A study of alumni follow-up practices in accredited postsecondary institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Alumni follow-up practices of accredited postsecondary institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia were investigated. The subpopulations studied included: (a) community colleges (N=23); (b) two-year colleges (N=3); (c) proprietary two-year colleges (N=19); (d) accredited proprietary schools (N=47); and (e) accredited postsecondary vocational programs (N=5). A total of 97 institutions participated in the study.

The study collected data on the: (a) purposes for which alumni follow-up studies were conducted; (b) procedures and methodologies employed in follow-up studies; (c) categories of data collected; and (d) dissemination made of completed alumni follow-up reports. The study used two survey instruments and achieved a 100% response rate for both instruments.

The following conclusions were drawn from the research findings: (a) Almost all accredited postsecondary institutions conduct alumni follow-up studies; (b) the four most common purposes for conducting alumni follow-up activities are for evaluation, compliance/reporting, accreditation and planning; (c) graduates or program completers are the population of alumni most universally studied in follow-up studies; (d) employers of graduates or program completers are almost exclusively the focus of alumni follow-up activities; (e) institutions tend to follow-up the subpopulation of all students when conducting alumni follow-up studies; (f) most institutions use mail questionnaires in alumni and employer follow-up studies; (g) most institutions make 1 to 3 attempts to collect Follow-up data from both alumni and the employers of alumni; (h) a minority of institutions collect longitudinal data from alumni; (i) a majority of institutions collect follow-up data on alumni to determine their employment status, to evaluate training programs, to determine the job satisfaction of alumni and to obtain information on the educational status of alumni; (j) the majority of institutions collect follow-up data from the employers of alumni on the satisfactoriness of their alumni, employee knowledge and employee characteristics; and (k) the primary disseminations made of completed alumni follow-up reports are to meet compliance/reporting requirements, institutional information needs and marketing efforts.

The findings are applicable only to accredited postsecondary institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This study also makes recommendations for future research on alumni follow-up practices.