Students the winners
REGIONAL UNIS TOPS WHEN IT COMES TO JOBS
STUDENTS at regional universities are more likely to land a job than graduates from prestigious ‘sandstone’ institutions.
Only two big-city universities are among the top 10 for graduate employment this year, exclusive new data obtained by News Corp Australia reveals.
Among the top eight universities, at least three quarters of last year’s graduates found full-time work this year.
But in the worst-performing universities, more than half the graduates were still hunting for a fulltime job, four months after finishing their degree.
In Queensland, the top university for full-time employment is the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), based in Toowoomba, where 78.9 per cent of graduates walked into full-time work.
Despite the COVID-19 recession hammering graduate employment across Australia, USQ was among only three universities where the full-time employment rate rose this year – up from 76.1 per cent in 2019.
James Cook University, with campuses in Townsville and Cairns, boasts an above-average 75.9 per cent employment rate.
At Central Queensland University, based in Rockhampton, the graduate jobs rate is 73 per cent.
JCU vice chancellor Professor Sandra Harding said the ranking confirmed JCU graduates were in high demand.
“JCU is the university of northern Queensland and we take very seriously our role to educate and train the region’s workforce,” Prof Harding said.
“Our career-focused courses are designed to prepare graduates for the workforce by experiencing reallife scenarios while learning from leading industry professionals.
“To be ranked so highly for full
time graduate employment is a great achievement, and confirms JCU’S strong performance in teaching and research.”
Cquniversity came in at number 11 nationally and third in Queensland, several places ahead of the prestigious Australian National University and University of Technology, Sydney.
Bachelor of Business alumnus Andrew King said he had completed a bridging course with CQUNIversity before enrolling as one of the Cairns campus’ first undergrads in 2016.
“There were a lot of mature-age students and the uni had a good reputation,” Mr King said.
Mr King, who majored in accounting, was able to begin work in the industry mid-degree.
“It was quite a practical degree,
as first years we were assigned the financials of real companies and had to pull them apart,” he said.
The practice came in handy at his first accounting job.
“I was working for a liquidator, seeing companies at their worst,” he said. He later was poached by Cairns Marine, which recruited him straight from uni.
“As they are an exporter, we do some advanced accounting and work with foreign currencies,” Mr King said.
Cquniversity vice chancellor and president, Professor Nick Klomp said the uni prided itself on creating “employable graduates”.
“It is also very pleasing to see so many regional universities ranking highly, which again proves that you don’t need to move out of the regions to gain a quality education
and subsequent employment,” Prof Klomp said.
Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said nine out of 10 Australian university graduates find fulltime work within three years of graduation.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic had a “major impact’’ on graduate employment rates this year.
The survey, commissioned by the federal Department of Education, does not reveal whether graduates found work in the same field they studied at university.
It says graduates from regional universities are more likely to be older, and to study externally and part-time. “(They) are more likely to have completed vocational degrees and … have also fared better in the current downturn,’’ it says.