Many universities offer scholarship and bursary schemes to provide financial support to students, enabling them to focus on their studies without the burden of financial stress. What are less common are funds that support students to explore jobs, sectors and employers, such as attendance at networking events or career taster sessions. While many such activities are free, others – like workshops and training courses – can carry a fee.
Even when the cost is relatively low (for example, £50 to £100), some students may struggle – we are still experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, after all. Free events, such as job fairs, may still involve travel costs or access to funds to produce professional portfolios. For students of creative practices, such as at the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) at the University of Edinburgh, many will not follow a “traditional” career path, making career explorations in their final year of studies all the more important.
With any scholarship or bursary scheme, one of the biggest hurdles is usually sourcing the funds. At ECA, we are lucky to have a small, allocated scholarship budget. After obtaining approval and support from the senior management team to use the pot for a career development bursary, we found the main challenge was designing and administering the scheme. Like universities across the UK, we have been experiencing a tightening of resources. This means that no administrative support was available. However, with meticulous planning and digital automation, I was able to run the scheme with a skeleton crew consisting of just me managing the whole process and a panel of colleagues to consult on the criteria and to review the applications.
The ECA Career Development Bursary Scheme has now had two successful runs: a pilot in 2023-24 to gauge demand and test workflow; and a revised scheme in 2024-25 based on lessons learned. Below is advice for anyone (especially time-poor academics) who is thinking of designing and running a similar scheme with extremely limited human resources, provided that the funds for the bursary itself have already been secured.
Be ultra clear about the purpose of the scheme
When money is on the line, it is very important to be explicit about what is and is not eligible to be funded. In my case, because the scheme was specifically for career development and explorations outside the students’ degree programme, I made sure the guidance included specific examples that do not qualify for the scheme, such as requests for funds to attend a course for skills the students are expected to have learned during their studies or to purchase materials for their final project in a course.
However, to keep the tone positive, I provided links to university resources that can help with these needs. Examples that are eligible for the scheme are also included, but these are kept more general as career development and explorations can take many forms, especially in creative practices. Therefore, it is more useful to specify what the scheme definitely will not fund. A pilot run was especially helpful in refining the guidance for subsequent years, as it is not always possible to anticipate what applicants may propose.
- Spotlight guide: Helping students through the cost-of-living crisis
- Click here for more resources about equity, diversity and inclusion
- Creating safe spaces for students to talk about financial difficulties
Consider all involved in determining key dates
Depending on the nature of the bursary, certain times during the typical academic year are more or less suitable for each stage of the scheme. What’s important is to consider it from both the applicants’ and the reviewers’ point of view, as well as the university’s financial cycle. For the Career Development Bursary, the scheme was announced and advertised early in the first semester to sow the seed for students to start brainstorming and keep an eye out on relevant opportunities.
A deadline set a few weeks into the second semester provided sufficient time for both the applicants to put together their proposals and the review panel to assess the applications before things get busy with end-of-year projects, marking and graduate shows. Awardees are notified and funds transferred just as the second semester draws to a close, leaving plenty of time for colleagues in the finance department to tie up the account before their workload peaks towards the end of June and July.
Assemble the review panel early and make assessment easy
It goes without saying that members of the review panel should have the requisite expertise to evaluate the applications. In my case, the panel includes one to two academics from each of ECA’s five distinct subject areas who can attest to the validity and quality of the proposed career development activities in those areas. Colleagues from student development, careers and commercialisation service round out the panel.
As application assessment can be time consuming, getting colleagues to agree to be on the panel early in the academic year is key to locking their calendars before other responsibilities take over. Equally important is to make the evaluation process as pain-free as possible. For this, I devised a traffic-light scoring system. I distributed applications among panel members to score individually. I then tallied the results and the panel members assemble to discuss only those applications that required further deliberation, thus respecting everyone's time and effort.
Spell out application form instructions in minute detail
When designing the application form, it helps to think from the reviewers’ point of view. Consider what specific information would aid the reviewers in assessing against the criteria and distinguishing between similar applications. While I designed the application form to ask only a few key questions, each prompt is accompanied by copious notes, example texts and a word limit to give applicants a sense of the level of detail required. As a result, despite having around 30 applications each year, I received virtually no queries on how to complete the application form or what information should be included.
Digital automation is your friend
The absence of any administrative support meant I had to find a streamlined and scalable way to handle the applications. For this, I leaned heavily on Microsoft Forms for application collection, which not only provides a user-friendly submission process for the applicants, but also makes it easy to share the applications with the review panel since all information is collated into one spreadsheet file.
This format also makes it easy to incorporate a consent and privacy notice section aligned with university guidelines. For tasks that don’t require complex decision-making, such as sending out application receipt confirmations, Microsoft Power Automate, a workflow automating platform, is a game-changer. It is especially helpful in contacting the applicants’ referees based on the email addresses provided in the applications in a timely fashion.
Setting up this bursary has been a lesson in efficiency and adaptation. Undoubtedly, further improvements will be made for subsequent runs. But early planning and clarity in guidance have ensured the quality of the received applications is high and the assessment process is smooth. Delegating high-volume but low-decision tasks to automated workflows has also saved considerable time and human resources.
Victoria Lee is a lecturer in architecture and environment and co-director of equity, diversity and inclusion at Edinburgh College of Art.
If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.
comment