Advice for Staff at UK Universities

Advice for Staff at UK Universities and HE Colleges

Advice for Staff at UK Universities and Higher Education Colleges

Publicity

As you will see from the rest of this website, the Study China Programme is a fantastic opportunity for your students and the costs are covered by the government sponsors. It is not a profit making scheme. It is open to Undergraduates/HND students at all Universities and Higher Education institutions in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The programme receives a great deal of publicity and attention in China with numerous TV appearances and newspaper articles.

Past experience has shown that the most effective way to publicise this opportunity to students is to cascade the information via staff. We are largely dependent on staff to pass on our messages to students. Sadly, many institutions do not successfully convey this information.

We normally email our contacts to announce each new programme. We also send posters and leaflets by post. If you receive our emails we would ask that you cascade these as best you can. Ideally, we would request that you email your lecturers and ask them to make verbal announcements in class.

We currently have a number of contacts gleaned from websites. To disseminate this information most effectively we would ideally like to have nominated single points of contact in every institution in the UK. If you would like to be S.P.O.C. for your institution, or if you would like to know who is currently nominated, please contact us via the contact details on our home page..


Confirmation of Registration

One of the eligibility requirements laid down by the government sponsors is that students have to be currently registered as full time students at a University or Higher Education institution in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Your staff are likely to be asked to provide confirmation that the student is registered at your institution. This is done online via a URL toward the bottom of the 'how to apply' page of this website. We used to refer to this as a 'Reference' but that caused a certain amount of confusion.

We do not accept confirmations submitted by paper or email. The online form is very short. We only ask for confirmation that the student is registered full time at your institution and what course they are registered for. We also ask about any components of studying abroad.

To confirm the source of the confirmations, we insist that staff use an academic email address (i.e. ending in .ac.uk). We email the contents of the reference to that email address. We also telephone staff if we are considering offering a place to the student for whom they provided a confirmation. We call your instution switchboard and ask for the member of staff by name to make sure that they exist! We then ask the member of staff to confirm that they submitted a confirmation for the student in question.

The deadline for submission of confirmations is held to very strictly. We have a huge amount of processing to do after this deadline and we have to do it quickly in order to give students plenty of time to purchase tickets. The deadlines for the next programme are shown here.


Successful Applicants from Your University/College

There are a number of relatively quick things that you can do to help students make the best out of this programme if they are lucky enough to be selected.

We organise predeparture briefings in major cities before every programme. It would really help students if you could arrange a more informal meeting for your students at your own institution. If you can give them the opportunity to meet each other before departure then that would be fantastic. If you have students who have previously been on the programme who could come along to your meetings that would be even better.

We can release certain contact information about present and previous students so please get in contact with us.


Finance

All the costs of the programme once the students arrive in China are covered by government sponsors. The students have to pay for their own food, air fare, visa and travel insurance. Flights start at around £550 for Easter and £650 for summer programmes.



Gifts

The successful applicants will be helped by many Chinese volunteers during their stay in China. They will also attend presentations and events hosted by the Chinese universities and by local schools and businesses. Some UK institutions have given their students small branded gifts to give to their Chinese hosts. This is great publicity for yourselves and a great way to support the goodwill of the programme. It is purely up to each institution whether they want to do this but gifts could include things like postcards, keyrings, fridge magnets, guidebooks, coasters etc. The participants will come into contact with maybe 20 Chinese students and will form friendships with maybe 5-10 of these. There will also be language teachers, local companies and possibly family visits. It's not essential that they take gifts but it's nice if they can.

Students often take their own gifts as well. Items that have clearly recognisable UK imagery such as the flags, the Queen, London bus etc. are always well received. The Chinese love tea and UK teas would be quite exotic to the Chinese hosts. The twinings speciality teas are always well received. Small bags of sweets can also be a good idea.


Questions?

If you have any further questions about the programme, please feel free to call or email at any time. See the contacts page of this website for addresses.


With best regards,
Study China Programme Team
The University of Manchester