# 第5節 Graduate Surveys around the World and the Case of Cooperation in Germany

Kerstin Janson(INCHER- University of Kassel)

The character and purpose of graduate surveys have changed substantively in the last ten years. Up to the beginning of the new millennium, graduate surveys were mostly an instrument of sociological or higher education research. The classical model of graduate survey is that a research institute conducts the survey centrally, using the Higher Education institutions as media to contact the graduates and to collect the returned questionnaires. Graduate Surveys conducted by and on the level of a single Higher Education were randomly up to the new millennium. Regular institution-wide Graduate Surveys could only be found at US-American Higher Education Institutions.

The increasing demands towards legitimization and justification as well as the growing managerialism of Higher Education in the last 10 years had an impact on the character and purpose of graduate surveys. They are no longer an instrument of social science research but rather an instrument of external legitimization and internal Quality Assurance. The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education formulates in its Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance 2005: "Institutions should ensure that they collect, analyse and use relevant information for the effective management of their programmes of study and other activities", in particular "student progression and success rates; employability of graduates; students' satisfaction with their programmes" (ENQA 2005:18). In reaction to these new external demands and the growing quality awareness inside of Higher Education Institutions a new model of Graduate Surveys emerges. Graduate Surveys are conducted in responsibility of the Higher Education institution. Instead of a representative sample all graduates of the institution are surveyed and the data is analysed on institutional and departmental level.

Higher Education Institutions around the world have reacted differently to the demand of conducting tracer surveys on institutional level. Four different approaches shall be exemplary presented here, of which the last one shall be described in depth:

☑ Tracer Studies as Multifunctional Approach– the Case of the Netherlands

Tracer Studies in Cooperation with the Labour Market – the Case of Italy

Tracer Studies as Indicator for Study Quality in Rankings – the Case of Australia

Tracer Studies conducted in Cooperation – the Case of Germany and Indonesia

## Tracer Studies as Multifunctional Approach– the Case of the Netherlands

The Netherlands have a centralized approach. Since 1998 the graduates of all thirteen Dutch Universities are surveyed approximately 1.5 years after graduation. Each university is responsible to contact its graduates and to collect the data according to nationally specified guidelines. Up to 2008 the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) at the University of Maastricht coordinated the survey, since 2009 the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) is the coordinating unit. A standard questionnaire – specified by VSNU - is used, but each university can add individual questions.