Monash has campuses in Malaysia and South Africa and the courses are designed by the international teams as well as academic staff within Australia. "This gives us an international flavour within our degree structure. Africa is very important for the future and an Asian perspective is important also, because it is a critical market. The IT student is a global student -- for someone to have an international perspective is an important aspect and aren't restricted to only to work in Australia -- to have an understanding of international [IT] means they are well placed in these markets.

"We have an ongoing review; we address needs of industry and current technologies and are currently reviewing the Masters programs. There will be no major changes mid-year but there will be minor changes. We are trying to emphasize a few things; improve multi disciplinary areas, which is a critical aspect of IT.

"We will work with other areas, business science and medicine, reviewing subject offerings to provide a broad base of knowledge and common set of subjects that lay the foundations and promote student flexibility within their degree and crossing their degrees."

University of Tasmania Honours coordinator Jacky Hartnett said it offers a one-on-one research component with students and staff members. Members of staff work with their 'expert' areas and offer students the opportunity to bid for their choice, Hartnett said. "Research topics are primarily computing but with an application area like marine science or in conjunction with the centre for spacial information systems or our collaborating partner in Switzerland.

"We try to adapt to what is coming in the future and always had an interest in mobile computing. Because of the [level of ] interest, we are running courses on imbedded systems in clothing, computing in context and the environment. We do have subjects on multimedia, data mining," Hartnett said.

"All Honours and masters students get their own computers, desk and workspace."

Uni offers software-specific courses

The University of NSW in conjunction with SAS Australia offers a second-year undergraduate course focusing on the management of large volumes of data using SAS software tools.

The course provides students with the skills required to manage large data sets using SAS and gives them the opportunity to participate in a work experience program and also sit for the SAS Base certification exam.

Melissa Cassar, SAS academic program manager, said, "Offering work experience is extremely important and we hope to place 50 students with customers across banking, manufacturing, telecommunications and government departments this year. We also provide an after-course service in helping the students find employment."

Sandeep Mane, 31, was one of many students to benefit from the course, said: "Not only did the SAS course give me the work experience I needed to get full-time employment they went the extra step and found me a job after I completed the course."

Abhijit Horem, who also secured a job - with Citibank - following his course, agreed. "The course and the SAS Institute give you ample assistance to make sure you have an excellent knowledge of SAS Base, providing a very solid platform to develop even further when entering the work force. It also gives a good grounding in the basic principles of programming, which has enabled me to learn other languages quickly on the job.

"You can also see how versatile SAS is in the workplace, such as linking some operations of other programs with SAS, or even when connecting to remote databases. The course gives you the skills to work effectively with other programs and is the back bone of understanding while the work experience gives you real life examples which are much more complex."

SAS courses were first offered at Queensland University of Technology and the program is expected to be launched in Melbourne mid-year.