Mixing study and work experience is a win-win for students and employers

Australia’s inaugural student- apprentices completed their first year of joint work-study in 2024 and the program has proved so successful the South Australian government has now committed to a range of additional degree-apprenticeships in different discipline areas

Designed to promote university to less-wealthy Australians who often regard the cost of a degree as an insuperable barrier, the employer-sponsored degree-apprenticeships cover university fees as well as allowing students to earn a salary while they complete the degree.

Tom Raimondo, dean of programs (information technology and mathematics) at the University of South Australia, says the degree-apprenticeship program took a couple of years to establish, with the co-operation of industry, the university and government. There was no precedent in Australia for this degree-apprenticeship so there were legislative difficulties to be overcome, but with the assistance of the Skills Commission, the program was established as a registered apprenticeship.

Conferring a degree- apprenticeship bachelor of software engineering (honours), the five-year program emphasises study in the first two years and then shifts to focus on work as the hours of study taper off.

“The students are employed by a company; they sign up as a registered apprentice and sign up as a student,” Raimondo says.

Three defence and security organisations are sponsoring the first software engineering degree- apprentices in Australia; BAE Systems, ASC and Consunet.

The first cohort of 13 students includes men and women, school- leavers and mature-age students,

from a range of backgrounds. “One of the motivations is to try to support students from equity backgrounds, those that wouldn’t normally consider university, either because of the financial cost, or because they might be the first in family to consider that,” Raimondo says.

The degree-apprenticeships were popular from the start. The university had 130 expressions of interest for the first 13 places. One of the 13 students has since dropped out for unavoidable personal reasons, Raimondo says, but the remaining 12 did “exceptionally well” in their first year, and they are all considered higher-distinction students.

“The degree-apprenticeship is great for all parties,” Raimondo says. “It’s great for the employer: they can embed professional development in the program, so at the end of the program, they get a graduate with five years’ worth of workplace experience.”

The graduate, he says, will have done all the inductions, all the professional development work, all the training, all the familiarisation exercises, the soft skills, the teamwork, the communications, policies and procedures for employees and the employer gets a mature and well-rounded graduate at the end of the process.

The AUKUS defence agreement will create a surge in demand for skilled science, mathematics, engineering and technology graduates across the nation in the years to come, Raimondo says.

“We’re not going to be able to supply enough graduates,” he says. “That’s the simple fact in South Australia, and nationally; there won’t be enough graduates if we keep at current trends.

“We need something that changes the attractiveness of these programs for prospective students, and also attracts a larger diversity of students.”

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