Universities are commonly ranked for the quality of education they deliver to students and their research reputation, but another increasingly popular measure garnering attention is the employability of a school’s graduates.
And Dal, it appears, is growing increasingly attractive in this regard among international recruiters.
The university jumped 18 spots to 186 from 204 the previous year in Times Higher Education’s (THE) latest Global University Employability Rankings, joining the prestigious top 200 cohort.
THE works each year with Emerging, a French consulting firm that specializes in corporate relations and higher education, to exclusively publish the employability ranking — using direct input gathered from companies that hire internationally to rank schools’ capacity to deliver work-ready grads.
“We take great pride at Dalhousie in providing a rich environment where students not only get a world-class education but are also presented with opportunities to develop the different skills and attributes sought after by employers today,” says Frank Harvey, Dal’s acting provost and vice-president academic.
To create the list of 250 universities, nearly 9,000 recruiters from more than 22 countries were asked to select 15 to 20 universities from a list of 6,000 international institutions in answering the question: “As a person dealing with international graduates, which universities are in your opinion the best in the world when it comes to graduate employability?”
Universities were then ranked based on the number of votes obtained.
“Our top 200 ranking in this category stands as a clear testament to the hard work of our faculty, students and co-op staff, and we are thrilled to know employers around the world recognize just how valuable our graduates are to their organizations,” adds Dr. Harvey.
Dal was one of nine Canadian universities to appear in the 2020 ranking, placing eighth ahead of University of Waterloo and just behind the University of Victoria.
Respondents were drawn from a broad cross-section of roles ranging from corporate, HR and business to engineering and IT. Various industries were represented, as were companies of different sizes, from large corporate firms to startups.
Most respondents were from Asia-Pacific (37.1 per cent), with Europe/Central Asia (33.6 per cent), the Americas (20.8 percent) and Middle East/Africa (8.5 percent) rounding out the pool.
Polling for the ranking was done by independent research agency Trendence, in partnership with Emerging.