UK - China Collaborative Partnerships in Employability and Entrepreneurship

What is this funding opportunity?
The overall aim of the China-UK collaborative partnerships scheme is to strengthen the UK-China partnership. Universities are challenged with helping to develop the global citizen for the 21st Century and partnership work in this area will benefit the development of both national and international models. We encourage UK universities to engage in equal partnership with Chinese universities which will both build on existing undergraduate / postgraduate programmes delivered in the UK and China and further develop these programmes to produce work-ready, employable graduates.

The objectives of the scheme are to:

facilitate exchange of knowledge and experience in the areas of employability and entrepreneurship   
develop ideas and concepts for a high-level China / UK forum on employability and entrepreneurship   
promote mutuality and/or complementarity between UK and Chinese HEIs.   

Specifically, this area of work will contribute to the overall objectives of PMI2 through:

increasing the level of engagement and collaboration between the UK and China in high quality programme development and delivery   
commitment to developing solutions to common issues in enhancing the employability and entrepreneurship of graduates in both countries   
promoting activities that are of strong mutual benefit to the UK and China.   

UK higher education institutions are invited to work with Chinese higher education institutions on developing the themes of employability and entrepreneurship at the higher education level.

What funding opportunities are currently available?
This is the third year for this call for proposals. We are seeking to establish a further ten projects between UK and Chinese universities. These projects may be based on new or established links with one or more Chinese HEIs and must demonstrate mutual and / or complementary benefits to both sides of the partnership.

In this third call, we particularly welcome applications for projects with partners based outside of Beijing and Shanghai. Hong Kong is not eligible for this scheme.

Funding will be provided in the first instance for a one-year scoping project with the assumption that this will extend for a further year on the basis of satisfactory year one outputs coupled with proposals for building on the first year experience.

Total funding over two years is as follows:

Year 1: up to a maximum of GBP 25,000   
Year 2: up to a maximum of GBP 17,000   

The deadline for bids has now passed. Results will be made available by December 2009.

For full details, see the guidelines:
Guidelines (620KB)

What type of partnerships have been funded previously?
Since 2008, 13 partnerships have been funded. The full lists are available here.

If you have any questions, please contact the PMI2 Connect team.