Higher Education Challenges

Most Australian universities have a WIL policy. Many have a WIL strategy. Some have a WIL framework, a WIL committee, and a dedicated WIL office. And yet, in a surprising number of institutions, work-integrated learning remains something that happens at the edges — championed by a handful of committed coordinators, inconsistently embedded across faculties, and persistently undervalued by senior academic staff who see it as someone else's responsibility. Policy is necessary bu

There's a role in Australian universities and TAFEs that carries enormous responsibility, touches hundreds of students every semester, and is almost always under-resourced. That's the WIL coordinator — the person who makes internships actually happen. They negotiate with employers, brief students, chase compliance documentation, manage scheduling conflicts, track insurance requirements, handle the placements that go wrong, and somehow find time to support the ones that are go

Ask an employer what they want from an intern and you'll hear something like this: someone who can hit the ground running, communicate clearly, take initiative, and ask good questions. Ask a university coordinator what skills their internship program develops and you'll often hear something quite different: discipline-specific knowledge, technical competency, professional awareness. Both answers are reasonable. But they're not the same answer. And that gap — between what inst

If you're a student at a metropolitan university with a thriving CBD campus and a stack of industry partners down the road, access to a quality internship is challenging but manageable. If you're studying remotely, attending a regional TAFE, or based hours from the nearest industry hub, it's a fundamentally different proposition. Australia's regional internship gap is real, it's significant, and it's not being talked about loudly enough. The compounding disadvantages Regional

Using work integrated learning (WIL) to support graduate outcomes

The challenges of designing assessment for work integrated learning

Considerations for good internship design

How ;earning-by-doing can add value to graduates in an AI-disrupted landscape

Are unpaid internships realistic in a cost-of-living crisis?