University of West London RAK: Prepping for the real world

University of West London RAK branch campus aims to build bridges between academia and the corporate world, writes CEO Ahmed Rafi B. Ferry

University of West London RAK contributes to UAE's Vision 2021 by striving relentlessly to meet and exceed the expectations of all stakeholders.
We work with several schools across the UAE and strategically support them to enhance the student learning and teaching experience, we regularly share the good practices and research outcomes to support the schools achieve the National vision.

University of West London (UWL) supports the national vision by offering affordable quality British education. UWL now being ranked 52 in the UK (Times and The Sunday good university guide 2020) and we are the top modern university in London for overall satisfaction, according to the National Student Survey 2019.

UWL UK has won several awards including the Business School of the Year at the Times Higher Education Awards, known as the "Oscars of higher education". The University of West London UAE Branch Campus located at RAKEZ won the 'Best Educational Provider' runner up by the RAKEZ Business Excellence Awards. We share the same values and have relentlessly strived to align with the same vision.

As a 'career university', we take pride in our high employability with 98 per cent of students employed with six month of graduation, which testify UWL's heavy investment in building partnerships with local businesses to give students a real-world experience of their career choices before they go out into the workplace.

The University of West London RAK branch campus is also working towards the same direction to maximise the employability among our students and a unique, innovative concept 'Employability Lab' already launched to ensure the branch campus in UAE also to be par with the parent campus and to be more career focused matching with the parent campus in the UK.

Enriched with diversity
Diversity and equality are at the core of UWL's mission and values and we strive to live these principals every day. We have held several roadshows in Africa, Central Asia, South Asia and Eastern Europe to attract students from around the world. Our students come from a wide range of academic and social backgrounds, including those who leave school or college with high previous attainment, those entering higher education much later in life and also those who are re-entering academia while pursuing a career to enhance their skills.

We have worked hard to narrow attainment gaps, develop an inclusive curriculum and cultivate pathways to higher education for under-represented communities. In line with this strategy we shall be adding four to five new courses every year. In the year 2020-21, we shall be introducing two new courses namely BSc Computer Science and MSc Cyber Security. We shall also be launching our revamped Global MBA.

Educational trends
It is heartening to see that UAE is leading the world in anticipating and adapting to the changes posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As we move towards the concept of a universal basic income, we have to ensure that we embrace robotics and machine learning in our curriculum. As most of the jobs that exist today shall be irrelevant soon, we should proactively work towards building 21st century skills.

Career opportunities
With a unique programme "Employability Lab" recently launched at University of West London Branch Campus at RAKEZ, we ensure that our students develop and demonstrate the competencies expected by their future employers. By building bridges between academia and the corporate world, we could definitely improve the readiness of our students.

At UWL, we constantly evolve academic curriculum to suit the industry life cycle thereby giving a real opportunity to the students to engage with the real world in addition our courses are taught by industry experts with matching academic background and you'll benefit from their insight, experience and support as they help to prepare you for your future career in a befitting manner.

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