Ishita Shah, Master of Professional Accounting graduate. The Australian labour market continued to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021. Southern Cross University, however, saw a rise in overall undergraduate employment rates, according to new national data on employment outcomes.
The Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), part of the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching program funded by the Federal Government, surveyed more than 127,000 recent university graduates in late 2020 and during 2021.
Southern Cross University saw undergraduate overall employment rates rise in the annual report with more than 88 per cent of recent graduates employed in 2021, placing the University in the top 10 nationally. Additionally, approximately three-quarters of recent Southern Cross graduates were employed full-time in 2021, with the University also ranking in the top 10 for this category. The median salary for Southern Cross undergraduates rose to $67,100 in 2021, above the national median of $65,000.
For postgraduate coursework degrees, the Southern Cross University graduate median salary was $104,000, significantly higher than the national median of $89,700. The postgraduate coursework employment rate for Southern Cross was 87.8 per cent, higher than the national mean of 84.9 per cent.
On a national scale, employment rates for undergraduates from regional or remote areas remained higher than those from metropolitan areas. The full-time employment rate for regional/remote graduates was 74.3 per cent compared with 67.5 per cent for metropolitan graduates. The overall employment rate for regional/remote undergraduates was 87.4 per cent compared with 84.2 per cent for metropolitan recent graduates.
Manager of Careers and Employability at Southern Cross Leanne Baker said ranking in the top ten universities in Australia for undergraduate and postgraduate employment is a great thing for students to know. “We’re a regional university but we look after our students and our students do really well as graduates,” Ms Baker said.
“What you find for Southern Cross is our students are not just numbers. We know our students, the staff know the students and the staff go that extra mile with their contacts and with the support we give our students to help them achieve their goals.”
The highest paid undergraduates from all universities in 2021 were working in Dentistry and Medicine with $100,000 and $76,000 median full-time salaries respectively, followed by Social Work ($72,600), Teacher Education ($72,000), Engineering ($70,000), Rehabilitation ($67,000), Law and Paralegal Studies ($66,800), Health Services and Support ($66,500), Computing and Information Systems ($65,500), Nursing ($65,200) and Psychology ($65,000).
