The WO-Monitor (WO is short for wetenschappelijk onderwijs or university education) was designed to serve a range of purposes on national and institutional level:

• Quality assurance (and increasingly accreditation)

• Alumni-tracking

• National monitoring of transition from higher education to work

• Study choice information for school-leavers (both at national and institution level)

• Input for labour market forecasting

• Scientific and policy analyses

Universities can use the results of the WO-Monitor for internal and external information purposes, for alumni policy, and for quality assurance. The universities receive a confidential report with detailed results per field of study. The results for the own university are compared with national results per field of study. The results for the own university are compared with national results for the same field of study, so that universities can easily determine the position of their own study programmes compared to the national average (ROA 2005).

Governments, public employment services, trade unions, employers' organisations, professional associations and sector organisations can use the national results to assist them in their education and labour market policymaking. The VSNU publishes a national report every two years, in which the labour market situation of Dutch university graduates is analysed. In addition, detailed results by field of study can be found on the VSNU website (ROA 2005).

## Tracer Studies in Cooperation with the Labour Market – the Italian Approach:

In Italy the AlmaLaurea Consortium of Universities uses an approach which is characterized by a strong cooperation with the Business Sector. AlmaLaurea was founded in 1994 which is supported by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research. 2011 the Consortium had 62 member Universities and covered around 76 percent of all Italian graduates. The AlmaLaurea system serves two purposes. On the one hand it contributes to the assessment of Italian Universities and on the other hand it fosters the transition of graduates to the labour market by offering an online job board for employers. At the time of graduation the graduates are asked to register in the online database and to participate in the survey. The graduates' answers are not anonymous but will be supplemented by university information about entrance mark, final grade, study length and age. The graduate is then asked if his or her online profile shall be public for employers. The AlmaLaurea database contains around 1.5 million graduate profiles which are regularly updated. On the one hand by the graduates themselves and on the other hand by regular follow-up surveys around 1, 3 and 5 years after graduation. The follow-up surveys are either conducted by phone or by web (Camelli et. al.).

The AlmaLaurea survey is partly financed by the fee, employers pay for membership and access to the database. AlmaLaure itself uses this enormous database for research and public reports. Results can be easily retrieved online by a variety of possible break options, which enables a comparison of institutions and departments. A third indirect function is, thus, a ranking of Italian institutions and faculties.

Each participating institutions receives a database to use for internal quality assurance. Additionally, each university gets two annual reports and can book additional services like marketing activities for its further education programmes. $ ^{1} $