-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)

McGregor: industry-ready graduates

Professor Dame Heather McGregor is Provost and Vice Principal of the vintage Heriot-Watt University (HWU, estb.1821), Edinburgh’s Dubai campus, which has 4,500 undergrad, postgrad and doctoral students on its muster rolls.

Newspeg. Prof. Heather was in Bengaluru on April 26-27 to further enhance this Scottish university’s profile and visibility among potential students in India, and address a well-attended alumni meet. Of HWU-Dubai’s enrolment of over 4,500 students, approximately half are from India or of Indian origin.

History. A polymath with decades of teaching and industry experience, McGregor is an agriculture marketing and business management alumna of Newcastle and London universities who pressed on to research for a Ph D in finance from the University of Hong Kong. Moreover, she is also a qualified chartered global management accountant (CGMA), a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Beginning her professional career as an investment banker, in 2004 she went solo and established a global personnel search firm which she led for 17 years, before switching tracks into higher education. In 2016, she was appointed Executive Dean of the Edinburgh Business School at HWU, Scotland and was deputed to take charge as provost and Vice Principal of its Dubai campus in September 2022.

Direct talk. “Dubai is an attractive higher education destination for students from India for a variety of reasons. The quality of education is good. This cosmopolitan city is only a short flight from India, student accommodation costs are much lower compared to other parts of the world, cultural assimilation is easy, and the low crime rate and strong commitment to law and order makes students, especially women, feel safe. HWU’s business, engineering, and IT-related programmes have always been popular among Indian students. However, with the pace of digital and technological transformation, more students are choosing to enrol in artificial intelligence, data sciences and digital marketing programmes. Currently, with renewable energy and sustainability goals jumping to the top of global agendas, our programmes in sustainable engineering have also become very popular. Moreover, our average undergraduate tuition fee at $18,200 (Rs.14.92 lakh) per year, is comparatively lower than the $26,000-40,000 in the US. Through our strong industry-academia partnerships in Dubai, we are committed to our parent HWU’s philosophy of producing industry-ready graduates,” says Dame Heather.

Future plans. Recently granted Initial Institutional Licensure by the UAE Ministry of Education through the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA), which acknowledges high quality academic provision, HWU-Dubai is in the process of upgrading all its undergrad and postgrad programmes. “Although we are based in Dubai, our study programmes and curricula are on a par with our parent university in the UK, which is ranked among the Top 40 in the UK and in the Top 250 globally by QS World University Rankings 2024,” says McGregor.

A higher education option worthy of serious consideration.