management, behavioural economics, digital marketing and data analytics are among the courses in high demand, suggesting they are areas where the jobs of the future will lie.
Ingrid O’Brien, academic chair of several business courses at Murdoch University, agrees the pandemic is influencing postgraduate course choice. “People see the impact around data, artificial intelligence,” O’Brien says. “We certainly see a growth in the numbers of people needing to be not only digitally literate, but able to manage and interpret data.”
QUT offers a graduate certificate in strategic digital compliance, covering digital communication skills applicable to social media, data analytics, artificial intelligence and visualisation, and a digital MBA for future digital leaders. “That has become much more acute over the last seven years and it’s continued in the post-pandemic world,” he says, noting the COVID pandemic has challenged long-held assumptions about career goals, and business students now want not simply to work, but to have an impact.