Lady Brabourne College conducts a career and higher education fair for UG and PG students

Lady Brabourne College, which recently received a NAAC A grade for the 3^rd consecutive time, organised an enriching career fair for their UG 2^nd and 3^rd year and PG students on 20 September 2022. Speaking about the fair and its intent behind the same, Professor Dr Siuli Sarkar, principal, Lady Brabourne College said, “We believe that we should try to help our students in their placement, their progression to some other institutes of national and international repute and in this we have not confined ourselves within the very narrow boundary of teaching, learning and evaluation and have actually gone outside [it] to help them in their careers.”

Dr Sarkar went on to add, “By career, I do not mean only helping them in getting good jobs. There are many students in this institute who are keen in academics. In their progression for their PG or PhD or Post Doc degrees and so on, we can give them some opportunities of different institutes and universities of the nation and also outside the nation.”

While most career fairs focus on career counselling and recruitment, this one was a little different. The fair saw participation from USIEF, BluSky Education, Global Reach, Techno India Group and State Bank of India. While at the USIEF venue, students were being briefed about study and research opportunities and scholarships, as well as everything else they need to know about studying abroad in the USA, both BlueSky and Global Reach were focused on higher education opportunities in a host of other countries abroad. The Global Reach venue was also a source of information for the Pearson Test of English (PTE), a standardised, computer-based test of English for students wanting to study abroad.

At the Techno India venue, on the other hand, we had counsellors talking to students about technical higher education, including specialisations that are a ‘need of the hour’, based on their undergraduate subject of study. At the State Bank of India venue, students were given detailed information regarding education loans that the national bank is offering to support students who want to study further but are facing problems with arranging funding.

Interestingly, the SBI session started with an eye opener on financial frauds happening in this new digital age of online payments and UPI. This focus on imparting financial literacy, which is not often given to college students in our country, also came as a welcome change. Across all the air-conditioned venues provided by the college, we saw well-informed counsellors who not only spoke to the students about the various opportunities but were also present to discuss individual queries, as a group or one-on-one. Students were also provided with contact details for future reference.

It was heartening to see full participation from students visiting each of the venues with their departmental cohorts, and a quick chat with them revealed that many were hopeful of pursuing further studies, either in India or abroad.

Speaking about the efforts of the team behind the fair, Dr Sarkar said, “Our IQAC (Internal Quality Assurance Cell) coordinator Dr Indrani Choudhuri Dutt, and the Career Counselling committee convenor, Dr Srimati Mukherjee, have jointly organised this career fair. They had actually started planning this career fair long ago, just after our 3rd NAAC accreditation in July. I am very happy to say that during the pandemic period also our IQAC and career counselling committee remained very active and helped students. [Students] didn’t know when to sit for exams, the mode of exams, when the results would be out. They [were given the opportunity to communicate] with a number of professional counsellors from the city.”

This initiative taken by the Lady Brabourne College, so close on the heels of the pandemic, is a testament to their refusal to be complacent and a true commitment to making their students future ready.