Graduate Destination Survey (GDS)

The Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) is part of the Australian Graduate Survey (AGS), an annual survey of university graduates developed by Graduate Careers Australia (GCA). The aim of the GDS is to determine the activities of graduates approximately four months after they completed a program at an Australian university. In particular, the survey asks whether graduates were in employment at the time of the survey, or whether they had proceeded to further study.

The scope of the GDS is all graduates who completed an undergraduate or postgraduate program at an Australian university in the previous year (e.g. the scope of the 2007 survey is graduates who completed their program in 2006). This includes both coursework and research graduates.

Two indicators from the GDS are used in the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund. The first indicator is the percentage of graduates who were in full-time employment, out of those graduates who were available for full-time employment (i.e. were either in full-time employment or seeking full-time employment). This indicator excludes graduates who were not seeking full-time employment (e.g. graduates in full-time study). The second indicator is the percentage of graduates who were in further full-time or part-time study, out of all graduates who responded to the survey.

Current data from the GDS are available in the Data Warehouse. The University of Adelaide’s results (including program level data) are available for the 2004 survey onwards, and national benchmarking results (for all universities) are available for the 2002 survey onwards. Commonly used GDS data from the Data Warehouse, such as the percentage of graduates in full-time employment or further full-time study, are also available in the Regular Performance Reports on the Strategy and Planning website.