Latest ranking: KTH graduates among world's most employable
KTH graduates are among the most employable in the world, according the latest rankings released by Times Higher Education (THE). The Global University Employability Ranking by THE places KTH at 91 in its list of 150 top universities globally.
“This is very positive – it gives a reliable picture of KTH’s reputation in the international recruitment market,” says Per-Anders Östling , the ranking expert for KTH.
One of four Swedish universities that made the top 150 , KTH climbed nine places higher than its 2015 ranking. Outside of Sweden, five universities in the Nordics were included in the list.
Östling says the ranking will likely confer some additional advantage to KTH alumni in the job market.
“Recruiters pay attention to this, clearly,” he says. “We know that recruitment officers prefer to take students from ranked universities.”
The THE rankings were based on surveys of two international panels of respondents, including management-level recruiters and managing directors from international companies, representing the U.S., U.K., India, Brazil, China, Germany, South Korea, France and Australia, among others. No respondents from Sweden were included in the survey.
The recruiters were presented lists of universities in their countries and asked to vote for those that produce the best graduates in terms of employability, with the option of adding ones that were omitted. They were also asked to select from a global list of universities that they considered “the best in the world when it comes to graduate employability”.
The second panel consisted of 3,450 managing directors of international companies. Participants could cast a maximum of 10 votes on both the local and global lists of universities that had been produced by the first panel. They could also add universities from a database.
Votes were then aggregated into scores for each university to produce the ranking.
While it comes as no surprise to see schools such as MIT and Tokyo Institute of Technology in the top 150, Östling says that research-heavy technical institutions in general perform strongly in employability ratings. “Most employers want to recruit people who have engineering and natural science backgrounds, which is of course an advantage to us here,” he says.
But that’s one of many factors behind KTH’s strong performance in the rankings, he says. The survey respondents were influenced by the reputation of the research and educational programs at KTH, as well. “It also helps to have cultivated a large and increasing number of international students during the last decade,” he says.
The results will likely boost international recruitment, as well, he says. “These rankings provide easily-accessible, quality information about universities. They influence more things than you can imagine, including student loans and residence permits.”
David Callahan