CQUniversity has fared well on measures of student satisfaction and graduate salaries, compared with national results from the recently-released 2010 Beyond Graduation Survey (BGS) Report.

The BGS is a detailed investigation into the activities of graduates from Australian higher education institutions three years after the completion of their studies.

Comparisons show the median salary for CQUniversity's full-time employed bachelor degree graduates in 2010 was $62,000, compared to $60,800 nationally.

Also, 95.1% of CQUniversity graduates expressed broad satisfaction with their courses, compared to 92.5% nationally.

Graduate Careers Australia (GCA) conducts the BGS survey in collaboration with our Office of Development and Graduate Relations.

In 2010, graduates from 31 Australian higher education institutions who completed their studies in 2006 and subsequently provided a response to the 2007 Australian Graduate Survey (AGS) were re-contacted and surveyed regarding their main activities over the past three years. More than 10,000 responses were received.

A summary report is now available which presents, where available, findings concerning the activities of Australian resident bachelor degree graduates from CQUniversity benchmarked against national averages.

At the national level, GCA reports the full-time earnings of recent graduates increased by 35 per cent (from $45,000 to $60,800) in the first three years after course completion.

GCA Senior Research Associate, David Carroll, emphasised that graduates should not expect this rate of growth to continue indefinitely.

"Graduates' earnings increase notably as they accumulate work experience and skills in the early years after graduation; however we expect that this high rate of growth will begin to taper off as they mature in their careers," Mr Carroll said.

The research also found that Australian bachelor degree graduates enjoyed low unemployment rates during this period, with just 3.3 per cent of graduates in the full-time labour market reporting that they were unemployed at the time of the 2010 survey.

The majority of Australian bachelor degree graduates who were in full-time employment at the time of the survey considered themselves to be in a job that was related to their full-time career goals, with graduates from the study fields of education, health, and engineering and related technologies the most likely to be so employed