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Co-operative Employment Program

Work-Ready Brochure (PDF 228KB)

ACS Foundation - Advancing ICT Through Scholarships and Research

Scouts Australia - Victorian Branch

The Co-operative Employment Program is an integral component of the Bachelor of Business (Business Information Systems) degree. All students, both local and international, get the opportunity to spend their third year in industry, applying their course knowledge whilst developing practical IT and business skills.

We view this as the year when industry and academia come into partnership to help develop young IT professionals. The students are bright, enthusiastic and eager to apply the new technology they have learned.

This program has been running for over 20 years, and has included hundreds of firms from large corporations to small businesses. It provides outstanding benefits for employers and students alike, as evidenced by past students’ Testimonials and its continued strong demand.

Examples of Employment Tasks

Our Business Information Systems students can be and have been employed to undertake a wide variety of projects. Some of the many examples include: provision of product, system support and consultancy to clients and end users; programming; designing, maintaining or extending GUI and database systems; help desk/customer service for IT systems; analysis, design and maintenance of computing systems (application or systems software); systems administration, support, or installation on PCs and networks (OS and NOS), web page design, creation of user documentation and help systems.

Placement Calendar

There are two placement periods per year, each beginning after a semester’s examination period. During their year in industry, students work as normal, full-time (i.e. no study) salaried employees at a competitive rate. Towards the end they need to write a Professional Business Report on their learning experiences.

If the relationship works well, at the end of the Co-op year, employer and student can come to an agreement about continuing work (full or part-time) and studies (full or part-time), and/or an offer of work after graduation. Otherwise the student returns to studies.

Other Schools

Many other Bachelor Degrees in the Business Portfolio also incorporate a year of co-operative education into their programs. For more information on this, or for general Co-op information, please visit the Work Integrated Learning page.