Rural employment: A get-go for recent nursing and allied health graduates?

OBJECTIVE

To explore the pathways recent nursing and allied health graduates have used to gain initial employment in regional and rural Tasmania.

DESIGN

A mixed-methods design comprising an online survey and semi-structured interviews.

SETTING

Tasmania, Australia.

PARTICIPANTS

Eighty-four recent nursing and allied health graduates from 18 disciplines.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Location and pathway to initial employment, job search strategies, number of job applications and length of time taken to gain employment.

RESULTS

Participants obtained their qualification from Tasmania or mainland Australia. Rural-origin graduates were more likely to work in rural locations after graduating. Graduates sought initial regional or rural employment to be close to family; to avail themselves of more job opportunities and less competition from other graduates; and for adventure. An inability to secure metropolitan jobs led others to seek opportunities in regional and rural Tasmania. Graduates that used multiple job search strategies and who were more flexible regarding location and field of initial employment experienced fewer challenges gaining employment.

CONCLUSION

For recent nursing and allied health graduates, securing initial employment can be time-consuming and labour-intensive. Being flexible, persistent and willing to adjust expectations about work location will help. Rural employment might provide the right get-go for a professional career. Understanding the pathways recent graduates have used to gain initial rural employment can help better connect graduates and prospective employers.

Remaking higher education for the post‐COVID‐19 era: Critical reflections on marketization, internationalization and graduate employment

This Special Issue was conceived and developed following a series of international conferences held in Asia, with a particular focus on critically reflecting upon higher education development in the region from broader social and political economy perspectives. Some of the papers in this Special Issue were selected from presentations in the East Asia Social Policy (EASP) Research Network Conference successfully held in Taiwan in 2018, while others were chosen from international events held at Lingnan University in Hong Kong presenting critical reviews and reflections on internationalization, marketization and graduate employment of higher education in Asia. This introductory article puts the discussions of the selected papers in this issue in context, with critical reflections on the key issues being examined in these papers. The Special Issue is published when the world is still confronting the unprecedented global health crisis resulted from the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article discusses the higher education development trends in Asia through the massification, diversification and internationalisation processes in transforming the higher education system and examines how these development trends are affected by the COVID‐19 crisis.