Good employment prospects and higher salaries for NUS graduates
- Better employment rates for graduates from 19 courses and higher starting salaries1 for graduates in full-time permanent employment from 12 courses
- Full employment for fresh graduates from Dentistry and Accountancy (Honours) as well as follow-up graduates from Medicine
- More than nine in 10 fresh graduates from Business, Computing, Nursing, Yale-NUS College employed within six months of completing their final exams
- Inaugural graduates from Yale-NUS College and Business Analytics course achieved high employment rates of above 90%
Graduates of the National University of Singapore (NUS) continued to achieve good employment rates and earned higher starting salaries in 2017 compared to the year before. In particular, salaries for fresh graduates hit an all-time high, and graduates from 12 courses who were in full-time permanent employment also achieved higher starting salaries1. The overall employment rates2 for NUS graduates from 19 courses have also increased.
These results were based on the latest Joint Graduate Employment Survey 2017, which was jointly conducted by NUS and the other Autonomous Universities.
Professor Ho Teck Hua, NUS Senior Deputy President and Provost, said, "We are pleased that NUS graduates continue to enjoy high employability and competitive salaries. In fact, the starting salaries of fresh graduates from NUS have been increasing steadily since 2014. We are heartened to know that our graduates have benefitted from the robust and transformative education offered by NUS, and are doing well in the job market. We will continue to enhance our curriculum offerings and work closely with industry partners to meet Singapore’s evolving talent needs.”
“The future of work is changing rapidly. In recent years, NUS has placed great emphasis on career preparation and equipping our students with important workplace skills to improve their career prospects. These efforts have certainly enhanced the employability of NUS graduates. Our focus in the coming years will be in cultivating NUS as an enriching, lifelong community of learning, where we continue to support our students throughout their working life,” Prof Ho added.
Close to nine in 10 NUS fresh graduates secured employment within 6 months after final exams; Almost full employment for follow-up NUS graduates
5,211 out of a total of 6,466 full-time fresh NUS graduates from the Class of 2017 and 595 out of 825 follow-up NUS graduates3 participated in the joint survey. The overall employment rate for fresh graduates from NUS was close to 90%, which is comparable to last year. Another 3.6% of NUS fresh graduates in the labour market have either accepted a job offer pending commencement of duty or are actively starting a business venture.
Fresh graduates from Dentistry and Accountancy (Honours), as well as Medicine graduates who completed their housemanship/first year residential training, achieved full employment, while Pharmacy graduates who completed their one-year pre-registration training saw almost full employment. More than nine in 10 fresh graduates from Business, Computing, Nursing and Yale-NUS were employed within six months of completing their final exams.
In addition, graduates from 19 courses in Business, Information Systems, Industrial Design, Project and Facilities Management, Engineering, Nursing, Applied Science, Science, Environmental Studies and Medicine achieved a higher overall employment rate in 2017, compared to 2016.
The top three courses that saw the highest increase in overall employment rates are Industrial and Systems Engineering, Accountancy, and Environmental Engineering. Please refer to Annex 1 for the list of courses in which graduates have achieved higher employment rates compared to 2016.
Higher salaries for NUS graduates in full-time permanent employment
The survey also revealed that the mean gross monthly salary of fresh NUS graduates in full-time permanent employment was $3,659 in 2017, which is 3.7% higher than the $3,527 in 2016.
The median gross monthly salary of fresh graduates from NUS in full-time permanent employment was $3,500 in 2017, which is 2.9% higher than the $3,400 in 2016.
Graduates from 12 courses in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, Science and Law achieved improvement in starting salaries.
Graduates from Business Administration, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Computer Science attained the biggest jump in starting salaries. Please refer to Annex 2 for the list of courses in which graduates have achieved higher starting salaries compared to 2016.
Good career prospects for first cohort of graduates from Yale-NUS and Business Analytics
Inaugural graduates from Yale-NUS College (Yale-NUS) and the Business Analytics course offered by NUS School of Computing have achieved high employment rates of above 90%, compared to fresh graduates from the Class of 2017.
Fresh graduates from the Business Analytics course recorded an employment rate of 97.6%, with a median starting salary of $4,000.
Fresh graduates from Yale-NUS achieved an employment rate of 93.3% with the College’s Bachelor of Science graduates drawing a median salary of $4,083, the College’s Bachelor of Arts graduates drawing a median salary of $3,500, and an overall median starting salary of $3,500 for the College’s entire cohort.
Footnotes:
1 Starting salary here refers to graduates’ median gross monthly salary.
2 The overall employment rate refers to the number of graduates working in full-time permanent, part-time, temporary or freelance employment, as a proportion of graduates in the labour force (i.e. those who are working, and those who are not working but are actively looking and available for work) as at 1 November 2017.
3 Follow-up graduates refer to those from the Architecture Class of 2014, who took part in the survey upon completion of their practical training, and graduates from Law, Medicine, and Pharmacy courses, who took part in the survey after completing their one-year practical law course, pupilage or housemanship/first-year residency/pre-registration training upon completion of their studies in 2016.
