Something abroad, as grads miss big day

Just three out of 23 students at a new UCC master’s degree turned up in Cork yesterday for their conferring — because the other 20 are already employed on the other side of the world.

Name after name of the 23 students in a MBS (Asian Business) graduating group were marked “in absentia”, initially making their absence look like a sort of walkout student protest: It prompted the explanation from UCC president Michel Murphy that it was because “they’re all working in Asia, and the others who are here today are also working”.

Proof that the old motto “go west young man” has been upended by the same injunction to today’s generation to “go east, young men and women”, was graphically illustrated by the 100% placement of the class of 2013, in this fledgling MBS course, undertaken in conjunction with the Farmleigh Foundation and sponsoring businesses. The group spent a year split between UCC, the Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, and on placement with Irish firms doing business with China and other Asian countries.