ABSTRACT

Working in UK HE for the past ten years, I have been part of the many debates and challenges we are facing as a result of external agendas and internal pressures to prepare students for life and work in our times. Throughout the 1990s academic and support staff have been drawn into the increasing desire and drive to produce more ‘rounded graduates’ equipped to work in rapidly changing, high-tech workplaces, in a global knowledge economy. Many of us are designing and delivering innovative curricula to address these issues and to meet the increasingly diverse needs of different stakeholders, driven by increased governmental and institutional pressures. Often we are working with a smaller unit of resource to meet the expectations of large numbers of ‘non-traditional’ students in the context of widening participation policies, globalization and internationalization.