The project "ATRACK - Graduate Tracking" (in German: "ATRACK - AbsolventInnen-Tracking") provides information on the situation of university graduates in the labour market. This provides persons who are interested in studying a degree course with an impression of the employment career that they can expect after graduation, so that they can consider this in their choice of degree course. The ATRACK information is summarised in factsheets and made available for download on this page.
ATRACK is also important for the further development of teaching at the university. For this purpose, there is a data cube provided by Statistics Austria (in German: "Bundesanstalt Statistik Österreich") and evaluations for specific questions can be requested from the Strategic Education Development Center via the service portal, opens an external URL in a new window.

Factsheets

The factsheets graphically depict the progression of employment careers in the first five years after graduation. Results based on a small number of cases (30 cases or less) are not published.

The different ATRACK factsheets provide an insight into the situation on the labor market of:

• Graduates under 35 years without enrollment in another degree after graduation ("F1" factsheets)
• Graduates under 35 years without enrollment in another degree after graduation in selected ISCED fields of study ("F2" factsheets)
• Graduates of a study program ("F3" factsheets)
• Dropouts from study programs ("F4" factsheets)

Factsheets contain selected results on the following topics:

• Status in the Austrian labour market by reference dates and employment rate,
• Duration until first employment in months,
• Top 5 sectors three years after graduation,
• Employment in the third year,
• Gross monthly income in full-time employment.

(List translated from STATISTICS AUSTRIA "HRSM Project "Graduate Tracking": Project Report" (in German: STATISTIK AUSTRIA "HRSM-Projekt „AbsolventInnen-Tracking“: Projektbericht"); Page 27)

Project progress at a glance

With the project "ATRACK - Graduate Tracking", headed by the University of Vienna, a register-based full survey of the career paths of all graduates of Austrian higher education institutions was developed for the first time in cooperation between the Federal Statistical Office Austria (in German: "Bundesanstalt Statistik Österreich") and 21 public universities during the project period 1. August 2017 to 31. December 2021. ATRACK was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the project partners contributed further work of their own to the project. In addition to the twelve applicant universities, nine other universities became associated project partners from 2018.

The aim of "ATRACK - Graduate Tracking" was to present the labour market integration and career paths of graduates by means of a register-based analysis of career entry, employment and income opportunities. To this end, the project is based on various register data, which were compiled and processed in anonymous form by the Federal Statistical Office of Austria. The focus was on information about the employment careers of persons residing in Austria after leaving an Austrian higher education institution (graduating or dropping out). In addition to the universities' own data, a data cube with Austria-wide comparative data was made available to the participating universities. The universities participating in the project thus have at their disposal important comparative information on the career entry and first years of employment of their respective graduates (in particular the search duration until the first job, employment status, labour market integration, income and the economic sector of the job).

Even when processing pseudonymised or anonymised data or publishing aggregated data, care must be taken to ensure that it is not possible to infer a concrete personal reference. This can happen, for example, if certain characteristics or combinations of characteristics are so rare that they can only be assigned to a specific person. In order to prevent traceability, the record swapping method was used within the framework of ATRACK.

(Text excerpt translated from STATISTICS AUSTRIA "HRSM Project "Graduate Tracking": Project Report" (in German: STATISTIK AUSTRIA "HRSM-Projekt „AbsolventInnen-Tracking“: Projektbericht"); Pages: 5, 6, 24)

The future of ATRACK

A weakness of ATRACK concerns the survey of graduates who give up their main residence in Austria after graduation and move abroad. Due to the lack of information in Austrian registers, no post-career data can be compiled for these persons. The topic of comparable information on graduates across Europe has already been taken up by the European Union. In a recommendation of the European Council in 2017, the Member States of the European Union agreed to collect information on graduates and to make it progressively comparable at EU level.

Now that ATRACK has been successfully implemented, possible extensions of the system can be considered in the future. Continuous updating of the data body is possible. Since ATRACK already contains the data of graduates from all Austrian higher education institutions, further higher education institutions (e.g. universities of applied sciences) can be included in the system. The existing data structure also allows the evaluation of further forms of aggregation of the data. For example, an analysis by graduation year - or graduation cohorts - is possible. This would make it possible to take a closer look at possible changes over time. Furthermore, ATRACK offers valuable experience for future projects with similar objectives.

(Text excerpt translated from STATISTICS AUSTRIA "HRSM Project "Graduate Tracking" :Project Report" (in German: STATISTIK AUSTRIA "HRSM-Projekt „AbsolventInnen-Tracking“: Projektbericht"); Pages: 59, 60)

Further information as well as Austria-wide results on and beyond the ATRACK project can be found on the Statistics Austria website, opens an external URL in a new window, and on the website of the University of Vienna, opens an external URL in a new window entrusted with the management of the project.