JOB prospects for University of Western Australia graduates held firm during the global financial crisis, but it wasn’t as easy for graduates from the state’s other universities to find employment, according to the latest edition of The Good Universities Guide.
The Good Universities Guide is Australia’s foremost independent non-government rating of the nation’s tertiary institutions.
The guide rates universities across a series of criteria with a view to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each institution.
The 2011 guide found students graduating from Edith Cowan University, Curtin University of Technology and Murdoch University rated it harder to find full-time employment than in the 2010 edition.
The graduate outcome figures are based on the Graduate Destinations Survey of 2007 and 2008 graduates conducted by the Graduate Careers Australia in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
At UWA, the proportion of job-seeking graduates who were successful in securing full-time employment within four months of graduating was high enough to put the university among the top 20 per cent of Australia’s tertiary institutions in this category.
UWA vice-chancellor Alan Robson said the rating was very welcome as it again confirmed the high quality of UWA’s staff and students and the university’s excellent results from teaching and research.
“UWA consistently ranks highly across any number of higher education measures,” Professor Robson said.
Edith Cowan University ranked the worst in the 2011 edition, falling back from three stars in 2010 to just one star.
According to the survey’s ranking system, one star puts the university in the lowest 20 per cent of institutions in this category.
Edith Cowan’s ‘positive graduate outcome’ rating also fell from three stars to one when considering the proportion of graduates getting a job or enrolling in further study.
Employment outcomes at Curtin University also fell back from three stars in the 2010 guide to two stars, while Murdoch University also fell from four stars to three stars.
Graduate outcomes at Notre Dame were also given a five star rating, but the university only had 7,061 students compared to Curtin University, which had 40,833.
The guide also gave UWA a five-star rating for research grants and research intensity placing it in the top 20 per cent research institutions in Australia.
Curtin rated four stars in these categories.
Edith Cowan University and Notre Dame rated the worst of the state’s universities in these categories with just one star. However, Edith Cowan and Notre Dame were the only WA universities to rank five stars for overall graduate satisfaction.
