?You should have been here this morning ? we could hardly move with the number of students present,? revealed Suhaila Saliahmohamed, the marketing and communications manager of the Professional Training Centre (PTC), last Friday. The PTC was holding its first two-day education fair at Labourdonnais hotel. And, on Friday morning, the main presentations were on medicine, pharmacy and scientific subjects ? a sign that a ?shift? seems to have occurred in the students? heads this year.

?Engineering appears to be one of the main sectors of interest for students this year while we noticed more of them were interested in law during previous years,? she noted. ?They have been looking for information about very unusual activities like food production or biotechnologies. I think they are considering remaining abroad after their studies.?

The PTC did not focus on UK universities only for this first education fair. ?Universities from all over the world were present ? Greece, Switzerland, Hungary, China, Canada? And students have shown interest even in the countries that have never really been advertised in Mauritius so far,? she pointed out.

This fair was different from others. Students could wander from one stand to another to look for any information about universities or courses but simultaneously there were short presentations of courses by lecturers coming from these universities. ?This is like a foretaste of what they will have when they go to these universities,? Suhaila Saliahmohamed explained.

Besides being a facilitator between foreign universities and local students, the PTC is also a MQA and TEC-registered training institution for the purpose of providing educational support locally. The institution provides distance learning facilities for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees as well as e-learning degrees and professional courses.