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It is widely recognised that a lack of work experience can impede university students seeking graduate employment and that many tertiary students face significant barriers in securing work experience. Drawing on existing research, this article analyses these barriers, and considers the consequences of this inequity for affected individuals as well as for broader Australian society and the economy. The article proposes various ‘do-able’ reforms to the regulation of work integrated learning in tertiary education and student-finance schemes which would go some way to reducing these barriers.

This article extends current understandings of regulation of tertiary education, in particular, work experience undertaken by tertiary students, by contributing a ‘law in practice’ analysis of the effect of the existing regulatory regime on work integrated learning practice within Australian universities. It considers how Australian universities are responding to, implementing, or overlooking the formal regulatory framework regarding work experience placements. The analysis is informed by data gathered in a series of 68 semi-structured interviews conducted with individuals from 15 universities around Australia and provides unique insights into how Universities are acting as regulators in the broad sense of the word. Understanding the enforcement of educational regulation is important, because it is the only national tool directed to ensuring work experience opportunities afford real learning which will facilitate skills development and increase future employment opportunities and are equitable and safe for student participants.

More and more young Australians are undertaking periods of work experience as a part of their study or independently to facilitate their transition into employment. They are often subject to a significant power disparity compared to others in the workplace, and need the placement to finish a course, and/or to get practical experience, connections and industry references. This makes them vulnerable, including to sexual harassment and sex discrimination. However, whether prohibitions of such conduct apply to them is a complex question, which this article explores.

This chapter explores the common assumption that work experience undertaken by students as a part of their tertiary education is better regulated and of higher quality than ‘open market’ opportunities. It considers the educationally focused regulation of internships in Australia, England and France and contributes a ‘law in practice’ analysis of the effect of the existing regulatory regime on work integrated learning practice within Australian universities. Informed by data gathered in a series of 68 interviews conducted with individuals from 15 universities, the chapter considers how Australian universities are responding to, implementing, or overlooking the formal regulatory framework regarding work experience placements. This analysis contributes unique insights into how Universities are acting as regulators in the broad sense of the word and allows preliminary conclusions about the efficacy of educationally focussed regulation to be drawn.

This concluding chapter assesses the extent to which international and regional labour standards currently apply to internships (or traineeships), as well as the potential for the creation of new standards that might regulate the quality of these arrangements and extend appropriate labour and social rights to interns or trainees. We briefly review the different types of state regulation that have been developed or applied around the world, and examine the role that non-state regulators (such as employers, trade unions, educational institutions and professional associations) can and do play. We conclude by outlining some principles that can usefully guide the regulation of internships and help respond to the policy challenges explored throughout this book.

The purpose of this book is to bring together experts from around the world in labour law, employment relations and labour economics to explain what we know about the use and value of internships (or traineeships as they are sometimes called), and to discuss how they are or should be regulated. This introduction offers some preliminary explanations for the growth of internships, and highlights some of the ways in which both scholars and policy makers have sought to analyse and respond to that development. It explains how the rest of the book is structured and briefly summarises the contributions in it. The introduction concludes by saying something about the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had so far on internships and what it might mean for their use in the future.

Background: COVID-19 can result in a severe viral pneumonia, with high reported mortality rates in patients requiring mechanical ventilation. There is controversy as to whether established therapeutic approaches to acute respiratory distress syndrome are optimal in this condition, and numerous novel therapies have been used, often outside the context of randomised trials. In addition, longer term quality of life outcomes associated with COVID-19 are as yet unknown. The aim of this case series is to describe demographic, physiological and outcome data of patients with COVID-19 admitted to our intensive care units who were treated according to evidence-based guidelines for acute respiratory distress syndrome.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the records of all patients admitted to intensive care units in our institution with COVID-19 between March and June, 2020. Physiological and laboratory data were recorded at baseline and daily until intensive care discharge or death. Quality of life was assessed at a virtual post-intensive care follow-up clinic around 10 weeks after ICU discharge.Results: 45 patients with COVID-19 were included, 37 (82.2%) of whom were male, with a mean age of 55 years. 42 (93.3%) of this cohort met criteria for acute respiratory distress syndrome at time of admission. Clinical management was consistent with evidence based institutional guidelines introduced for acute respiratory distress syndrome. Median length of intensive care stay was 14 days. The intensive care mortality rate was 8.9%. Functional and psychological morbidity post intensive care was significant: 45.2% of respondents had at least moderate impairment of mobility and 35.5% described at least moderate symptoms of anxiety or depression at the time of follow up.Conclusions : This case series demonstrates low mortality in a cohort of patients treated according to an established evidence-based approach for acute respiratory distress syndrome. However, COVID-19 survivors have a marked functional and psychological morbidity impacting quality of life following ICU admission. The therapeutic goal in the future will be to achieve similar survival outcomes while minimizing the significant morbidity associated with COVID-19 related critical care admission.

At the heart of modern labour law are two related questions: 'What is the purpose of regulating work relationships?' and 'who is the subject of that regulation?'. In recent years, scholarly debates about these issues have interrogated the adequacy of traditional concepts for the global era.

[Extract} The hypothesis that the university academic must have both a research and a teaching component to their work is under attack. At one stage it would have been said that every academic is by definition a researcher – that a research component is fundamental to the ethos of a tertiary institution and, specifically, the development of the teaching criteria for assessment and the setting of levels within that assessment. After all, how could one be comfortable that the grade for a particular piece of work was set at the appropriate level unless the assessor was knowledgeable in the research area? How could a marker confidently conclude that a student has applied the law correctly to a problem based scenario if they were not an active researcher in the relevant area of law? Universities were not to be seen as a college of teaching experts, but as experts teaching and disseminating the fruits of their research labour. It was the research component that allowed an institution to be its own benchmark and standard setter.