropolitan university.
There are nearly 12,000 postgraduates.
We are knitted firmly into global networks.
So again, this is going back to this idea that really we're acting on a global stage
now and university 21, that third bullet point there I'd really draw your attention to because
that's a really productive collaborative network of research intensive universities like our
own where we are trying to share best practice in teaching at an advanced level and also
allow our researchers to flow internationally and gain experience from working in different
educational and research cultures.
That's really working well, that network.
There are lots of networks around but that one actually really works well.
We have I think an outstanding research record in all our schools.
There are 27 schools and we do more or less everything.
There aren't very many things you could point at and say Birmingham doesn't do at all.
Certainly covering all the way across medicine, the physical and natural sciences, engineering,
arts and humanities, business law and the social sciences.
So there are a lot of options in your postgraduate study here, over 350 programmes.
And of course there's PhD supervision in everything we do because everything we do is research
led.
I hope you like the campus.
A number of people who have come to visit me since I moved here, as I say, three years
ago, had not been to Birmingham before and to a person, they all said 'oh wow, I really
like this campus.
I didn't know it was like this'.
So it's quite surprising that what Birmingham campus and the Birmingham University feel
is like, doesn't necessarily transmit to everyone all the time.
You've got to come here and experience it.
I hope you are experiencing a very positive feeling for what we've got here, the way that
the campus encapsulates our learning environment and really helps to build that feeling of
a focused, scholarly environment where you can really focus on your research.
We have a great big library just over there and that's going to be rebuilt in the very
near future.
We have lots and lots of sports going on and you can see a lot of that towards the other
side of campus on the sports fields down the hill, but of course also elsewhere.
One of the things I really value about this campus is that I can just walk five minutes
from my office and find myself in a nationally important art gallery.
I absolutely love the Barber Institute.
I love the base stock that it has but I also love the temporary installations and touring
stuff that they bring.
And of course we've got our own botanic gardens just across the way and I really would, if
you have an hour, an hour and a half before you have to leave today, it would be great
to go and have a look at that.
You can get here really easily.
It might not feel like that if you spend a lot of time on the M6, especially if you spend
a lot of time on the bit of the M6 that cuts through the north part of Birmingham.
But if you travel by train you can come right into the university and there are essentially
no other universities for which that is true.
There are 243 acres of parkland all around us here and inside that we have specific accommodation
for postgraduates, so we're not just going to mix you all up with the fresher's and leave
you unconnected to your peers.
You've probably already got a fairly strong idea in your heads what kind of postgraduate
course you are looking at but of course it's worth jus bearing in mind, or just asking
that question again.
If you're looking at a Taught Masters degree then it will be one of these ones at the top
here, sometimes with very specific professional outcomes.
Research Masters are an interesting combination of taught and research elements and it might
be a good way of asking yourself do you have the appetite for that prolonged, intensive
and to a certain degree, lonely actually, you know, you've really got to be self-motivated
if you want to do research.
So M-Restrictions, MSc by Research, these are interesting options if you just want to
see what that feels like.
There are some interesting combined taught and research degrees if you feel that you
need a step up in a taught element of what you want to study as a research topic.
I'd really recommend you talk to people at the course fair if that's a concern for you.
And of course there is doctoral research which many of you will be considering.
And there I would just make the point that with this slide you might get the impression
that doctoral research is something completely different from these taught master and combined
taught and research degrees, but it is just worth making the point now that in the UK,
doctoral research is not like it was 20 or 20 or 40 years ago where there was no taught
element.
There's a really strong element of training built into all our doctoral research degrees
now in Birmingham and that's because we are in very close conversation with the funding
body, [HEFKI - 0:11:41], and the research councils, RCUK, so the people that pay for
research in the UK and they want to see that skills base very explicitly being delivered
inside doctoral training.
So do ask, if you're interested in a doctoral degree, a PhD, then do ask about the training
element.
The other thing that I'd just mention quickly here is that that might mean that you are
applying, or at least looking, at doctoral positions which are being offered not simply
by the university alone anymore or by a single supervisor anymore, but by consortia of universities
and you will see that more and more right across from humanities to the sciences and
medicine.
And again, the key here is to understand that you're going into the right area, the area
that you're interested in, and then that you're going into the right university.
And with that I'll just say cheerio and wish you the very best for the rest of today.
Thank you very much.
APPLAUSE
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