our unis are not serving Australia very well. i have over 30 STEM roles working for me. More and more i'm recruiting oversea trained grads. We have stopped our grad program with the local uni and even stopped taking vocational placements.

Uni seem to be completely uncoupled from the needs of industry, and do a very poor job of preparing grads for life in industry.

Sadly even when our overseas recruits English is very poor they more then make up for it, in their willingness to work, to learn the skills required to get the job done, and don't have an expectation they'll be running the company in a couple of years.

How much money do you donate to the local university Cobber? Have you ever spoken to the Deans of the relevant faculties about your issue?

Bugsy you have that exactly back to front.

It is the job of highly paid Deans to find out what business requires, design courses to fit those requirements, & offer the students who are the only reason to employ Deans, the courses most suitable to their future needs.

It is the ivory tower problem, just from another direction.

Higher education is a disgusting gravy train, & needs derailing right now.

Yes, I'm sure derailing higher education in Australia will get us higher quality graduates.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't know what a Dean's duties are Hasbeen. What do you do when someone isn't delivering the service that you want? Complain loudly to your friends that it is their job to find out what every person who may or may not use their services what they want?

Or directly tell them what you need and negotiate how to get that.

This all depends of course as to the nature of the business. If it's highly specialised and isn't similar to industry generally, then why would a university train a handful of graduates for those roles. ]

I also find they a lot of industries expect universities to train graduates with skills that they can learn on the job. In fact, that is exactly what universities expect businesses to do- train their staff for the job they have. All the degree means is that they have background knowledge and can learn the job, not that they have learned the job.

I believe a good pass in science and maths has to be mandatory as a path to uni or scholarships govt funding etc! Or indeed, teacher's college!

Science and engineering hands on projects must be part of our primary school curriculum! And funding must be removed from recalcitrant states and placed in the hands of directing parents as a transferable endowment rather than cash!

This way, parents can pick campuses that don't regularly fail our kids in these foundations core subjects! And an absolute essential in the world our Kids, will inhabit as adults!
Alan B.

@Bugsy yes we did, our HR/recruitment department had several meeting with them. I had one face to face, when we cancelled our grad program they didn't even ask why.