Victorian universities with best salaries, employment rates for graduates
High fees, large leafy campuses and prestigious reputations don’t guarantee the best graduate salaries and employment rates.
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Victoria’s eight universities are lagging well behind those in other states despite Australia’s graduates enjoying soaring pay rates and plentiful jobs.
High fees, large leafy campuses and prestigious reputations don’t guarantee the best graduate salaries and employment rates, the 2022 Quality Indicators for Teaching and Learning shows.
The university in Victoria with the highest average salary three years after graduation is Monash, which is nonetheless rated 20th in the country out of 40 institutions, according to new data from the Social Research Centre.
The medium-term average salary for Victorian graduates ranges from $80,000 at Monash University to $73,200 for The University of Melbourne.
Top in the country is the University of New South Wales with an average salary three years after graduation of $87,500. The national average is $80,000.
When it comes to employment rates three years after graduation, Monash University is also the best in the state on 94 per cent, although it is only seventh in the country. Australian Catholic University is next, rating ninth in the country, also with 94 per cent of graduates employed full-time.
All of the state’s other universities are in the bottom half of the nation, with Victoria University’s three-year employment rate of 85 per cent the lowest in the country.
The study of 2019 graduates includes 44,000 students from 42 universities and 72 other non-uni providers.
The snapshot also reveals female graduates continue to earn less than males, with the gap widening from $2400 or 3.7 per cent in 2019 to $5700 or 6.8 per cent in 2022.
The largest gender gaps for those who graduated in 2019 are in architecture ($12,400) and nursing ($6,300).
Compared to 2019, the full-time employment rates of graduates in 2022 has risen by up to 20 points, with health-rated courses such as rehabilitation posting 99 per cent employment rates.
Study areas with lower full-time rates in 2019 improved even more by 2022, with tourism, hospitality and sport courses rising 25 percentage points to 87 per cent and communication rising by 23 per cent to 86 per cent.
Lisa Bolton, director QILT Research and Strategy at the Social Research Centre, said the results showed that those who finished their course during or immediately after the pandemic felt the brunt of employment falls.
“Graduates who had the opportunity to establish themselves in the labour market prior to the pandemic were mostly spared,” she said.
Australian Catholic University provost, Professor Meg Stuart said she was “pleased to again see positive growth in our performance in the QILT surveys, this time in the area of graduate outcomes following our improved results in the most recent student experience survey”.
Universities Australia Chief Executive Catriona Jackson said graduates were in high demand as Australia’s employment market continued its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“With more than half of the one million jobs expected to be created in the next five years requiring a university degree, we need more university-educated workers entering our workforce, not less,” she said.
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