In 2013-16, the European Commission, concerned by regional skills gaps, increasing graduate geographical mobility across national boundaries and incompatibilities in the administrative data resources and graduate tracking measures in member countries, launched the Eurograduate Feasibility study, to explore how sustainable monitoring of mobility among Europe's higher education graduates could be established.

This research, conducted by Dr Kai Mülek, Senior Researcher at DHZW (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies), led to the decision to establish the European Graduate Tracking Initiative in 2017, guided by an international Expert Group, to work towards a comprehensive European graduate tracking study by the end of the 2020s.

Since then, Dr. Mülek, working closely with Professors Gilberto Antonelli and Marina Timoteo at AlmaLaurea, the Italian Interuniversity Consortium co-ordinated by the University of Bologna, have worked with teams of experienced researchers in countries with established graduate tracking records, to design and conduct feasible graduate tracking surveys across EU countries. A pilot survey was carried out in 2018-19, initially covering eight member countries, and a second stage pilot covering 17 countries is now underway, due to report in mid-2024.

Although the UK is no longer eligible to be included in this research as a result of Brexit, Professor Kate Purcell was invited by AlmaLaurea to participate in a consultative conference on 1st December at the University of Bologna, where international experts in graduate tracking were invited to meet with members of the Eurograduate team, along with representatives of the European Commission and other stakeholders, to discuss and advise the researchers, on the basis of their own graduate tracking experiences and international research collaborations, on the short and longer term methodological issues and theoretical challenges that they face.

Professor Francis Green from UCL had also been invited to attend but was unable to do so. He nominated his former colleague Dr Sangwoo Lee, now a Research Fellow at the IER, to present relevant findings from their recent work to the research team and conference delegates. Sangwoo’s presentation focused on exploring potential enhancements to the recently launched European Graduates Tracking Initiative (EGTI) for the implementation of more sustainable and robust approaches. During his talk, Sangwoo introduced the concept of job quality, highlighting its significance in society. He also emphasised the potential of utilising job quality indicators as a measure of graduates’ labour market outcomes, a concept he termed the ‘job quality premium’. Both Kate and Sangwoo offered insights into advancing the EGTI towards a more comprehensive and holistic framework.

Thus, although the UK is no longer part of the EU, our research impact still reaches and influences European research.