International graduates find it extremely difficult to get professional work in Australia, despite having qualifications in areas of supposed skills shortages, a three-year study has found.
The accounting, nursing and engineering graduates in the study encountered multiple barriers to getting a job, including a tough jobs market and local firms unwilling to take on staff without permanent residency.
The Deakin University report, Australian International Graduates and the Transition to Employment, bluntly concludes international graduates without a permanent visa are unlikely to find work in their discipline area in Australia.
“According to our interviews with employers, academics, peak bodies and international graduates, without permanent residency (PR), international graduates are unlikely to secure employment in their field in Australia,” the report states.
The report also found racism remained a problem for students, with “many [participants] in this study experienced discrimination in some form during their time in Australia”.
A senior bureaucrat in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship who consults with Australian employers extensively, was quoted in the report as saying there is an “inherent degree of racism amongst middle management in Australia”.
These issues could put the international education industry, the country’s fourth largest export sector and worth $15 billion in annual revenue, at risk as international students consider local work experience an expected part of studying in Australia.
The study’s authors found international students and graduates continue to see an Australian tertiary education as a pathway to permanent migration.
The report verbally expressed “many employers have a blanket rule that precludes international graduates from applying unless they have perpetual residency status”, with the trepidation that international graduates “represented a more preponderant risk of flight than a local graduate”.
Employers had a range of issues with international graduates beyond their visa status, including “poor communication skills, inadequate soft skills, and lack of local work experience”. The authors verbalize universities need to take responsibility for ascertaining international graduates are job yare, including availing the overseas students to amend their communication skills and general job readiness.
The report was predicated on a qualitative and quantitative study of 107 international students and 93 non-students.
The peak university body, Universities Australia, will run a vigilance campaign about post-study work visas next year. “In 2015, we will be embarking on a cognizance raising campaign targeting the business community but this is still in early stages of development,” Universities Australia chief executive, Belinda Robinson verbalized. “In integration to this, all universities offer employment support accommodations including activities such as resume inditing and interview workshops and internship opportunities which naturally avail students gain employment post study.”
The accounting bodies, in a joint verbal expression, verbalized they had “a number of programs in place at the local, state and federal level, and, through universities around Australia, aimed at fortifying international students”.
0 comments:
Post a Comment