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The 2020 survey, the latest wave of the so-called "Génération" surveys carried out by Céreq to analyse the professional integration of young people in France, is pursuing its objective of knowing and understanding the first steps into the labour market of young people who left the education system in 2017. By alternating observations at a given date and analyses of longitudinal data, more than a hundred indicators make it possible to update, consolidate or contradict perceptions of a given generation's entry into the labour market.

There are a number of European surveys focusing on learners, citizens and graduates. This webinar is an opportunity to discuss how European surveys operate and how they have addressed data protection issues. The experiences of existing European surveys can offer opportunities to learn and think about the organisation of the next European higher education graduate survey.

A special issue on “European Higher Education Graduates – Formation, Acquisition, and Suitability of Skills” edited by Katarina Wessling, who is a member of the EUROGRADUATE consortium, will be published in March 2023 in Research in Comparative and International Education. It is dedicated to provide an international -in particular European - perspective on skills with a specific focus on higher education graduates. It particularly aims to provide room for research on less studied European countries to create a more complete picture of skill utilisation. Additionally, the special issue is geared towards methodological issues in surveying skills on higher education graduates in different national contexts and in an internationally comparative perspective. In this context, at least three of the seven articles featured in the Special Issue base their results on data from EUROGRADUATE 2018.

Ensuring comparability of Likert-style items across different countries is a widespread challenge for authors of large-scale international surveys. Using data from the EUROGRADUATE pilot survey, this study employs a series of latent class analyses to explore which response patterns emerge from self-assessment of acquired and required skills of higher education graduates and how these patterns vary between eight participating countries. Results show that countries differ in the number of classes which most accurately fit the data structure. The effort to overcome national specifics by combining the levels of acquired and required skills into a single measurement of skill surplus/deficit reduces heterogeneity of patterns across countries and slightly increases comparability, yet the notion that respondents understand the scale in the same way across countries (measurement invariance) is not supported.

AlmaLaurea Interuniversity Consortium recently conducted its annual survey on graduates’ profile and occupations in Italy. According to the results, the Covid-19 crisis had severe consequences on the university experience, but it did not fully affect the 2020 cohort. Mobility abroad for study and training increased in participation numbers and the report shows to what extent these experiences affected mobile and non-mobile graduates. Among graduates interviewed one year after graduation, the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on the employment opportunities, while at five years after graduation the effects of the pandemic on the indicators analysed appear marginal.

The Irish Graduate Outcomes Survey is a nationally representative annual survey of graduates from 23 higher education institutes (HEIs). It was released on 23 November 2022. It is the fourth iteration of the report, following the class of 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021. The class of 2019 was not surveyed in 2020 due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The response rate for this national survey was just over 50% and sees record graduate employment in Ireland with 81.9% of graduates in employment 9 months post-graduation.

The Department of Higher Education (DHE) of the Cyprus Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth has received funding from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for the development and implementation of a National Graduate Tracking Mechanism along with a National Employers’ Skill Survey. In the context of the RRF project, Cyprus will also fund its participation in two waves of EUROGRADUATE survey (2022 and 2025).

The Croatian national research team announced the implementation of the field phase of the EUROGRADUATE survey in Croatia at a national event hosted by the Ministry of Science and Education in December 2022. In connection with the event, a national EUROGRADUATE website was also launched.

The Austrian EUROGRADUATE survey conducted by Statistics Austria reached a response rate of 55%. An overview of the sampling strategy, the process of contacting the respondents and the weighting shows how such a comparatively high response rate has been achieved. The article also shows how different register data will be used for weighting and analysis of survey data. Finally, there is an outlook on the potential of linking survey and register data for the purpose of analysis.

The European pilot survey on higher education graduates EUROGRADUATE 2022 has successfully started the data collection in all participating countries (launched between October 2022 and January 2023). The data collection ends in February 2023. Experiences and challenges will be discussed thoroughly to provide recommendations on how to best implement a future common European higher education survey. To stay up to date, subscribe to the EUROGRADUATE Newsletter following the URL below (first issue in January 2023). You can also view and download the master questionnaires used in the 2022 pilot survey from the EUROGRADUATE website.

The European Parliamentary Research Service recently published an overview on the development of graduate tracking at European level.

The first Peer Learning Activity of the European Network of Graduate Tracking was organised by the European Commission, in cooperation with the Support Service, in October 2022. It was hosted by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in Prague, Czech Republic, and gathered 30 participants, including national graduate tracking reference points from 16 countries and European-level stakeholders and social partners.