UNE’s Bespoke Course model gives students the freedom to custom build a course consisting of two, three or four units from traditional degrees, which they can combine into short online courses. Students can select units from a single degree, or they can mix and match units from across different degrees entirely.
UNE’s Bespoke Courses were created in direct response to market research that clearly identified the need for such flexibility among working adults.
The University has also recently added a new Bespoke Graduate Certificate and Bespoke Graduate Diploma to its range.
Director of Marketing, Anthony Smith, oversaw the extensive research which UNE conducted nationally.
“It showed that a very large number of people across Australia know that they urgently need to do more higher education, but they can’t find courses that fit them and protect them in the way they need,” he said.
“We have learned a great deal about the education working adults are looking for in this new era. One part of this is that they are looking for smaller elements of study and knowledge that allows them to get the content they specifically need, to really protect themselves in a workplace that’s changing rapidly.
“In particular, they are mindful of technology that is coming along and taking big chunks of people’s jobs – artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics.
“There’s plenty of data around showing how radically people’s jobs are going to be affected, and they know it’s coming.
“Many people – particularly those who already have a degree – realise they need to respond faster than doing an entire postgraduate degree allows them to. They need the freedom to access just the parts a degree they need right now.
“This is because the changes are affecting them at work, either right now, or they’re about to happen, and they need to be able to respond them.
Mr Smith said one of the advantages of being a marketer at UNE was the University’s tradition of listening to what students wanted rather than telling them what they needed.
“Professor Phillip Kotler said authentic marketing is ‘not selling what you make, but knowing what to make’,” he said.
“Typically, universities have only offered students degrees structured in the way the university wants to teach them.
“Here there is a long-standing philosophy dating back to our inception, of focusing on what students want, and removing barriers so they can have it.
“Our first Vice-Chancellor, Robert Madgwick, said the University shouldn’t be dictating to working professionals what it is that they need – they’re adults, they know what they need.
“This guiding philosophy is why UNE has pioneered so many important innovations from distance education in the 1950s to Bespoke Courses 60 years later.
“So at UNE I have the freedom and solemn responsibility, unique among marketers in higher education, of going to great lengths to understand precisely what students are looking for and helping ensure they get it.”
For more information on UNE’s Bespoke Courses visit www.une.edu.au/bespoke.
