One hundred and fifty‐seven students undertaking counselling and therapy courses in 10 Australian universities were administered the Counseling‐Orientation Scale (COS) to collect information on relative counselling‐orientation preferences. The most prominent orientation overall was client‐centred with behaviour therapy least preferred, although this was not necessarily the case for indivdual universities. The pattern of results for the Australian sample was very similar to data from the American setting. Explanations for the results were discussed, and comparisons made with previous conceptions about the practice of counselling psychology in Au