Interestingly the University that held the event does not actually have a surveying course. In fact there only a few surveying degree courses in the UK.
About 15 years ago my daughter attended University of Nottingham in her final year as an exchange student from Oregon State University civil engineering program. I believe she took several surveying courses while she was there.
Yes civil engineering courses have surveying modules. So nearly all "Graduates with the skills to use surveying equipment" from the UK are actually civil engineers. I just thought it was odd that headline of the article was "More opportunities for new surveyors".
A few links through RICS:
http://www.rics.org/en/geography/?selectcountry=true
http://www.rics.org/uk/about-rics/professional-groups/land/rics-geomatics-professional-group/
http://www.uel.ac.uk/undergraduate/specs/civilengsurveyingmappingsci/
Well, I'm guessing a lot of those 'opportunities' are for short terms contracts with contractors to fill the gaps left by the migration of many to the much better paid oil and gas industries. Once you're over the hurdles of paying for survival courses etc, pay and conditions in the North Sea are way above those in general construction.
Yes University of East London have a couple of degree courses.
I wonder if there used to be more degree courses. I was surprised how few there are. I could find less than 10. The RICS are mostly chartered property surveyors (valuers). There are also building surveyors (building condition surveying amongst other things) and quantity surveyors (measure the cost of building contracts). Land surveyors are also welcome to join RICS, and they are the only "surveyor" that use survey instruments, software etc;
We don't have the cadastral aspect in land surveying here, or at least it is very very rare. There just aren't annotated and monumented plans of property ownership to work with. "Precedent not monument" is a phrase I have heard used to describe the situation in the UK.