The Quality Assurance System for doctoral programmes (hereinafter, SGCPD), as a subsystem of the current SGCT of the Universidad de Sevilla, approved by the Governing Council of the Universidad de Sevilla (Governing Council Agreement of 20 December 2012) pays special attention to the follow-up of graduates by establishing specific mechanisms for such follow-up, as explicitly stated in the applicable regulations and in the support guide for the verification of doctoral programmes prepared by the Andalusian Knowledge Agency (AAC).
To this end, the SGCPD has various indicators that allow it to measure and analyse the labour market insertion of future doctoral students and future PhDs, as well as the level of satisfaction with the training received by graduates. This information will be obtained by conducting graduate surveys and collecting data from institutional databases (e.g., occupational laboratory).
Specifically, the SGCPD stresses the importance of this information by dedicating a complete procedure to collect information on the follow-up of graduates through various indicators that provide evidence of process 5 of the SGCPD:
P5 - ANALYSIS OF THE LABOUR MARKET INSERTION OF DOCTORS AND SATISFACTION WITH THE RESEARCH TRAINING ACQUIRED.
The purpose of this procedure is to establish a system to measure, analyse and use, with a view to improving the doctoral programme, the results of labour market insertion of graduates and the satisfaction of both graduates and employers with the research training acquired. The following indicators are available:
I01 Employed Graduates: No. of graduates employed two years after graduation from PD/ Total no. of PD graduates*100.0.
I02 Average time to obtain the first postdoctoral contract: Sum of months elapsed until the first discharge in the Social Security System since leaving the DP/No. of graduates with discharges in the Social Security System from the DP.
I03 Level of satisfaction of employed graduates with the training received: (No. of responses rated by employed graduates as "Medium", "High" and "Very High" in item XX/ No. of responses to the item)*100.
I04 Postdoctoral contracts: (No. of graduates who obtain grants and postdoctoral contracts in the year following the defence of the dissertation/No. of graduates during the previous year)*100.
I05 Degree of satisfaction of employers with the graduate's research training: No. of responses in the employer satisfaction survey.
According to the data yielded by the five indicators designed to analyse the labour market insertion of PhD graduates, as well as the satisfaction with the training received and in application of the provisions of the PM procedure, the Academic Committee shall analyse in detail and as a whole, all the results. In view of these, it should identify strong points and propose possible actions for improvement (See section 3, Documents for monitoring the DSCMS). In any case, an Improvement Plan will be formalised by the Management Committee or the Centre Board, as appropriate.
Detailed information on the GDPCS is available at the following web address
https://www.doctorado.us.es/sistema-de-garantia-de-calidad.