uk

Gone are the days of students having to travel thousands of miles in search of a good education. In an effort to secure a career, it wasn't abnormal for youngsters to need to fly the nest and move to another city - or even a foreign country - to gain the skills they needed to get ahead. 

These days, however, institutions around the globe offer a veritable smorgasbord of degree choices, all designed to meet the needs of education hungry students, without the need to up sticks if they don't want to.

But what if you fancy something a little more unusual that's not readily available on your doorstep? What if you want to study in a foreign land? What if you want to endure 12 months of rain?

Well, away from your archetypal undergraduate subjects such as accounting, law or humanities, the UK is positively bubbling with a range of atypical courses designed to get your grey matter tingling. Whether you fancy a degree in viticulture and oenology or a solid grounding in Viking Studies, Dear Old Blighty really is the place to be.

To get you started, check out three of the most unusual degrees you can study in Britain ...

One of Britain's biggest sports stars Tom Daley revealed yesterday that he is in a relationship with a man. In a YouTube video, the London 2012 bronze medallist said: "In spring this year my life changed massively when I met someone, and they make me feel so happy, so safe and everything just feels great. That someone is a guy".

In the personal video, which has already had more than 4.5million views, the diving star goes on to explain:

"It did take me by surprise a little bit. It was always in the back of my head that something like that could happen. But it wasn't until spring this year that something just clicked. It felt right and I thought 'OK'. And my whole world changed there and then."

You can watch the whole moving video below.

Two British universities have taken the radical step of fingerprinting their international students to monitor lecture attendance. The universities of Sunderland and Ulster have both brought in this unprecedented system to comply with new government rules, but have faced heavy criticism for it.

The ‘biometric monitoring systems' are used at satellite campuses in London, which are home to only overseas students. It is this discrimination between British and foreign students that has been roundly condemned, with the NUS leading the chorus of concern.

International students' officer Daniel Stevens claimed the measures are "incredibly unwelcoming" and "unfairly target one group", adding that:

"It is appalling that certain institutions have required physical checks of any quantity and have discriminated against international students when implementing monitoring procedures."

Such concerns have been echoed by Sunderland students' union president Carl Taylor who called it a "limitation of freedom".

Indeed, another institution- Newcastle University, scrapped their idea to use a similar fingerprinting system after a student union vote against it.

A new report released by the British Council today has predicted huge increases in the number of international students coming to study in the UK over the next ten years. With growing concerns over tighter visa restrictions, unwelcoming governmental rhetoric and increased tuition fees at UK universities, this forecast is hugely encouraging.

In the next decade it is expected that the UK will attract an extra 126,000 international students, making it one of the world's fastest growing destinations by 2024. It will cement its place as one of the leading countries for higher education in the world alongside the US and Australia, though it is predicted that all three will face stronger and stronger competition from China.

On a global level, despite the economic struggles, the overall number of students choosing to study abroad has exceeded expectations in the last five years, and such growth is expected to continue. Amazingly, by 2024, China and India will be sending a combined total of almost 4 million students to other countries, contributing a third of the global total.

However, the UK is expected to perform most strongly in the developing markets of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where it is currently pushing its higher education sector.

The latest global university rankings have been released, with record numbers of UK universities appearing in the prestigious list. The annual QS world university rankings table places six British universities in the top 20 and 15 in the top 200, though Cambridge has slipped from second to third as the highest ranked UK institution.

The list was topped by two American colleges- MIT pipping Harvard to claim the top spot for the second year running. Four further US institutions are in the top 10 and this American domination continues throughout the list, with over 50 US colleges appearing in the top 200. However, UK universities are a clear second, with Cambridge, UCL, Imperial and Oxford all placed in the top 10 in the world.