Abstract:

Tracking the careers of fresh graduates has proved to be an internationally successful method of promoting communication between higher education and the labour market. Graduate career tracking programmes are empirical researches among university or college graduates aiming to provide information about the professional progress of graduate students, their opportunities on the labour market, as well as their feedback and evaluation of their degree course:

- Information on their former students' job finding experience, their status on the labour market, and the relevance of the skills they acquired provides essential feedback for universities and colleges, based on which these institutions can further improve their training programmes and services.
- Graduates' success in finding employment and the pre-requisites of success represent useful information for future students as for the career path they wish to pursue, and for choosing a degree course.
- Governmental organisations as well as institutions of higher education can benefit from the survey as an essential source of information when planning their training programmes.
- The findings of career tracking survey can also provide useful information for employers about the trainings at institutions of higher education.

The creation of a nationwide, centralised, continuously updated career tracking database took place in 2008 with the support of the European Union (project TÁMOP 4.1.3). The programme was managed by Educatio Public Services Nonprofit LLC in co-operation with the successfully applying institutions.
Educatio Public Services Nonprofit LLC is an organisation of the Ministry of National Development. Setting up GCTS in Hungary, the methodological support of the project, carrying out the related research and the publication of the results are the achievements of the research and management team of Education Nonprofit LLC.

According to the Higher Education Act of 2005 and 2011, every university and college in Hungary is obliged to conduct career tracking researches. In recent years, there have been several development projects of this kind; however, these have typically been isolated, unconnected researches adopting different methodologies, requiring different data processing approaches. These organisational and operational shortcomings have been addressed in 2008 by the central priority development programme "Systematic Development of Higher Education Services" funded by the EU, as well as by specific calls for tender for universities and colleges.

Keywords:

graduate career tracking, graduate follow up, higher education management, planning, evidence based policy, higher education policy.