About the free in freelance: communication industries and work integrated learning at two Australian universities

Ongoing and secure employment is increasingly difficult to attain in the Australian media and communication industries. In its 2013 report Experience or Exploitation? The Nature, Prevalence and Regulation of Unpaid Work Experience, Internships and Trial Periods in Australia, Australia's national workplace relations tribunal, the Fair Work Commission (FWC), found the Australian media and communication industries to be prolific in their use of unpaid work place experience. The report featured a survey of students from the metropolitan University of Technology (UTS) Sydney to understand how journalism students viewed internships. The University of Newcastle (UoN) is a regional university and has a higher than average rate (27 per cent compared to the national average of 16 per cent) of students from low socio-economic backgrounds. The researchers sought to compare and contrast expectations around work-integrated learning (WIL) and found the experience of students from a regional university differed from the experience of students from a metropolitan university. The research found the increasing demand of employers in the media industry for work-ready graduates, along with a desire and aim of universities to promote and embrace WIL, provides a number of questions that beg further inquiry. These questions relate to the concept of a mutually beneficial relationship guided by a framework that underpins much thinking about internships, work experience and WIL. Such a framework needs a more complex and developed understanding of student expectations and desired outcomes pertaining to gaining experience in the workplace