Graduate Employment Survey

 We needed to know how our students fared. So for the first batch of undergraduates, we tracked them down personally and we knew them by name. We called them, we found out what they did and how they were doing. In fact, we are (still) in touch with some of the first batch of graduates. You know, we meet them on the road while they are doing so well these days.  So we tracked them because we wanted to know how they were doing. We don't have longitudinal studies, which actually maybe Alumni (office) might want to do this. (It would be good to find out): How they started? Where did they go? What helped them? And what were the success factors? Where have they been? So probably that would be something (we could do going forward)

At the end of the day, we wanted to see where our students went. What did they do? What is the market for them? What distinguishes them from the others? It was because we wanted to know. That's why we tracked the first batch of graduates. I think as we grew, the Ministry of Education said, hey I want to know too: - Not only your university but every other university, And to then make it (the information) public. It was in our interest to let the communities, the larger community, know that SMU students have done well and they are in demand. People (employers) like the SMU hires. And they (our graduates) have gone places. I think that's an accolade for the kind of education we provide in SMU.  It was important to let people know how our graduates were doing. And I think for these few years the Ministry had (introduced), instead of every university doing their own and you can't compare (data), they now have a joint graduate employment survey (annually). That means same questions are being asked, same time periods (used) and (using the) same format for presenting your data and (for) reporting.  So it's standardized across the universities now.