However, I strongly urge you to talk to BIT students from UTS and UNSW, and get a better feel for it. Its not all fun and games. In fact, many BIT students burn out early due to the immense work load (the course is almost the same as the non-scholarship version except for the industry components, but the time allocated is only slightly longer).
The other thing too is that the scholarship system is not *free* money to you. Rest assured, that most of the contributing firms not only break even on their investments (the students) they usually make a great ROI because you will spend upto 6mths doing a $50k P.A job for a paltry $10k (and don't forget there are no leave/sick entitlements so a $50K salary usually presents an internal cost of anywhere between $70k-90K depending on the firm cost structure). So students come away feeling used and undervalued, which is unfortunate because most of these students are good enough to be architects, CIO's and the like and they are forced to do pretty low-grade programming or lab assistant roles.
However, the upside is obviously the names you have on your resume and the fact that you're a scholarship student, can make a telling difference in terms of the jobs you can apply for, but given that today the sydney and melbourne markets are grossly over-supplied and there are many people significantly more industry experience walking around, I don't know how much a scholarship would actually mean up against an experienced candidate.
Furthermore, the contributing firms are mostly giants like IBM, PWC, etc. And you will get a feel of IT as it is like from within a mammoth organisation, which is fairly different from small startuups and service providers between 30-100 people. Don't let the atmosphere and organisational culture of some large firm crush your passion for IT.
Think hard about your decision, this isn't just a clear cut case of a win-win situation, there are costs involved.
Jason.
Brenton Fletcher wrote:
Hi folks,
Does anyone have an opinion on the UTS Bachelor of Information Technology?
It is a totally scholarshiped course that you can transfer into from other
institutions. It has an industry component. I was wondering if it ties you
to specific employers with special conditions or anything like that? I am
currently studying RMIT subjects via OLA.
Brenton
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