Research on bachelors
The research on graduate students at the University of Banja Luka was conducted electronically, via an on-line questionaire, in the period between March and July of 2013. It included all the students who had graduated in the 2006/07 academic year and the 2011/12 academic year at all faculties of the University of Banja Luka. The target group and their contact information were identified according to administrative data of the faculty's Student services centre. The research included 2.876 students in total, 966 of which had graduated in the 2006/07 academic year and 1.919 had graduated in the 2011/12 academic year. The questionnaire included all the graduates from each of the three cycles of higher education.The online questionnaire included 125 questions organized in several thematic units: general socio-demographic data about the graduate student, education before enrolling on the studying programme where the student grauduated, experience related to university education (course of the study, studying conditions, acquired competencies, work experience related to the time immediately after graduation, first paid employment, current employment, vocational orientation and professional satisfaction) and comments and recommendations.
All bachelors were contacted by an invitation letter which contained a unique access code, and four other reminders followed the initial contact for the bachelors who in the meantime did not complete the questionnaire. The overall response rate for the generation 2006/ 2007 was 41%, and for the generation 2011/2012 it was 43%. For the research at the University of Banja Luka the overall response rate was 42%, which can be considered as a satisfactory result because the percentages were similar to those achieved in the research on bachelors in Europe and the region.
The first research on bachelors of the University of Banja Luka was realized in the frame of the international CONGRAD project ( Conducting graduate surveys and improving alumni services for enhanced strategic management and quality improvement – CONGRAD- 157153-TEMPUS-1-2011-1-DE-TEMPUS-JPGR), which was supported by resources from the European Union program called Tempus, in the period of 2012-2014 . This program was gathering 14 higher education institutions into one independent research organization from seven countries: four universities and three high vocational schools from the Republic of Serbia, the University of Montenegro, two Universities from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and four University partners from the European Union, more precisely, from Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain and Finland. The project coordinator was the University from Bielefeld in Germany and the institutional coordinator of the project was Prof. Dr. Draško Marinković, vice chancellor.
