There are hundreds of vocational courses on offer at colleges in Australia and New Zealand, in a wide range of subjects. The amount of choice may seem daunting at first but Study Options can help you select the best options for you.
This section outlines some things you want to consider when choosing your course and helps you to identify the colleges you may want to apply to. The What can you study? page shows the different colleges offering courses in your subject area. We only list them by subject area as there are so many! So contact us for up-to-date course lists and detailed descriptions.
Where to start...
When you are choosing your college course, you should make sure you have a very clear idea of what career you would like after the end of your study. Vocational courses are very specialised and teach skills related to a specific job or industry. It is not easy to become a plasterer if you have just completed a diploma in hotel management! So, you should set out to study a course in an area that will keep you interested for the rest of your working life.
Australia and New Zealand lead the world in training for certain industries and, if you want to work in one of these, there simply isn’t a better place to study. One great example is hospitality and tourism. Both countries have an excellent reputation and ever-growing industry in this field, so doing a course in Australia or New Zealand will give you the opportunity to absorb and benefit from the skills and knowledge behind the reputation. Find out more on the best place to study.
For some professions, you will also need to ensure that the course gives you the right level of qualification to perform the job that you want. For example, you can work in nursing with just a diploma, but if you want to become a fully registered nurse, you would need to ensure that you have completed a bachelors degree. In other subject areas, there is also a distinction between where the necessary qualifications can be gained - e.g. To become a veterinarian, you would need to study veterinary medicine at university, but you could work as a veterinary nurse after studying a vocational course in college. Find out more on professional qualifications here.
If you're interested in a career that will enable you to travel the world and find work almost anywhere, then a course that enables you to enter work with specialised, transferable skills could be for you. Have a look at the worldwide opportunities section for some ideas.