After graduating from the University of Sydney in 2017, Cian Byrne spent eight years supporting final-year “capstone” projects for more than 750 students.

He now believes changes to the program mean current students may be missing important practical experience.

Capstone projects are designed to bring together classroom learning by having students solve real-world problems for real organisations.

When Byrne began, the university offered 28 capstones with companies including IAG, Alta, NearSat, AgriWebb, Brain Imaging, Thales, Data61, Geointeractive and MyStake.

University material at the time described capstones as “an authentic, project-based activity that relates to professional work in the field… Therefore, collaboration with the industry is an integral part of [students’] learning.”

Industry involvement attracted hundreds of students to projects Byrne helped build in computer vision, AI, autonomous drones and web development through roles with Robotics Masters Limited, Strong Compute, InSite Project Solutions and Winboard.

He estimates he spent more than $15,000 on software licences to support students, hired several graduates directly from the program and kept in touch with many others after completing a capstone himself during postgraduate study.

This year, he said, current students contacted him with concerns.

“They’re telling me ‘there’s no one here’ and no real industry partners involved,” Byrne said.

He noted that 34 of the 43 projects on the 2025 capstone list are run by internal Sydney University faculties rather than external industry partners.

“They didn’t invite anyone back to be part of the course in 2025,” Byrne said, “which I thought was surprising – and while I’ve been trying to get in touch with people about it, no one is interested in talking about this course anymore.”

The course handbook also signals a change. The COMP5709 description now says students complete an individual project “to carry out an individual defined piece of work with academics of our school.”

Concerns about graduate readiness

The shift comes amid wider debates about intellectual property rights, the push for paid placements and companies cutting budgets.

Dr Basem Sulieman, a former Sydney University capstone coordinator now working as industry capstone liaison officer within the UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering, said industry involvement is central to capstones.

UNSW runs capstones for more than 3,000 students annually with partners such as Atlassian and NSW Health.

“If you want to enrich students’ learning, and make them ready for industry jobs, this is a good option,” he told Information Age, noting that “in the age of AI, I see this as one of the most authentic ways to make sure students work on real problems.”

“We really appreciate what the industry partners bring for the students,” he continued, because it “gives them the opportunity to work on real industrial projects, interesting emerging technologies and problems that enrich their learning.”

Concern about graduate preparedness is already widespread.

A 2023 Employer Satisfaction Survey found nearly 20 per cent of IT graduates felt their degree did not prepare them for work, while an AIIA survey reported 49 per cent of businesses believed graduates were not ready for employment.

That’s no surprise to Byrne, who said that without working in real firms “there’s not really any incentive for students to do any work” on projects that will never see the light of day – and that students ultimately suffer because they don’t know how to work in a team.

“It was surprising and shocking how much worse [his last students] were than the previous cohorts that I’ve worked with,” he said, “because they’re just missing out.”

The issue, he added, wasn’t their software skills but “more the softer skills that the capstone unit used to teach them around communicating, working as a team, problem solving as a team, and communicating with someone who is not an academic.”

“What’s being missed by not having this unit functioning as it used to?”

Can industry placements still work without industry?

Work-integrated learning placements have long been common – 451,263 students took part in 2017 – but universities faced challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic and criticism of unpaid placements.

ICT enrolments have also declined as faster and more flexible alternative training pathways gain popularity.

The University of Sydney says its program still offers practical learning.

A spokesperson told Information Age more than 36,000 “unique work integrated learning student experiences” were delivered last year.

The School of Computer Science is running 86 capstone projects this semester, including 37 affiliated with the university.

These “provide students with the opportunity to apply their course learning in a practical way that contributes to professional growth,” the spokesperson said.

While many are “more research-oriented involving stakeholders within the University working on product development and discovery,” they added, “all are live challenges which require students to engage with stakeholders outside the core teaching team.”

“Projects are scoped to ensure that students learn to navigate the complexity and competing demands they will encounter early in their future careers.”

Other programs are also gaining popularity, such as the Engineering Sydney Industry Placement Scholarship (ESIPS) that provides a $22,000 scholarship to high-achieving students that complete a rigorous application process that is more like a job interview.

Recipients “are embedded at the company, working there; they’re at the company all day,” explained Sydney University School of Computer Science senior lecturer Dr Jonathan Kummerfeld, who will supervise four ESIPS students this year.

“It is completely driven by the industry partner’s needs,” Kummerfeld – who also served as an internal industry ‘client’ for capstone students last semester – told Information Age, “and then it’s a conversation about how to apply research ideas to address that.”

“In my mind the capstone is less about industry and more about taking the concepts they’ve been learning in different subjects – project management, programming, and more specialised skills – and tying them together.”

While participating in ESIPS, by contrast, “the students don’t have anything else distracting them, so they’re 100 per cent focused on the project – and the companies are very eager to get their projects fill and get students working on them.”