Charles Sturt University welcomes the announcement by the Australian Government of a program to forgive students the cost of their university training if they work in remote, rural and regional areas upon graduation.

This scheme will only add to the attractiveness of studying and working in regional Australia, an option an increasing number of students and workers are pursuing.

Charles Sturt University has long been one of regional Australia’s most reliable pipelines of highly skilled, ready-to-work healthcare graduates. Our medicine and nursing students study alongside our comprehensive offerings in allied health who are also critical to the health outcomes of regional Australians.

In 2021, there were more than 2,400 students studying nursing at our network of regional campuses, while in the last five years alone we have graduated around 1,500 nurses.

This year we welcomed the first cohort to our School of Rural Medicine at our Orange campus. All students in that inaugural cohort come from remote, rural and regional areas, with more than 10 students hailing from the Central West of NSW alone. They will spend five years studying and undergoing work placements in regional, regional and remote Australia before starting and forging careers in those same communities.

There is no questioning the appetite from prospective students to study medicine and nursing in regional Australia. There were more than 800 applications through UAC to study in 2021’s first cohort at the School of Rural Medicine at Charles Sturt University in Orange. There have also been more than 900 offers accepted to commence studying nursing at Charles Sturt in semester one of 2022.

Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show the rate of potentially avoidable death increases from 91 per 100,000 people in the major cities to 136 in outer regional areas and 248 in remote Australia. As an anchor institution in regional Australia, Charles Sturt University will continue to train the skilled and committed health professionals our regional communities desperately need.

ENDS