Rural
13 August, 2025
Longerenong College Open Day draws hundreds from across states
WITH a strong motivation to "cultivate careers in agriculture", Longerenong College marketing and business development coordinator, Brad Barber, said he was thrilled with last Sunday's Open Day success, especially considering the distance many prospective students were prepared to travel to check out what the school has to offer.
"We had between 200 and 250 people come through from all over Victoria, also South Australia and even New South Wales," he said.
"It normally would open at 10am (but) we had people turning up from about nine – which is encouraging; they were excited to see things."
Mr Barber said the day's setup had been a little different this year, with the event trying to showcase "a bit more of the various things you do, as well as the accommodation and the living on campus and the connections you can make – and it went really well".
"This year we had displays in our data centre, what we call our Innovation Centre," he said.
"We had agronomists – one of our agronomy trainers had a display in the soil labs. We had one of our partners on site, RAGT – (they) took tours as well. We had our wool classing trainer doing talks in the wool classing room. We had show steers doing exhibitions with our show steer students.
"We had the students taking personal questions on life at Longerenong from their perspective, so the students and the prospective students and parents could get an understanding of their side of things. We also had four auditorium sessions going through all the courses – I guess you'd say it was quite exciting."
The event included a history display of the college, “because we've been going since 1889,” which was included in a campus walking tour run by students.
He said one thing that surprised many students was the level of attainment that could be achieved in only a relatively short time.
"A lot of students were really surprised at how many qualifications they can get in only two years," Mr Barber said.
"These days, our qualifications are only one year long each, and you can study two qualifications per year side by side.
"So a lot of students and their parents were surprised that they could effectively walk away from two years at Longerenong and enter the workforce with four qualifications.
"They were quite excited by that."
Asked by The Wimmera Mail-Times about the challenges of running courses to prepare graduates for a rapidly changing agricultural industry incorporating new technologies, Mr Barber said the college was constantly "getting feedback on what businesses and the industry want from our graduates, and looking to incorporate and work that into the curriculum".
"Our trainers are very well-connected, and it's quite common to have visitors on-site presenting to the students, whether that be in the latest spray technology or whether that be the latest computer technology, sensor technology, or whatever the case may be."
He agreed that a lot is going on in the space.
"We're constantly looking at, 'What do we need?' and 'How do we tweak our offerings?' to make sure we're considering the direction of agriculture."
The Open Day also had a dedicated room to present the many short courses offered, such as chemical handling, chainsaw operation, side-by-side vehicles and pest control, which were popular with local businesses and government departments.
Mr Barber said all this, along with the Vocational Education and Training Delivered to Secondary Students (VDSS) for Years 10-12, kept the college busy even during term breaks.
"We have fantastic relationships with the surrounding schools, which is brilliant," he said.
"I field inquiries from a long way away, even into South Australia, looking to do school camps with us during school holidays or when our students aren't on site."
Mr Barber said the flexibility of the college to "choose your own adventure" with a two-year commitment, arranging subjects like wool classing, agronomy, or agribusiness in whatever order suited them, was very attractive to many visitors, and he was pleased with the number of course sign-ups they got after the day was over.
"We don't push for them to sign up; we just want to show them," he said.
"But there's been quite a bit of interest already. I'm just actually sitting down to have a look at my emails now ... quite a lot of students have applied already straight from the Open Day, which is fantastic.
"So we're excited about a solid year ahead and a new cohort coming through. It's exciting to get them into the industry and help them in their journey for their careers, whether that be directly on farm or whether that's involved in the broader agricultural business, because a lot of our students don't come from farming backgrounds; they just have a passion to be in agriculture."
General manager, Jacinta Langdon, echoed the sentiments, saying she was "very pleased with the turnout".
"We had a lot of things on offer at the same time so people could experience and see lots of different parts of the college," she said.
"We wanted to make it more conversational, so that people got to talk to trainers and students rather than listening to us talk all day. It was more about having a conversation."
She was also thrilled with the positive responses from attendees.
"I mean, that's all I could ask for," Ms Langdon said.
"It's not really how we thought the day went; it's how the people that attended thought that it went."
Mr Barber said the college was always open for personalised tours for people who were unable to make it on the day.
"If anyone wants to come and have a look and just on their own with us, we're quite happy to accommodate that," he said.
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