Australia requires a skilled and diverse nutrition workforce to address healthcare challenges and improve population health(1,2). Despite growing demand, gaps remain in understanding nutrition career pathways, employment strategies, and the role of work-integrated learning. Existing research has largely focused on students, graduates, and employers(3), with limited insight from academics. The Undergraduate Nutrition Employability Education (UNEE) project—a national collaboration among academics from five Australian universities—aims to address this gap by exploring curriculum strategies that embed employability development in nutrition tertiary education. A mixed methods approach was employed, including an online survey conducted between June and August 2025 of nutrition educators from Australian universities (n = 31), in order to determine pedagogical approaches, barriers, and enablers of including career readiness in the curriculum, to inform future curriculum design.
Participants were coordinators of either a nutrition degree program (77%) or nutrition major coordinators/discipline leads, with more than half of the respondents having significant experience (10-20 years) in nutrition education. The most common career readiness elements included employability development (92%), work-integrated learning (WIL) (92%), career information sessions (85%), professional identity development (77%), and digital identity development (69%). Less commonly included initiatives were study tours (38%) and simulations (23%). Career readiness was primarily taught within subjects/units (48%) or as an extracurricular activity (29%). The most common time point for offering career readiness development was third year (49%) and within core subjects (47%). While all career readiness initiatives were deemed as important, professional identity development (85%), employability development (77%), and WIL (69%) were rated as extremely important. Career information sessions and digital identity were also rated as extremely important by 62% of participants.
Understanding the value that nutrition academics place on employability development, where it is embedded, and the curriculum strategies that educators use is important to knowing how graduates are being prepared to contribute to diverse food and nutrition challenges. Further, the barriers and enablers of employability development can guide the development of contextualised strategies to prepare work-ready graduates. Over half of our respondents said that teaching staff experience and passion for including career readiness was an enabler, but an overwhelming barrier was staff workload, and having time and space in the curriculum. Connections and partnerships with external parties were both a barrier for some and an enabler for other respondents.
There is substantial variation in career readiness initiatives across Australian nutrition courses, highlighting the need for a set of tools that enable educators to embed employability into bite-sized components throughout a degree. Such tools can help students progressively develop the skills needed to build and sustain momentum in their career readiness. Additionally, relationships with interested parties should be emphasised to provide advice on what is needed to prepare work-ready employees.