Assessing alumni outcomes

Abstract

Evaluative statements from alumni have legitimacy with both internal and external stakeholders. Thus, alumni studies can provide valuable evidence of institutional effectiveness and lend themselves to both locally designed and commercial survey instruments for data collection.Assessing Alumni Outcomes J. Fredericks VolkweinColleges and universities customarily survey their graduates in order to collect subsequent education and career information and to cultivate charitable giving and volunteering. As early as the 1930s, leading colleges surveyed alumni to track their professional degree attainment and collect information on workforce issues and employment (Pace, 1979). During the remainder of the twentieth century, the purposes of alumni research multiplied and proliferated across the full range of institution types (Pettit and Litten, 1999).In recent decades, institutions of higher education increasingly view their alumni as valuable sources of both information and financial support. Alumni offer important perspectives for evaluating academic programs and student services and are often used in student recruitment and mentoring. Alumni giving now occupies a prominent position in the modern strategic plan. In the past twenty years, more and more campuses have used alumni surveys to assess the impact of the collegiate experience on student cognitive and noncognitive development (Cabrera, Weerts, and Zulick, 2005). The standards of most regional and specialized accreditors now call for outcomes evidence and using assessment feedback for educational and administrative improvement (Volkwein, 2007). Moreover, colleges and universities are beginning to incorporate feedback from alumni in performance and accountability systems (Borden, 2005;Ewell, 2005). These trends also appear to be developing in some European countries (Weerts and Vidal, 2005).

Developing a decomposed alumni satisfaction model for higher education institutions

“…In recent years, higher education institutions increasingly treat their alumni as sources of valuable information and financial support (Volkwein, 2010). Accordingly, researchers are using alumni surveys to assess their college experience (Gaier, 2005;Pettit, 1991).…”

Modelling Students’ Experience Towards the Development of Alumni Involvement and Alumni Loyalty

“…Alumni studies are useful not only to assess institutional effectiveness but also to aid institutional planning and revenue generation. Alumni are important sources of information and support, and alumni studies should occupy a prominent place in the institutional research portfolio [3]. The first objective of this study is to reveal the relationship between students' experience in the university and their intention to involve when they become the alumni for the university.…”

Desiging the Pathways of Engineering Alumni Research Survey (PEARS)

“…While we have largely focused our dissemination efforts on School of Engineering faculty, chairs, and administrators, we are also planning to share our findings from the survey research as well as the deployment logistics to broader audiences such as alumni associations, career centers, and possibly institutional researchers. By soliciting their input and feedback on our findings we hope to maximize the utility and value of alumni research (Volkwein, 2010).…”