Undergraduate student career and study choices are known to be heavily influenced by parents, family, schools, and ‘modelling’ within students’ formative environments. Institutions with a strong regional focus, such as Western Sydney University, often situate themselves with meeting a complementary focus on satisfying the desires of student and community learning and career interests, and meeting the needs of regional economic and industry development. A recent CSIRO study “The Geography of Australia’s Digital Industries” (2023) found that employment in digital industries is predominantly in the east and north of Sydney, meaning that students and graduates of the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences based in Western Sydney may face a choice of commuting long distances to a place of employment, moving out of the region, or working locally in a field not related to their studies. This project explores students’ motivations, anticipations and expectations for study and work in fields that will take them ‘away’ from their home communities.

De-identified survey responses exported from Qualtrics.

Please contact the author Nicholas Sheppard ORCID 0000-0003-1404-0137 to discuss nediated access to the dataset.