My sister's a midwife and didn't do the La Trobe course, but went to a different institution. The thing that gets me about this whole arrangement is that you guys are expected to be able to miraculously magic up some pregnant women, who are willing to have you check in with them and learn from their experience, when you've all got super limited networks in the industry and so on, but they make it a compulsory component of your degree. The experience itself is fantastic and I think is a great idea. My sister reports having learned a tonne and it probably is really good for motivation, application to the studies and so on, but my issue is that they make it compulsory but offer you no support in lining it up. I've done a couple of degrees at Melbourne based supposedly reputable (G08) institutions who have the same requirements for other degrees. I've fortunately not had to deal with myself but have found the concept rather dubious. The Software Eng at Monash, for example: they admit a set amount of students each year and charge them constantly growing fees for the first two to three years, but to graduate these students need a specific amount of experience. This in itself is obviously an awesome thing, to qualify for a certified engineering degree of any kind you need that experience. However, my issue with this is that each year they do a round of interviews and such that line up students with employers and the number of students that successfully get the required placements out of that is a fraction of the total people they admitted, and everyone else is expected to find alternatives which are often unpaid. I'm not sure of exact number but I understand its in the realm of only about 50% of the students that they actually assist in any way to line up the required experience to graduate. Also the whole internationally student situation is quite dubious in many of these situations as they're only allowed to work 20 hours so its I don't know how they work the IBL program for example, where they work full time for six months. I think they fudge it as some kind of up front scholarship and all the hours worked is study. I suppose alternatively internationals struggle to get placed because of visa issues... Not quite sure of the details on the international student situation. In summary though: they accept tuition and all kind of other exorbitant fees from students for two to three years, knowing that there's an accepted percentage of those that they will refuse to/be unable to provide the means to complete a compulsory part of the degree required to graduate. Something about that seems commercially dishonest to me, to the level that it should be investigated by the ACCC. I'm aware of all the alternative points of view regarding preparing them for the competition of the job market etc, but when the accepted percentages of people they don't place are that high (it seems int he case of the midwifery course at La Trobe none of you get assistance with placement) I think it's fraudulent.