Everyone’s a winner
AUTHOR: Mike Butler and Chris Sheedy DATE: 07.09.07 ISSUE 1, 2007
Scholarships deliver enormous value to the recipients and the wider world of business. Meet some of the high achievers at the Australian School of Business in 2007.
When UNSW graduates Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar were named Overall Winners of the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards in 2006 and winners of the Young Entrepreneur Of The Year category, it was an honour for them and also for the scholarship program at the Australian School of Business, of which they were a part. To be recognised by an award series held in 40 countries was a tremendous boost for their software company Atlassian, and the fact that their education and initial industry experience was gained as UNSW Co-op Scholarship recipients at the Australian School of Business illustrates the real value of scholarship programs.
From left: Jason von Stieglitz, Sam Wills, Mary Ann Kennan, Delia Richards, Lloyd Tomlin, Charles Guang Yu Lai, Rony Stephen, Victor Virski, and Stephanie Pow. |
"Our success is ultimately judged by the quality of our graduates by prospective employers and recruiters," says Jane Westbrook, Director, Alumni & Community Partnerships at the Australian School of Business.
“The quality of our teaching and learning is demonstrated through our graduates' successes. That is why our scholarship programs are so important. Put simply, we want to attract the very best students and produce the very best graduates."
The broad range of scholarships within the School, several of which are now sponsored by Atlassian, includes undergraduate and postgraduate offerings, from Bachelor to Masters, from MBA to PhD. Other scholarships aim to take away social, economic, cultural or other barriers that can stand between promising students and a top-class education. Scholarships are funded by individuals (many of whom are alumni), philanthropic trusts and foundations, and many are underwritten by the corporate sector.
"There's a war for talent in the corporate world and our graduates are in high demand, especially our high achieving graduates," Ms Westbrook says. "We work closely with our corporate partners to identify their specific needs and match those with our own objectives. Through supporting scholarships, organisations can raise their profile amongst the most talented students, participate in selection panels and build a relationship that often results in graduate internships and job offers."
The scholarship programs are about building partnerships with business, fast tracking careers, holding on to great talent, giving top students international exposure and grooming for future success. The Co-Op scholarship, for instance, offers tax-free income as well as structured industrial training throughout the course. Research scholarships involve recognition of excellence and financial assistance for current research projects.
"Donors and sponsors work with us to identify the specific areas that they wish to support," Ms Westbrook says. “For example, we have scholarships that support female students; those who are located in regional or remote areas; indigenous students or scholarships that provide support to study accounting, human resource management or marketing."
Companies such as Goldman Sachs JB Were, who target Honours students for graduate positions, support a number of scholarships at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Honours Excellence scholarships provide a powerful incentive to some of the brightest and best students to stay on in the School to undertake fourth year Honours.
"Thanks to the generosity of one of our most distinguished alumni, we will soon announce a new initiative to provide a range of scholarships for people working in the not-for-profit sector," Ms Westbrook says.
Most exciting for certain scholarship winners and their future employers though, is the chance to exchange with an overseas institution, to meet leading students and academics from other parts of the world and come home with new ideas and a variety of valuable contacts.
"The Farrell Family Foundation [of ResMed fame] has supported an exchange scholarship to send a student from our school to Babson College in Boston, ranked number one in the world for entrepreneurship education," Ms Westbrook says. "That opportunity came from alumnus Paul Farrell, who himself won an exchange scholarship to Babson College. He wanted someone else from the school to have the same experience that he did."