| November 27, 2009
John Ridge
Executive director of the ACS Foundation
RUST: Please start with an overview of the company.
RIDGE: The ACS Foundation was established by the ACS in August 2001 to raise funds for scholarships to support students studying ICT throughout Australia. Since then it has raised around $A25 million and has awarded some 1700 scholarships. Its main focus is Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) scholarships, which are similar to internships or cadetships, and enable the participants to gain relevant industry experience to complement their education and qualifications. It enables the partner organisations to "try before they buy" and helps ensure the students are work-ready and more experienced about what to expect when they graduate. From studies conducted in 2000 and 2001, it was found that around 47 per cent of graduates in Sydney and Melbourne changed jobs in their first 12 months, while 70 per cent of those who had participated in a WIL-type program were still with the same organisation after seven years.
RUST: Describe your objectives and successes?
RIDGE: Our objectives are to focus on the needs of three stakeholder groups -- industry, students, and universities, in that order. We want to provide industry with a more flexible approach to WIL that meets their needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. We also wanted to ensure that the benefits of WIL are recognised by universities, with academic recognition given to the students' qualifications and that a period of WIL should be mandatory in all ICT courses, if not all courses. Pleasingly, this is gaining increasing support from universities to the extent that recently a group of vice chancellors made a commitment to this direction. In the last financial year we increased the value of scholarships awarded by 10 per cent, which is a great result. We are awarding between 350 and 400 scholarships a year, and have just topped $A5 million of scholarships for the financial year, which is one year ahead of our strategic plan.
RUST: How do you attract sponsors?
RIDGE: We rely mainly on word of mouth referrals and networking to spread the word about our scholarship program (www.acsfoundation.com.au). We identify requirements for students from our partners and then endeavour to find suitable candidates from a range of.
RUST: What are your top priorities for the next 12 months?
RIDGE: To continue to grow the awareness of the ACS Foundation with both industry organisations and students. We continually need to source more quality candidates for our partners. We have some exciting new initiatives which will be launched over the next 12 months which will assist in this regard.
RUST: Where do you expect to see the foundation in five years?
RIDGE: I expect the ACS Foundation to at least double the number of scholarships in five years. I am a firm believer in the philosophy that if you are not growing and changing then you are going backwards, and we are always looking to new initiatives, while remaining focused on our primary aims and objectives.
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