As part of the European Graduate Tracking Initiative of the European Commission, EUROGRADUATE addresses the need for comparable and high quality measures and data on graduates of the European education systems. The specific goal of EUROGRADUATE is the creation and implementation of a regular, comprehensive, comparable and longitudinal European data collection on higher education graduate. The project pursues to monitor educational pathways of graduates, how they evaluate their study experiences, and how that translates into their professional careers and lives as European citizens.
The interest in comparable data on higher education graduates within the EU is growing as higher education is continuously gaining relevance for the welfare and prosperity of individuals and society as a whole. It is expected to accelerate economic growth and innovation, to foster employability while decreasing unemployment, as well as to promote tolerance, civic engagement and social inclusion. However, it remains unclear, whether the higher education systems of European countries meet these expectations and how the individual and social relevance of higher education can be improved. Amongst others, there is a lack of comparable data on Europe’s higher education graduates to monitor and analyse who the graduates are, what they do and how higher education has helped them in their careers and activities. International comparisons and data could, thus, facilitate the identification of ways to improve higher education and deliver knowledge on contextual factors influencing graduates career development, such as labour market conditions and structure or education system characteristic. Accordingly, there is a growing recognition of the importance of measuring the quality and outputs of tertiary education within the EU by means of graduate studies.
Against this background, the following goals for EUROGRADUATE have been specified:
- Development and implementation of a comparable and high-quality European graduate data collection
- Activation, development and alignment of national and international monitoring structures and resources to work towards a full-scale European graduate study
- Involvement and integration of as many European countries as possible, with the goal to involve all countries of the European Economic Area (EEA)
- Establishment of the EUROGRADUATE brand
The project is being handled by an international consortium of experienced organisations that are specialized on conducting large-scale international survey projects in the field of higher education. It is coordinated by the German Centre for Higher Education Research on Science Studies (DZHW), see “individual projects” for more information.
