Charles Sturt University and the University of Wollongong have both participated in a new project that is targeting future student enrolments to fill identified regional job vacancies identified on the Skills Priority List. By working with regional employers in the healthcare, IT and education sectors, both universities have identified specific academic programs that can lead to graduate employment vacancies in their regions. This project has been supported by Study NSW, Successful Graduate, ISANA and Global Study Partners, and offers an education agent search component as well as a career preparation online course component.
Community, Connection: The collaborative nature of the project enabled each project partner to address the needs of international students from a variety of perspectives, namely: the government perspective, the student recruitment perspective, the academic perspective, the student services perspective and the industry (employer) perspective. Each of these perspectives will be explored during the session.
Belonging, Partnerships with Business and Community: an integral component of the project began to emerge when regional employers were interviewed for inclusion in the Successful Graduate micro-credential ‘The Regional Career Preparation Program’. Each employer (NSW Health, IT companies, aged care companies, NSW Education, etc) spoke at length about the importance of international students achieving a sense of community at the regional level, and using this sense of belonging to their advantage when pursuing employment opportunities. Indeed, there are two unique advantages that regional Australian locations have in this regard: 1. The Skills Priority List (Aus Govt) provides for PSWR extensions in regional locations, 2. Regional communities tend to look after their own. Each employer interviewed has entreated international students to seek a place of belonging in their community for this reason.
Student diversity and inclusion: student expectation and satisfaction – helping to develop a connected network of satisfied students who have received a better student experience and end to end connection from the point of application to immersion with their local community upon arrival and while studying.
The project was part funded by Study NSW and all project partners as the Careers Toolkit to Grow International Student Numbers in Regional NSW. Hear from the universities and industry partners about the statistics, successes and outcomes of this groundbreaking regional project!
Biography:
Gordon Scott is Managing Director of student preparation skills training provider www.successfulgraduate.com. Successful Graduate delivers client-branded student preparation training platforms, developing job skills, pre-departure and academic readiness training at scale, across the entire student lifecycle. Consider a Successful Graduate platform as a plug-in that adds employability to your student value proposition.
Successful Graduate supports clients around the world, and has a 98% student approval rating. Gordon also launched Study Brisbane in 2008 at a time when the industry required a collective approach to international student recruitment and engagement in the wake of the global financial crisis, negative publicity concerning Australia’s international education offering, the high value of the Australian dollar and poor social inclusion of students in Australia.
Gordon is a Senior Fellow of the IEAA and served for two years as a Board member of the association. He is a past member of the Queensland International Education and Training Advisory Council.