Graduate Employability Rankings announced at 11th QS – APPLE Conference 2015

THE Graduate Employability Rankings for 2016 were announced at the 11th QS – APPLE Conference held in Melbourne last week, which gathered professional leaders from all around the globe as they grappled with the challenges and opportunities of education in a globalised world. Stephen Clarke reports. 

The topic of global employability dominated a big part of the QS – Asia-Pacific Professional Leaders in Education (QS – APPLE) held in Melbourne last week.

For three days last week, delegates from universities around the globe gathered at Melbourne’s Convention Centre to swap perspectives and share ideas on how to meet the needs of the growing pool of global, nomadic students.

Speakers from as far away as Russia, Brunei and Saudi Arabia came to share – and brag about – their experiences in attracting and catering for international students. Every speaker finished their slides to a barrage of questions from the floor, and delegates also swapped experiences as well as best practice examples.

Richard Colbeck, the Australian Minister for Tourism and International Education, who was present at the conference, called for greater cooperation between Australian universities.

“Collaboration between Australian providers is necessary – we don’t need to be in all out war…there is an opportunity for creating an Australian brand,” Mr Colbeck said.

He was quick to highlight the figures that support the facts – 1.86 million international students educated in Australia since 2002 from more than 140 countries.

One of the more anticipated events of the conference was the announcement of the Graduate Employability Rankings for 2016.

The rankings list, still dominated at the top by US and UK universities, is starting to show developing competition from the Asia-Pacific region, with the University of Sydney ranked at 14 and Tsinghua University at 9. The full list is available here.

Coinciding with the QS employability rankings, Ibisworld, the global market and business researcher, has also separately released a special report focusing on the industries that are set to show the fastest employment growth figures in the next five years. According to the report, future industries worth keeping an eye out for include:

• Clothing retailing
• Physiotherapy services
• Meat processing
• Oil and gas extraction
• Private and government schools

For a deeper look at the information behind these predictions, you can check out the report yourself.