decision-making at German higher education institutions. The project was initially planned for two or three years (pilot phase), but has since evolved into a long-term cooperation. So far, about 80 German higher education institutions have participated in the project.

In the pilot phase of the project in the winter semester 2007/08 nine higher education institutions conducted graduate surveys. A total of 15,200 graduates of the 2006 cohort were contacted. The first large-scale survey was conducted in the winter semester 2008/09, in which 47 higher education institutions participated. In the winter semester 2011/12 the fifth survey took place: 45 institutions participated, 83,000 graduates were contacted and 38,000 graduates responded to the questionnaire. The experiences from previous surveys are very positive: The response rates were 49 % and 50 %, respectively, far above the response rates of comparable studies. The sixth survey is currently running. For the first time, all Higher Education institutions of a whole federal state (North Rhine-Westphalia) and single Austrians institutions take part in the project. This means that 170,000 graduates are invited by their former higher education institution to participate in the survey.

To ensure that the results of graduate surveys at the individual higher education institutions are comparable, all participating institutions use a commonly developed standardized core questionnaire. In addition, the institutions can choose from a set of standardized additional questions (so-called "optional questions"). Core questions, optional questions and self-developed, institution-specific questions form the individual questionnaire of each higher education institution the cooperation project. As an additional option to the core questionnaire, the participating institutions developed specific questionnaires for highly state regulated subjects like medicine, teacher studies and law. Additionally, there is a specific questionnaire for PhD graduates.

The invitation to participate in the graduate survey is sent through mail or e-mail by the institution - INCHER-Kassel receives no addresses of graduates from the participating institutions. Each institution checks itself the quality of the available addresses and updates them. Three reminder actions are intended.

The graduate surveys are usually conducted as online surveys. INCHER-Kassel runs these online surveys for each of the participating institutions on a server in the University of Kassel. In addition to the online survey the graduates have the opportunity to participate in the survey using a paper questionnaire. INCHER-Kassel provides the higher education institutions with a print-ready layout of the questionnaire and takes over the data collection of the paper questionnaires. In addition to the data acquisition INCHER-Kassel acquires the plausibility check of the data and data cleaning.

After completion of the data correction, coding and analysis INCHER-Kassel will compile a table report for each higher education institution with basic frequency analyses of the results and further special analyses (individual table report). It includes all individual results sorted by relevant groups (field of study and/or groups of field of study, gender, employment status, etc.). Additionally, a complete table report with cross-institutional overall results (overall table report) which includes the basic frequency analysis of all results and further special analyses, sorted by relevant groups (field of study and/or groups of field of study, gender, employment status, etc.). Each higher education institution will receive this overall table reports and can compare it to the results of their own graduate surveys.

The Member institutions are accompanied in each step of the survey. For each project cohort four workshops and one national conference are organized by INCHER-Kassel. The following overview gives an impression of the tasks and steps in each project phase. In brackets the respective workshop is listed: