It has been a 'languages' day for me.  This morning I formally opened a careers fair for jobs involving languages.  And this evening I hosted a round table discussion over dinner with the various co-ordinators for the many languages we teach.

The set of employers at the languages careers fair was very interesting.  There were what might be thought of as the 'usual suspects' - the British Council, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, GCHQ and others.  But there were also engineering firms, an information servcies provider, the big management consultancies.  In total a surprising range of employers were setiing out their stalls to attract both specialists linguists, but also students whose degree subject had been something very different but who also had proved themselves as language learners.  I talked to several of the employers and got similar messages - we have certain specialist needs for which we need linguists, but we also want engineers, scientists, management students, economists, journalists etc who can understand something of the way in which languages and cultures operate outside their own background, and who could be sent on 'foreign' placements or work in mixed teams with those of different nationalities.  On Friday we have the twice-yearly meeting of our Careers Advisory Board, and that is a message they have been giving us for some time.

I go to musing whether in the relatively near future we are going to see a new set of employer differentiations in relation to our students.  At one time they chose between rival candidates for posts on the basis of expertise in using Excel or Powerpoint, or experience of undertaking a significant piece of independent research.  That was at a time when these skills were not universal in our students.  Now almost every degree programme develops some aptitude in those areas, and I wonder whether in the future we will see employers taking the student with some language ability over the monoglot?  It is a plausible scenario with an increasing proportion of jobs lying within companies and organisations that operate internationally.

Perhaps students are realising that.  For my evening event I had asked for a set of data on registrations for level 1 (beginners) classes in the Modern Languages Teaching Centre this session and last.  The data are very interesting.  Last year there were 718 registrations for modules of language. This year there were 906 - or a 26% increase.  Italian grew by 52%, Arabic by 31% and Spanish by 17%.  A new course in Modern Greek was introduced and attracted 29 registrations.  Thirty-seven students are taking a largely on-line module in intercultural awareness with an intensive course in a new language.  These are very significant figures.

Language learning in schools is atrophying rapidly - particularly in the state school sector.  But it does seem that students are realising the benefits of languages befroe it is too late.  Our employers should find this encouraging.

This is the last of the random dates that came up for blogging in November.  Dates in December will be 1st, 9th, 13th and 19th.

I have written before (15 December 2010, 23 February 2011, 27 May 2011) about inaugural and special lectures and the value I think they have in widening the experience of those who attend.  Tonight I was in the audience for another equally special occasion.  A good university makes many contribtuions to society at large - obviously through its educational mission, but also through its research when translated into policies and products for use in the wider world, through its involvement in wider debates on ethical, economic and technical issues, and in many other ways.  But a university with a significant cultural offering contributes to the enrichment of human experience. The recent 'Off The Shelf' festival brought many people from the wider community to book-related events sponsored by the University.  A  couple of weeks ago I was involved in the opening of an art exhibition in the city, partly sponsored by the university and partly by a major law form.  Tonight I attended a recital.

It's confession time about my personal interests - and the confession is that music is my main leisure activity.  In particular I play the piano, I enjoy opera, and I seek out musical experiences when I am travelling (and have introduced many students to their first opera attendance whilst on field classes in Berlin).  I particularly enjoy great singing, and over the years I have been fortunate enough to hear many of the great singers of recent decades - Janet Baker, Ileana Cotrubas, James Bowman, Cecilia Bartoli, Andreas Scholl, Natalie Dessay, Anna Netrebko and many more.  Tonight it was Elizabeth Watts in a recital of numbers by Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel.  And it took place in Firth Hall, to a sell-out audience who applauded until we were finally given an encore.  And Elizabeth Watts is a Sheffield graduate (in Archaeology rather than in Music) who has gone on to win the recital prize at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition and a host of other prizes. It was a wonderful evening - a homecoming for one of our distinguished alumnae - and another aspect of the multiple contributions that the university makes to the wider community.  For I recognised relatively few people there: most were, I strongly suspect, from outsdie the university.

But as I sat listening to the full-bodied and technically brilliant singing (and one great feature of Elizabeth Watts is that every word is clearly articulated) I also looked around and pondered on the message that Firth Hall gives to the casual visitor.  It's a wonderful space, certainly, but with its portraits of ex-Vice-Chancellors all in acacdemic robes - and not a woman amongst them - it doesn't create a real feeling of inclusivity.  One of the main rooms at Queens University Belfast has similar portraits of males round the walls, but in pride of place on the main surface is a specially-commissioned painting entitled 'Women of the University' which depicts a range from professors to cleaners, students to secretaries, catering assistants to lab workers.  It's a nice and very effective idea.  And we could always have a world-class recitalist and opera singer depicted there to represent our alumnae.

Before I became a PVC I very often came in to work by bus.  But my going-home times are now so irregular, and often stretch beyond the time when the bus service frequency drops, that I generally now drive in.  That brings me through the 'student quarters' of Broomhill and Crookesmoor - and sometimes through Crookes or Walkley if I vary my route.

The urban landscape in these areas has suddenly changed in the last few days.   A forest of signs has suddenly appeared, placed in permanent brackets on the sides of houses, on posts in gardens, or pasted to windows.  The landlords have decreed that now is the time to seek tenants for their propoerties for next academic session .We are in the seventh week of the 2011-12 academic year, with 23 more weeks of undergraduate education to come, plus the Christmas, Easter and summer vacations, yet we are already into the 2012-13 letting cycle.  And it is very difficult for students to resist it.

What it means is that first year students who are in the early stages of making friendships are thrust into deciding who they might want to share a house with next year - with a reasonable chance that by next September, 10 months away, their friendships will have changed and they will regret the groups they made now.  It means that second and third year students living in rented property will be expected to put up with other groups inspecting their accommodation with a view to taking it over next year.  For stduents who will graduate next summer it gives added anxiety to decisions about whether they might want to stay on to do a Masters programme or seek employment in the city, because the feeling grows that if they don't make their minds up now all the best accommodation possibilities will have been snapped up.

For all of these individuals this early housing blitz is a reminder of the transitoriness of the student lifestyle, at a time when everything should be settled for the main part of the current acacdemic year with students feeling secure and stable in their lifestyles and networks - whatever type of accommodation they are in.  We can try everything we can to help students to recognise that dealying the housing search for a few months will not bring disaster.  But everywhere you look around the student neighbourhoods today those little 'to rent' signs build an atmosphere of anxiety and the feeling that 'I must do something now' about next year.

If I were allowed a little piece of legislation I would ban all advertising of housing offers for the following acacdemic session until Easter at the earliest.

I may have been lecturing for a long time, but I am still willing to try to new things - indeed, I am quite keen to do so if I think they will bring benefits.  Tomorrow I am going to try to use the voting system by which students can express their opinions on particular issues by voting in class and seeing the results come up instantly: their collective views can then be used a basis for class discussion.  I've seen the system used - indeed we use it in the University's Risk Review Group to vote on what we think are the biggest risks the university is facing each yera. But I have never set it up and used it myself.

So today I downloaded the relevant programme, 'TurningPoint', and set to work producing the questions I want to put to the students.  I was a little surprised to be confronted with a variant of Powerpoint, since I was expecting something different, but I progressed through my questions and ended up with something close to what I want.  Then I went on to the next step, 'creating a participant list'.  At this point I wondered why such a thing was needed - the participants would be those in the room who had voting boxes.  So I went to the help button and was provided with a manual.  This is where I do start to sound very elderly.  I would much prefer to have a manual in front of me whilst working on a programme, rather than having to switch between screens.  Nevertheless I think I worked out that I don't really need a participant list at all and that there are a number of things in the manual that are really 'bangs and whistles' and  aren't needed for a simple use of the programme.  And that's another feature of systems these days - they are so complex in many cases that it is very difficult to start out on them because the user is provided with too many options at the outset.  It is more useful when one is offered a 'basic use', 'intermediate use' and 'advanced use' option at the outset.  

Anyway, I worked on this stuff until about 8 p.m. this evening and then set off for home.  But to run the whole thing I am going to need support from CiCS colleagues.  Wish me luck.

I can see why many people are nervous about trying new ways of doing things.  Risking something with a first year class of 300 is a very adrenalin-producing experience.  Anyone lacking confidence in handling an audience can easily have their level of self-assurance further dented if things go wrong.  My approach is generally to tell students that I am doing an experiment, and that usually brings them on side and makes them tolerant if things go wrong.  With the voting exercise tomorrow my fall back position will, of course, be to get them to vote by raising their hands.  It might be back to the simplest of technology after all.

Today we had a big careers fair in the Octagon, jointly organised by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam.  Its theme was careers in Engineering, Science and Technology.  As I heard at the end of the day, attendance had been very considerable - certainly up on last year.  This might not be surprising in a year when students have realised that they might have to put a lot of energy into chasing a post-graduation job. 

 

But there is one group of students for whom the goalposts in job hunting have changed significantly since they started their studies.  These are international students who arrived here in 2008 or 2009 expecting to be able to get work experience in the UK for a year or two after graduation and then return to their countries of origin with a further set of skills and experiences under their belts.  Instead they have been subject to a drastic change in the regulations for post-study visas, and many of them will effectively be barred from taking employment in the UK.  The rules are going to change again in April 2012 for anyone who graduates after that date.  A particular problem lies in the complexity of the regulations, such that employers are not aware of what they can or can't do: the result is that many are not taking on international students at all because it seems too difficult to do so.

 

I wonder if the government is Macchiavellian enough to have planned this complexity for just such an outcome?  In other words, making things as difficult as possible in the hope of reducing overseas student numbers in the UK yet further through the negative messages that are going out across the world about the UK government's attitude to immigration and to overseas students.

 

But this morning we had a 30 minute seminar for employers to make them aware of what they have to do to take on an international student.  It was an excellent session, bringing together  advisers from our Careers Service and the Students Union, with colleagues from Hallam also participating.   And judging by the standing room only at the back, employers want this sort of information. 

 

Last week I met a group from the CBI.  They share many of our concerns about policies towards international students. It seems to be only the goverment that sees things differently. Oh, and the Daily Mail. But one panders to the other on this.