Swinburne: new Amazon degree builds on training collaborations with manufacturers

Swinburne University has credited training developed with manufacturers as leading to a new cloud technologies course with Amazon Web Services to begin next year.

The Australian Financial Review reports that the new, two-year associate degree with AWS is a higher apprenticeship-style course, with students earning money as they both study and work with the company.

Like its Industry 4.0 higher apprenticeship pilot developed with Siemens — which was recently extended with another intake next year — the course sits just below a bachelor’s degree, and can be extended into one.

Deputy vice-chancellor for research and enterprise, Professor Bronwyn Fox, said the course built on work with Siemens and brewer Asahi, and that companies have appreciated the innovation resulting from the smaller scale and resources of Australian universities. 

“Asahi came to us to solve a problem on their bottling line,” Fox told The AFR. 

“Japan is good at automation but we are good on integration.

“The Australian arm of many global companies are ahead of their home country on systems thinking and integration. Integration is just not a problem for us.”

Swinburne is a dual-sector (VET and university degree) institution, and as a university can self-accredit courses and beat delays that can run to years for vocation providers to get Australian Skills Quality Authority accreditation.

Picture: James Hamilton, Amazon Web Services

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