Science, IT graduates face bleak employment prospects: Aust'n study

Graduates in science and information technology (IT) courses are struggling to find jobs, a pre-eminent Australian education study has found.

The Grattan Institute's "Mapping Australian Higher Education Report 2016" found that job prospects for science and IT students were bleak despite increasing demand in science technology, engineering and maths (STEM) disciplines.

The study found that, in 2015, only half of bachelor degree science graduates had found work four months after completing their degree, 17 percent below the average for all graduates.

Andrew Norton, higher education program director at the Grattan Institute, implored those young Australians thinking of studying science to reconsider their choice of course.

"Prospective students thinking about studying science need to know that a bachelor science degree is high risk for finding a job," Norton told The Guardian on Monday.

"Often students need to do another degree to improve their employment prospects."

The report, released on Monday, found that while prospects for science graduates increased over time, the employment rate of 82 percent after four years was still below the STEM average of 89 percent.

The "weakness in IT university education, and strong competition from a globalized IT labor force" was responsible for a third of IT graduates failing to find employment despite an abundance of available jobs, the report said.

Engineering students fared better than their IT and science counterparts with three quarters of new engineering graduates finding full time work within four months of searching.

Graduates with degrees in health, education and law had the best employment rate, all registering above 80 percent.

The Grattan Institute report also found that the average Australian man with a bachelor degree would earn 680 thousand U.S. dollars more over their lifetime than men without a degree. Endit