A/Prof Janie Busby Grant & A/Prof Amanda George (University of Canberra)

Title: Understanding Industry Demand for Australia’s Psychology Graduates

Abstract:

It is currently unclear where Psychology students can be employed after graduating, particularly those who exit at the 3-year degree; this impacts student recruitment, graduate satisfaction and employment outcomes. A UC- ANU research collaboration analysed more than five million job ads using Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to identify job roles suitable for psychology graduates, by establishing and exploring the impacts of underlying skills acquisition rather than traditional keywords. The analysis shows that graduates of the undergraduate Psychology degree have a wide range of unique skills and knowledge that are explicitly needed in variety of industries. This approach identified a wide range of jobs suitable for graduates straight out of the three-year degree, and also those jobs that would be a good fit for Psychology graduates after additional training or experience. Potential job roles spanned nearly every industry and included jobs where are Psychology graduates are unlikely to recognised as appropriate or be currently sought after. These findings can be used to support potential and current students and graduates, have impacts on curriculum development and assessment design, and inform the current debate around the social role of psychology education.

Bios:

Associate Professor Janie Busby Grant is based at the Discipline of Psychology, University of Canberra. Her research fields are at the intersection of cognition, robotics and mental health. She is the Psychology Lead of the Collaborative Robotics Laboratory at UC, leading an interdisciplinary team examining human-robot interaction and the implementation of autonomous embodied systems in health and aged care settings, with a focus on industry partnerships and applied projects. She has a long-standing interest in Psychology graduate outcomes and employment opportunities, and engages in substantial educational scholarship, including publications, presentations and practice-sharing nationally and internationally. 

Associate Professor Amanda George is a psychological scientist in the Discipline of Psychology at the University of Canberra. Her research focuses on alcohol use/problems and risky driving, especially among young adults. In particular, she focuses on modifiable factors that can be targeted to reduce harm. Amanda has also held numerous roles in educational leadership including of Program Director (Psychology and Counselling) and has been responsible for quality assurance processes, such as internal reaccreditation, curriculum renewal and teaching quality. She has established a program of peer exchange of teaching and learning adopted by the faculty and regularly contributes to working groups on learning and teaching matters and course advisory panels. Amanda is particularly passionate about supporting staff to adopt the four lenses of review when teaching and on helping to ensure provision of an outstanding learning experience for students, including focusing on work preparedness.