Career Outcomes
Career outcomes for graduates are an important measure of post-graduation student success. While career outcomes do not tell the full story of what students learn or gain from a university education, they do tell a compelling story about what students do with their knowledge and experience once they leave the institution. SMU takes career outcomes very seriously, and we have multiple measures of student post-graduation outcomes and success.
The Office of Institutional Planning and Effectiveness has two primary systems for gathering information about SMU graduate career outcomes. The first, and most important measure, is our SMU Graduation Census, which gathers information about SMU graduate’s “first destination” outcomes within six months after graduation. The results of SMU’s graduation census are available on the Graduation Census page. These results are also reported to NACE (The National Association of Colleges and Employers).
The Graduation Census results ascertain and report the number (and percentage of students) who report a positive career outcome within six months of graduation, including full-time employment, part-time employment, acceptance into a continuing education program, military service, or volunteer service. It also gathers and reports the number of students who are still seeking employment, and reports average salary information for the university’s graduates as a whole, and by school.
The university-level report is available to the public through the public-facing Graduation Census dashboard page. A more granular report, with important disaggregation, is available, through single-sign on, to SMU stakeholders.
The Graduation Census dashboards are updated annually in the Fall.
SMU has also partnered with SteppingBlocks…
Steppingblocks is a data and analytics engine that provides workforce and educational outcome insights on over a 100 million people in the U.S.
Steppingblocks uses a combination of Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, these aggregated sources power both our Digital Career Counselor (the student-facing career planning platform) and our Graduate Insights dashboards (Graduate Outcomes and Graduate Explorer). SteppingBlocks has approximately 100,000 SMU graduates in the system, along with current position, career trajectory, and relevant skills the students have cited in their CVs, job applications, and Linkedin profiles.
Information about student access can be found here.
Information on how to request staff/faculty access can be found here.