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Graduate programs in Greece
More and more Greek students seeking Masters degrees and PhD programs are looking for opportunities to study abroad, encouraged by the desire to obtain internationally recognized qualifications and a new cultural perspective.
Indications from the British Council and the International Institute of Education in New York confirm that there are more than 25,000 Greek students in those two countries alone, with Australian, Canadian and Dutch universities reporting increasing levels of interest from Greek graduate applicants.
Research from www.topgraduate.com, the team behind the QS World Grad School Tour, indicates that 45 different countries were named by prospective graduate students as potential destinations for their Masters degrees or PhD programs. Such an array of choice is surprising when so many students assume that only Australia, the UK and the USA are viable options for their further study. The 2006 edition of the UNESCO publication, Education at a Glance, raises the stakes even further. According to their data, more than 70 countries are listed with 1,000 or more international students at universities in their country!
Which country?
What both these reports demonstrate quite clearly is that the breadth of viable choice for those potential graduate students willing and interested in study abroad has reached almost epic proportions. But why do students select certain countries over others? The reasons for making a final decision on where to study are both complex and individual. However, the QS Applicant Research draws out some interesting patterns in the decision making process.
The key defining reason for students to select one particular destination country over another is the recognition of a country’s graduate qualifications internationally: an overwhelming 72.5% indicated that this was the primary reason for choosing a country to study in. The second and third reasons in terms of importance were cultural interest and lifestyle (59%) and the availability of scholarships and other forms of financial aid (56.7%). Greek students differ from these global trends, away from the international recognition of qualifications (66.7%) being their prime factor in choosing a country destination. The second most popular reason for Greek graduate applicants (54.8%) to choose one country over another is for the purposes of employment in their destination country on completion of their academic program has finished.
None of these three leading determining factors on prospective Greek graduate student destination choice come as a surprise. The recognition of a qualification internationally lies behind many students choosing to apply for a graduate program in the first place: not only do they want to enhance their career prospects by taking an additional qualification, but they want their degree to be recognized wherever they finally decide to settle and enter the labour market. Additionally, choosing a country based on the availability of financial aid and an attractive lifestyle both make for sensible factors in the decision making process – graduate students will live and experience the local life as well as study in a country and if some of the costs can be offset, then all the better!
However, given that the decision to study at the graduate level is often complex, particularly for those students considering moving to another country for their studies, it is only reasonable to expect that many sources of information and research be consulted before a decision is made.
This year’s QS Applicant Research underlines two particularly important facets of the research that underpins choosing an international graduate program. Firstly, as already indicated, the importance of the Internet in gathering material and information by candidates; and secondly, despite the dominance of the Internet in providing such information, the continuing use of other sources such as education fairs and contact with former students by students wishing to make an informed decision about their study destination.
Sources of information
Whilst potential graduate students seek much of their information via institutional websites or Internet search engines, an impressive range of other sources is routinely consulted to make a more informed choice.
