EUROGRADUATE

EUROGRADUATE 2022, running from 2022-2024, is the second phase of a European pilot survey of heigher education institution graduates running in seventeen European countries and building on EUROGRADUATE 2018, running in 2018-2019 in eight countries. The Czech Republic has already participated in the first pilot phase and now the European and national graduate surveys have merged.

• 17 participating European countries:

Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia

• Higher education institutions participating in the Czech Republic:
  • public higher education institutions except for two
  • 31 private higher education institutions
  • o one of the two state higher education institutions
• graduates surveyed in all participating countries:
  • graduates who successfully completed a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in the academic years 2016/2017 and 2020/2021
• graduates surveyed in the Czech Republic:
  • graduates who successfully completed their bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral studies in the academic years 2016/2017 and 2020/2021
  • part of the graduates who successfully completed their studies in the academic years 2017/2018, 2018/2019, 2019/2020
  • 2013-2017 graduates who were respondents to the „Absolvent 2018“ (meaning Graduate 2018) national survey and consented to be contacted again

EUROGRADUATE 2022 survey in the Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic, the European survey is combined with the national survey, which will reduce the burden on respondents and collaborating higher education institutions.

Data collectionNovember 2022 to 5 March 2023 (graduates of academic years 2016/2017 – 2020/2021 contacted by higher education institutions) and May 2023 (graduates who were respondents to the Graduate 2018 national survey and consented to be contacted again)

Participation in the survey is entirely voluntary for the respondents.

The primary aim of the research is to obtain data on the experiences of university graduates during their studies and the impact on their professional and civic life. The main topics on which graduates are asked are the characteristics of their study programme, skills acquired, educational pathways and modes of learning, international mobility, labour market outcomes, followed by political attitudes and political participation. Questions on some personal characteristics of the graduates, such as their personal and social background and health status, aim at a better understanding of the different groups of graduates.

Coordination in the Czech Republic: The Centre for Higher Education Studies, entrusted by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, is in charge of the project in the Czech Republic. Coordination with individual universities is essential, as they contact their graduates with a request to fill in the questionnaire via e-mail. The web application with the questionnaire was created by the company DATA COLLECT s.r.o. who will also participate in the data processing.

Scope of the project: compared to the European focus in the Czech Republic, the Eurograduate survey will have a broader scope, in addition to the extension to doctoral graduates (in which only some countries will participate) to include some graduates from the academic years 2017/2018, 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 in addition to the 2016/2017 and 2020/2021 graduates surveyed in all participating countries.

Above all, however, in the Czech Republic, compared to the European survey, we will also reach out to graduates who gave their consent to be re-surveyed during the national „Absolvent 2018“ (Absolvent means graduate) survey, thus also gaining information on how the experiences of university graduates evolve later on with a longer time lag since graduation.

Thanks for participation in the survey: we would like to thank all respondents for their willingness and time to complete the survey. We appreciate it very much. And we would like to thank them both by sharing the results of the survey as soon as they are available, and in at least a limited way materially. After the data collection is completed, we will draw three respondents who agree to this who will receive a gift voucher from Alza in the amount of CZK 5,000 and thirty-five who will receive a gift voucher in the amount of CZK 1,000.

Main objectives of the EUROGRADUATE 2022 survey at European level

Both the first (2018-2019) and the current second (2022-2024) phase of the pilot survey aim to develop and implement a regular, comprehensive, comparable and longitudinal European survey on higher education institutions graduates. It is part of the European Commission’s Graduate Tracking Initiative and implements the recommendations of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Graduate Tracking on the gradual development of a European graduate tracking mechanism. EUROGRADUATE aims to eventually cover all countries of the European Economic Area (EEA) with a comparable graduate survey.

Currently, the main objectives of the EUROGRADUATE 2022 survey at European level are:

• Develop tools and processes for the collection of comparable data in the participating countries
• Support the participating countries in all steps of preparing and conducting the data collection as well as in processing, handling, and analyzing the data.
• Coordinate the data collection in the participating countries
• Process the data and prepare an international micro-level data set covering all participating countries
• Analyse the data and prepare a comparative synthesis report on key results across all topics of the EUROGRADUATE survey
• Disseminate project results, publications, and outputs, including a scientific use file of the data
• Assess the project organisation, data collection, and data quality and derive recommendations and proposals for the further development of the European graduate survey

If you want to know more about the project, you can find more details, including the final reports from the initial phase of the pilot survey (national country reports, the report evaluating the implementation of the survey and the project summary report) and a number of other documents on the EUROGRADUATE website.