HND – A Way Forward?
Are you disappointed with your grades? Well don’t be!!! HNDs give you the practial skills
and knowledge you will need and use throughout your working life, and open up a huge range
of career options to you, including being fast tracked into the final year of a degree qualification.
Case Study: The Marketeer
“A lot of graduates don’t have that sort of vocational
experience and it’s helped me to rise above them.”
Mark Ansell’s decision to study for an HND in Business and
Finance set him on the right track and gave him some
practical work experience which fuelled his enthusiasm.
Work experience is a big part of an HND course and
for Mark this meant working for a designer clothes
store, providing marketing and business strategy
reports and presentations to the company’s chairman
and marketing director. Gaining distinctions in his
HND, he progressed straight onto the second
year of a business studies degree. When he
completed this he was selected by BT for
their graduate training scheme.
Mark explained: “A careers adviser pointed
me towards an HND and it’s the best thing
I could have done. It also gave me the
chance to work on real projects
in a workplace situation. A lot of
graduates don’t have that sort
of vocational experience and
it’s helped me to rise above them.”
Case Study: The Engineer
“With his HND, Akinwale was able to go into his final year of
a BSc in Electronic Engineering at Middlesex University”
As a child in Sierra Leone, Akiwale Akiwumi knew he wanted to become an
electronics engineer. Civil war in Sierra Leone made Akiwale decide to study
in England. After completing A levels in Statistics and Pure Mathematics he
decided to do a BTEC Higher National Diploma in Electronics.
Akiwale said: “Choosing the HND was a good decision. At the end of my first
year, consistency, hard work and the drive to achieve a good diploma began to
pay off. My grades had improved and my confidence grew. By the end of the
final year I had achieved distinctions in almost all my units.”
With his HND Akiwale was able to go straight into the third year
of a BSc in Electronic Engineering at Middlesex University.
