Part 6 of a multi-part series on why you should avoid Msc. Applied Cybersecurity at Queen’s University Belfast, collaboratively written by students on the course.
An International Perspective
Welcome International student! This post will be strictly focused on international students from outside the United Kingdom (UK) or European Union (EU) with regards to visas and the right-to-work in order to secure job in UK and sponsorship for Tier-2 Visa.
As an international student you will most likely arrive in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Tier-4 Visa and with Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) offering an additional 1-year placement programme on your course that enables you to avail of one extra year VISA where you can undergo “professional internship or placement year”, you will probably arrive on that programme also.
However, the placement year course is structured in such a way that you have to submit your employer’s details within the first week of January. So you start your classes at the last week of September and by January you are expected to undergo the application process, the interview process and receive an acceptance letter for an offer of placement in order to secure your so-called privilege as “placement year”.
Failing that you will instead need to submit your project ranking of approximately 20 projects, mostly from the university for your dissertation. All this despite the fact that you have only completed 3 modules and naturally are still unaware of what you are going to study in next three modules. All these judgment and ranking will be based on three modules.
So basically as discussed in the previous post about the lack of feedback and the huge delay, here if you want to secure placement then it will be based on your Bachelor’s degree or whatever past experience you may have. So don’t expect to find anything in Cyber Security Field, until and unless you are very lucky.
This year, international and 1y placement programme students were not offered any suitable placements. Of the few placement opportunities that were on offer, they were not suitable for students with Tier-2 Visa. The only 1 year placement opportunities that students were provided with this year, all went to EU or UK students who did not require Visa Sponsorship.
Eventually, after this your Visa will be reduced by making a note saying that “Student is not capable to secure internship as a Black Mark” — something which makes you, as a student, feel like you have failed. Something which will remain throughout your career.
This year after many meetings and emails and arguments with Queen’s University staff including many meetings with the Course Director (Dr. Kieran McLaughlin), Director of Postgraduate Studies (Dr. Darryl Stewart), and ultimately the Head of The School (Prof. William Scanlon) and in some small measure, thanks to this website, were able to get the school to admit their mishandling by failing to offer students any suitable placements.
In response, the school decided to make an “exceptional change” by creating a new programme for students on the 1yr placement programme — an internship module (ELE8099). As with everything at Queen’s, it comes with heavy limitations and serious caveats:
- Students must pass all six taught modules, the research project ELE8095, and the internship module ELE8099, to be awarded the MSc Applied Cyber Security with Professional Internship.
- This arrangement replaces the module ELE8098, which incorporated the research project and was weighted with 60 CATS. This new module carries a 0 CATS weighting but must be passed in order to be awarded the MSc Applied Cyber Security with Professional Internship.
- Students who are unable to secure an internship before the end of the academic year 2017/18, or who decide not to avail of the revised programme, will remain on the MSc Applied Cyber Security programme and complete at the end of 2017/18.
This new programme means that current international students must now find their own source of placement by September (approx. 3 months) which is willing to offer not only one year placement but Tier-4 Visa Sponsorship. To say that this is unreasonable would be understating the obvious.
Every International student we have spoken to about this course (which is most of them) feel completely abandoned by the University, find the new programme to add insult to injury, and will no doubt spend the rest of their careers telling everyone they know in their home country never to send loved ones to Queen’s University Belfast. From our experience, Queen’s is a place of despair, isolation and excuses and many of those excuses typically land on blaming students for things that the University should have sorted out — like the placement programme.
