Humzah Ghauri (BSc Computing with Business Management)

Buckingham’s 2 year degree was a very attractive proposition to me; it meant I could start building my professional career sooner. Furthermore, Buckingham’s Computing department is ranked as one of the top in the UK so it was an obvious choice for me. I studied the BSc Computing with Business Management degree which was the ideal major/minor course combination – it provided me with the Computing Fundamentals alongside Business sense for working in the real world for a business.

The great offering and a differentiating factor of Buckingham is the student to staff ratio. This meant a lot more support from lecturers and the fact that I could approach them anytime for questions or queries. This made a big difference, not only to support the courses I undertook but to decide which optional ones to choose and what dissertation to choose. Buckingham had a fantastic work/life balance. With so much to offer activities wise and such a small but interesting community, we all preferred this to what larger universities had to offer.

This degree equipped me with what I needed in my professional IT career, covering major aspects which I needed for the jobs I undertook later in my career. I think crucially the Buckingham Computing programme allowed me to make a mature decision in which sector in IT I want to take. Buckingham was one of the first universities to provide a Data Mining course, which at the time was only being offered for masters in one other university in the UK. Upon taking this course I decided this is what I want to do – I found data and its uses so interesting and because I had that knowledge under my belt, this allowed me to have interesting conversations in interviews because of that knowledge which gave me exciting roles for my career.

With the degree in my hand, I have since spent over 4 years as a Senior Business Intelligence Consultant at Oracle Corporation. This has allowed me to work with the latest technologies in Cloud but also AI/ML harnessing the value of data but also working with top-tier clients working on high profile projects, building valuable contacts and networking all around the world. More recently, I have joined Fujitsu on a similar role to expand my knowledge and experience in this segment. Looking back, knowing what a job requires, if I had to choose a university to do it again, it would definitely Buckingham as this helped me vastly for my career but also gave me the two best years of my life!