IN PROGRESS
Availability of information about graduates/alumni
As far as we can tell, University, as a whole collects, very little information about graduates' careers.
The Careers team do an annual Graduate Destination Survey, which has a generally low response rate. The only information from the survey we can access is the the job titles and general industry/workplace type that responding students reported they were working in. These jobs represent students' first jobs or early careers.
It's possible that some sections of the University attempt to collect more information about where their alumni end up, but we haven't heard of any yet and likely won't until we go and talk to people in schools.
This means we're unable to provide statistics about things like:
- how quickly Victoria students find employment
- how much Victoria students make
- how many Victoria students work overseas and where they work.
Some more general facts we might be able to get from the Faculties and Schools, e.g.: cool places students went on to work (Weta! Google!), students who have ended up in notable roles (Prime Minister! Governor General!)
External data sources
Some external data is good, some is based on bullsh*t low response rate surveys that may paint a misleading picture that comes back to bite us.
It's difficult to get to the original source of a lot of data available about various careers from Careers New Zealand. Salary information, for example, tends to come from professional societies and associations, many of whom don't publish their findings or research methods.
Some do, eg. the Law Society puts out an annual report on legal salaries based on a survey with a high response rate.
Good statistics are:
- recent
- relevant
- impressive (this is marketing, after all)
- sourced at the origin
- able to be updated OR won't go stale
Good facts:
- are relevant
- are impressive
- can be sourced at the origin or in multiple reputable places
- able to be updated easily OR won't go stale
- fun!
Risks
If we produce pages that are hard to maintain, the university may not be able to keep them up to date