Uneven outcomes: NESB students' experiences of employment placement programs

Employment placement programs serve various purposes within degree programs, but are widely believed to improve employment outcomes. This paper will explore issues relating to the participation of recently arrived and second phase NESB students in work placement programs, including the perceptions of both staff and students of the barriers to participation that NESB students experience and interventions which appear to assist these students to participate successfully. Evidence from two Victoria University work placement programs will be examined. The first, the Faculty of Business's Cooperative Education program, is an optional program designed to assist Business Faculty students to maximise their employment potential through one year's experience in the workplace between second and third year. The second, the School of Nursing clinical placement program, is a compulsory program which forms part of the Nursing degree.

Data obtained from interviews with staff and students from Business and Nursing will be used to explore similarities and differences between these two programs in terms of the experiences of the NESB students involved in them. Through this exploration, the paper will examine the extent to which participation in work placement programs presents similar barriers to NESB students as does participation in the labour market for NESB people in general.