September 2, 2025
Australian higher education keeps growing: total enrolments rose 3.2% to 1,600,563 students in 2023, including 409,249 onshore overseas students (source: Department of Education, Key findings from the 2023 Higher Education Student Statistics, 2024). Every cohort adds to the alumni pool a careers service and alumni relations team must keep engaged. At the same time, undergraduate full-time employment fell from 79.0% in 2023 to 74.0% in 2024, the sharpest drop across study levels (source: QILT, 2024 Graduate Outcomes Survey national key findings, 2024). Because that figure is published and benchmarked, the pressure to show active support into work is measurable and public.
The alumni pool grows with every graduating cohort. Higher education enrolments reached 1,600,563 in 2023, with domestic enrolments of 1,076,027 rising again to 1,086,789 in 2024 (sources: Department of Education, 2023 Key findings, 2024; Department of Education, 2024 Key findings, 2025). Graduate outcomes are measured nationally through QILT's Graduate Outcomes Survey, run about four to six months after completion, which is the sector's core evidence base for whether a degree leads to work (source: QILT, Graduate Outcomes Survey, 2024). For an alumni network, the constraint is rarely the size of the audience, it is access to genuine, still-open roles to place graduates into.
Spacewalk gives your institution a private, branded alumni job board, so your team spends its time engaging graduates rather than trawling job boards.
Build your branded Spacewalk job board and invite your talent community in minutes
Whether you choose to stream roles automatically, invite employers or post them yourself they are automatically matched to your talent pool
Track applications, placements and community engagement from one reporting dashboard
Unlike generic job boards, Spacewalk gives you a branded, private or public jobs marketplace your talent actually trust, with sourcing, matching and reporting running automatically in the background.
Privacy coverage is not uniform across the sector. Most Australian public universities are not covered by the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988; they are governed by the relevant state or territory privacy legislation, with the Australian National University and private providers being the exceptions that fall under the Commonwealth Act (sources: OAIC, State and territory privacy legislation; Macquarie University, Privacy Act 1988). Spacewalk itself, as a private organisation, operates under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles.
Marketing roles and opportunities to alumni also engages the rules on direct marketing. Where the Privacy Act applies, Australian Privacy Principle 7 governs use of personal information for direct marketing and requires a simple opt-out in every message, while commercial electronic messages by email or SMS are governed by the Spam Act 2003 (source: OAIC, Direct marketing guidance). Roles should only ever be matched to genuine, employer-direct vacancies rather than passed to third-party aggregators. This is context, not legal advice.
This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer story. An Australian university alumni team stands up a branded job board and invites its graduating cohort before final results. Instead of emailing job links, staff watch an employer-direct feed match each graduate to live, relevant roles, and see application and interview activity by discipline. When the institution asks for evidence of employability support, the team exports landings by cohort rather than assembling screenshots at year end.
With graduate-level data. Spacewalk tracks registrations, board usage, applications, interviews and landings by cohort, so your team can show what happened to graduates rather than reporting engagement activity alone.
Because the roles are curated and employer-direct rather than re-listed from public platforms. Each graduate sees verified, active vacancies matched to their discipline, seniority and location, which a generic board cannot offer.
Yes. Your alumni community gets its own branded board, so the experience carries your institution's brand rather than a generic job site.
From an employer-direct stream of verified, active roles with direct apply links, matched to each graduate's discipline, seniority and location. Your team can also post roles or invite employers to post, but the vacancies are not scraped from job boards or aggregators.
No. Right-to-work verification stays with the hiring employer. Spacewalk connects graduates to live vacancies and tracks their progress.
It depends on your institution. Most public universities are covered by state or territory privacy law rather than the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988, which applies to the ANU and private providers. Direct marketing to alumni also engages Australian Privacy Principle 7 and, for email or SMS, the Spam Act 2003.
Spacewalk supports alumni networks and careers services worldwide, including alumni career platforms for UK institutions, alumni job board software in the United States and alumni careers platforms for Canadian institutions.
Explore Spacewalk for Australian university careers offices, Australian professional associations, Australian employability programs and Australian skills bootcamps.
