my friend worked as a research assistant after Bachelor degree.

look on daad.de, quite good web page

one of my friend applied for the Uni after roughly to say 15-20- years, complited his masters and does his Phd. everything possible, never give up

I applied for the same program, I think CILIP certification is important most of all

u can stay up to 2 years on Tier 1 visa, after can extend ur visa if u have highly skilled work with salary over 30 gran need to count age and degree and so on.