Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster led sessions on the Sustainable Development Goals, the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework, and circular economy, inviting participants to see how environmental and social issues shape business decisions. Thirdly, human skills: we held workshops on reflection, communication, teamwork, entrepreneurship, CVs, LinkedIn profiles, interview handling and personal branding to help students tell their own story and navigate recruitment processes with more confidence. The demand for this kind of guidance among students and graduates was clear. A national call attracted more than 500 applications from across more than 40 universities – far beyond our capacity, but demonstrating we were focusing on the right things. After online tests and interviews, 45 participants were selected, with 62% of the final cohort women and just over a fifth travelling from beyond the Greater Cairo region. DOWN TO BUSINESS Learning was deliberately hands-on. We wanted everyone who took part to apply their new skills to real-world datasets, after all this is what they will come across in the workplace. Participants were supported by a network of instructors and mentors from EUI, Lancaster and industry. To make the situation even more practical, they did not just present their insights to us as a group of academics. Instead, we brought in industry professionals, including specialists in leadership, data analytics, sustainability and personal branding. This gave them experience of working to a brief, handling messy data, and explaining technical work to nonspecialists; situations they rarely encounter within standard degree programmes, but that will become day-to-day when they enter the world of employment. POSITIVE RESULTS Three months after the programme, we surveyed graduates to see what had changed. The headline figure was that 56% of our participants were in employment within three months, with 38% in full-time roles and 18% part-time. They had found work across 20 organisations, ranging from KPMG, Vodafone and Amazon to government ministries and local firms. For us they were extremely positive results. We were happy – and so were they: 92% said they would highly recommend the programme. That said, the result of employment in itself is not enough, We wanted to be sure that we were equipping these graduates for their careers, providing them with capabilities they would need in employment. Therefore, knowing that 76% reported actively applying soft skills such as communication and teamwork, that 54.5% were using data analysis in their jobs or personal projects, and that 30% had already implemented aspects of sustainability in their work demonstrated impact. Graduate stories put lived experience behind those numbers. One alumna described the hands-on data analytics work with Excel, Power BI and Python, together with the final project, as transformative for her confidence; another traced a direct line from the sustainability and data components to her new role as an ESG research analyst in an international company. If universities are sometimes criticised for failing to equip students with the skills and attributes graduates need in the modern, ever-evolving workplace, then these examples, and the overall statistics, demonstrate just what we can do. WHAT LIES HEADS? So, what does this experience tell us about the future of work? Firstly, we can see that agility matters. Intensive, market informed programmes like iSkills cannot replace degrees, but they can sit alongside them to respond quickly to changing technologies and employer expectations. Secondly, transnational partnerships can be vehicles for genuine cocreation. This was a joint venture between established higher education institutes in Egypt and the UK, combining local insight with international expertise, benefiting from the strengths of both. Finally, we can see that the future of work is unlikely to belong to data specialists or sustainability experts alone, but to graduates who can connect data, digital tools, sustainability and human skills in coherent, purpose-driven careers. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 41 Dr Mahmoud Gad is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance, and a member of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business. The authors thank Professor Marwan Izzeldin, Associate Dean (International) at Lancaster University Management School, for his support in facilitating this collaboration with EUI. m.gad1@lancaster.ac.uk; e.gadalla@lancaster.ac.uk Dr Eman Gadalla is a Lecturer in the Department of Marketing, with a research interest around online retail and consumer behaviour.
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