Macquarie Business School: Graduate and Employability Equity
21.11.2023 - 06:28
Traditional university ranking systems perform an important function, but could be made more powerful by using the wealth of data that now exists on outcomes. This research using innovative data sets for the first time in Australia offers evidence of how some institutions are improving equity outcomes for people from diverse backgrounds.
We partnered with Macquarie Business School (MQBS) to investigate how graduates performed against peer and Group of Eight (Go8) universities. Using a data-driven approach to assessing business school performance based on a large sample of peer-moderated employment outcomes, we found that traditional measures of business school outcomes and reputation underrepresent MQBS’ strong performance.
Drawing alternative insights from a large, longitudinal sample from professional profile data indicates that MQBS graduates are in high demand from top-tier employers including ASX50 companies and major professional services and financial firms. This means that MQBS is underrepresented by traditional measures of business school outcomes and has strong benefits for its graduating cohorts who are more likely to be equity students.
Our research shows higher education centres such as the Macquarie Business School (MBQS) offer favourable experience ratings and degree completion rates well above the trend relative to starting ATAR.
MQBS leads its Sydney Basin peer group across most student experience metrics, including skills development and access to quality teaching and support. They also have strong completion rates, performing above the trend relative to ATAR requirements which is the baseline for student capability.
While existing rankings largely served us well to date, traditional measures of business school outcomes and reputation underrepresent MQBS’ strong performance. Traditional rankings place MQBS in the lower band of performance than the Go8. However, in non-traditional rankings MQBS is placed more highly based on its employability outcomes. This points to the need for alternative mechanisms for measuring performance.
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