The 2019 Graduate Outcomes Survey – Longitudinal (GOS-L) measures the medium-term outcomes of higher education graduates based on a cohort analysis of graduates who responded to the 2016 Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS). Prior administrations of the GOS-L had instead relied on the Australian Graduate Survey (AGS) for ‘establishment year’ data. The GOS-L is an ongoing part of the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) survey suite.

Participation in the GOS-L was open to any higher education institution which participated in the 2016 GOS. In total, at all study levels 75 institutions chose to participate, including 40 Table A and B universities and 35 non-university higher education institutions (NUHEIs). The GOS-L achieved an overall 55.9 per cent response rate, representing 42,466 completed surveys, up from 43.3 per cent and 39,744 completed surveys in 2018.

The following report provides high level results from the GOS-L 2019.

Main finding:

The 2019 GOS-L confirms the findings from previous reports, that, since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), it has taken graduates longer to successfully establish themselves in their careers. In 2016, 72.6 per cent of graduates who completed both the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) and Graduate Outcomes Survey (Longitudinal) (GOS-L) were in full-time employment, four months after completing their course. However, three years later in 2019, the proportion of the same cohort of graduates in full-time employment had risen to 90.1 per cent which represents an increase of 17.5 percentage points from 2016-2019 compared to the difference of 22.1 percentage points from 2015- 2018.