Re e iiThe REFLEX project is a joint collaborative project of the following institutes The REFLEX project is funded by the EU 6th Framework Program (Contract No: CIT2-CT-2004-506-352) and several national funds. The project involves partners from sixteen countries (Austria, Belgium/Flanders, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) and is coordinated by the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market from Maastricht University. For more information, see: http://www.reflexproject.org.iii
AcknowledgementsThe REFLEX project (acronym for 'Research into Employment and professional FLEXibility') is a large scale international project that has been carried in 16 different countries. It focuses on the demands that the modern knowledge society places on higher education graduates, and the degree to which higher education equips graduates with the competencies to meet these demands.In the project three studies were carried out: (1) a country study highlighting the main structural and institutional factors that shape the relation between higher education and work in the different countries involved in the study; (2) a qualitative study on graduate competences in the knowledge society; (3) a survey of higher education graduates in these countries (for more information, see www.reflexproject.org). The results of the first two studies have been published separately (Koucky, Meng and Van der Velden, 2007;Arthur, Brennan and De Weert, 2007) 1 . The current report presents the general findings of the third study, the survey among graduates.A project like this cannot be carried out without the effort and involvement of many colleagues. In the different countries the following persons participated in the project (the coordinator is always mentioned first, the rest in alphabetical order): Austria (Paul Kellermann, Helmut Guggenberger and Gunhild Sagmeister), Belgium/Flanders (Walter van Trier, Kathleen de Rick), Czech Republic (Jan Koucky, Petr Vorisek), Estonia (Tiina Annus, Liis Kraut), Finland (Osmo Kivinen, Jouni Nurmi), France (Jean-Jacques Paul, Lisa Bydanova, Julien Calmand, Philippe Maalouf ), Germany (Ulrich Teichler, Oliver Bracht, Marek Fuchs, Harald Schomburg), Italy (Roberto Moscati, Angelo Di Francia, Michela Frontini, Michele Rostan, Matteo Sgarzi, Marco Vinante), Japan (Keiichi Yoshimoto, Yuki Inenaga, Naoyuki Ogata), the Netherlands (Jim Allen, Han van Dongen, Timo Huijgen, Paul van der Kolk, Hans Rutjes, Egbert de Weert), Norway (Liv Anne Storen, Clara Arnesen), Portugal (Virgilio Meira Soares, Armando Rocha Trindade), Spain (Jose Gines Mora, Lourdes Badillo Amador, Amparo Gómez López, Daniel Martinez Aceves, Jose María Nyssen González, Luis Vila), Sweden (Kenny Petersson, Daniel Samuelsson), Switzerland (Sabina Schmidlin, Katrin Schönfisch, Andrea Witmer), United Kingdom (John Brennan, Lore Arthur, Rod Hick, Brenda Little, Alan Woodley). These people were responsible for the national surveys and contribute...