Opinion
When the Universities Accord talks about aligning higher education with workforce needs, the conversation usually turns to teachers, nurses and doctors.
But there is another workforce challenge quietly emerging across regional Australia: veterinarians.
Across the country, veterinary practices in rural and mixed animal settings are struggling to recruit and retain staff. The issue is not simply the number of graduates entering the profession. Increasingly, it is about where veterinarians are trained and whether the current system is producing graduates for the places that need them most.
Veterinary shortages are not evenly distributed. They are most acute in regional and rural communities – the same communities that sustain Australia’s livestock industries, support export markets and form the frontline of the country’s biosecurity system.
Regional veterinarians monitor livestock health, identify emerging disease threats, certify animals for export markets and respond during floods, fires and other emergencies. Yet many regional practices report long-standing vacancies and growing workload pressures.
The underlying challenge is one of distribution.
Across the health professions, decades of workforce research have shown that training location strongly influences where graduates choose to practise. Students who study and train in regional settings are significantly more likely to build their careers there.
This insight has reshaped medical workforce policy over the past two decades through rural clinical schools and regional training pathways.
Veterinary education, however, has largely remained anchored in metropolitan models.
Historically, veterinary schools in Australia have been built around large university-owned teaching hospitals and farms, typically located close to capital cities. These facilities are expensive to operate and centralise clinical training in metropolitan environments.
As the Universities Accord considers how funding, regulation and workforce policy can better align with national needs, veterinary education is a clear example of where training models and workforce outcomes are closely linked.
If most veterinary training occurs in cities, it should not be surprising that many graduates gravitate toward urban practice.
A growing number of universities are now exploring a different model – one that reflects the realities of the profession.
Instead of concentrating training in a single university hospital, regionally embedded programs use networks of veterinary practices, wildlife hospitals, agricultural organisations and government agencies to deliver clinical education.
Students learn in the same environments where workforce shortages are most acute: mixed animal practices, livestock production systems and community-based veterinary services.
Southern Cross University’s new veterinary program in Lismore is one example of this approach. Rather than replicating the traditional metropolitan teaching hospital model, the program is being built around a distributed network of regional clinical partners across Northern New South Wales and southeast Queensland.
The aim is simple: train veterinarians in the environments where they are most needed.
The broader point, however, goes well beyond any single program.
If the Universities Accord is serious about aligning higher education with workforce needs, veterinary education deserves to be part of that conversation.
Addressing the shortage will require more than simply increasing student places. It requires reconsidering where training occurs, how universities partner with regional industries and how governments support clinical teaching beyond metropolitan campuses.
In medicine, the expansion of rural clinical schools dramatically increased the number of doctors practising in regional Australia.
Veterinary education may now be approaching a similar moment.
Because if regional veterinarians are essential to protecting Australia’s agricultural industries, safeguarding biosecurity and supporting rural communities, the real question is not whether Australia needs more veterinary training.
It is whether we are training veterinarians in the right places.
Jon Hill is Executive Dean of Science and Engineering and Associate Professor Rowland Cobbold is Professional Program Director of Veterinary Medicine at Southern Cross University.