UCL: wins £240K funding for internships

A joint bid by UCL and the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) has been awarded £240,000 of government funding as part of a national scheme designed to help young people into work.

UCL will administer some 115 internships in the digital industries, advanced manufacturing, engineering and financial services, while the RVC will manage 35 life science internships.

Places will be available to graduates of all universities, with priority being given to those who graduated last year and have yet to find a job, and for 2010 graduates.

The internships will help recent graduates to become more employable, through learning at work and skills training sessions, and allow companies to preserve novel research, development and commercial projects during the economic downturn.

UCL had already planned to offer 50 work experience places this summer, following a successful scheme last year. At the same time the grant allows the RVC and the London BioScience Innovation Centre to help life science graduates make the transition from higher education to the commercial bioscience sector.

UCL Advances, the centre for entrepreneurship and business interaction at UCL, will manage the internships. Timothy Barnes, Executive Director, said, “Students across the country continue to face an uncertain job market, and the more training and work experience we can offer them, the better their chances of finding a suitable job.

“Our programme last year saw 94.7 per cent of students rating the scheme good or very good and of the 38 businesses that offered internships, 100 per cent were satisfied, or extremely satisfied with the work carried out by the interns.”