Curtin Advantage Programme is now being offered nationally

Today’s employers are demanding work-ready graduates and despite many other demands on their limited resources, Australia’s universities are trying to deliver.

The problem is most traditional courses, apart from medicine, nursing and engineering, do not provide practical experience.

With little funding and only limited business support, what can a forward-thinking institution do?

Tracey Hodgkins, who developed the Advantage learning model, believes it may be the answer for institutions seeking to give their graduates the edge in a competitive marketplace.

Advantage is a program run as a company which offers students the chance to participate at many levels including as executives.

Every student who has completed the program has found a job.

Ms Hodgkins set up Curtin Advantage at Perth’s Curtin University after realising there wasn’t as much industry-standard practical experience in her business course as she wanted.

After five successful years and many awards and accolades, the program is now being offered nationally.

The program has won Young Achievement Australia state and national awards for its business plans, overall company success, innovation and marketing.

Also, Curtin Advantage students won the Students in Free Enterprise competition in Barcelona in 2004, making Australia the first country other than the US to win the SIFE World Cup in 29 years.

Ms Hodgkins’s personal credits include the 2005 Telstra WA Business Woman of the Year, the Hudson Community and Government Award and the Brownes Yoghurt Everywoman of the Year 2005 Award for Education.

Curtin University backed the plan Ms Hodgkins proposed in 2001, and since then Curtin Advantage has grown from a program involving 13 business students to a campus-wide option that has helped more than 5000 graduates.

The program is run through a not-for-profit company managed and staffed by student volunteers and overseen by expert personnel.

Up to 100 student volunteers work in the company’s various departments, including marketing, finance and IT.

Business units in the company develop and promote their own projects, recruit people to staff them and are responsible for their own performance. They must report upwards as with any corporate entity.

They can also tap into fully developed projects running both nationally and internationally.

The individual units offer internships that run on a four-monthly cycle with succession planning built in to hand over to incoming participants. After each cycle students can either stay with the project, swap to another for a different experience or graduate from the program.

Students also have the opportunity to apply for promotions in the company to management positions.

Each business unit has a board of business and community advisors made up of industry heads of various sectors.

Ms Hodgkin said having students working on real projects was one of the strengths of Advantage.

Projects students have worked on include an Innovation Centre and tourist monitor for Latvia, entrepreneurial education camps, competitions and events, and research and development with companies like Motorola.

“Research has shown that experiential learning is an extremely important and beneficial way of gaining knowledge,” Ms Hodgkins said.

“Powerful learning occurs through experiencing something firsthand, then reflecting on that experience. Advantage allows and encourages students to participate in everything, even making mistakes.”

Students often found it hard to get relevant work experience in industry due to confidentiality and other problems.
Ms Hodgkin, who has since completed her MBA and now runs Curtin Advantage in addition to her own training, development and consulting businesses, draws on her experience to advise students.

“Advantage is such a simple but effective program,” Ms Hodgkins said.

“Once a few basic elements are put in place it can easily be managed by just one staff member – the students do the rest, of course gaining management and many other skills along the way.”

For more information about participating in the Advantage system contact:
Tracey Hodgkins
CEO, Curtin Advantage
08 9266 3023
Email: t.hodgkins@curtin.edu.au