A Metric for Measuring Software Engineering Post-Graduate Outcomes

Abstract

Professional software engineering (SE) degree programs provide students with the education and skills needed to enter a new SE career, or take on increasing responsibility within their current career. An important metric for evaluating such programs is the impact that completing the program has on postgraduate, career outcomes. Apart from hiring rates and median salaries, this is challenging to measure, because alumni survey response rates are frequently low, and without alumni feedback, insight into individual career advancement after graduation is difficult to observe. In this paper, we propose a new metric, called Career Velocity, that measures the impact of a degree program on alumni promotion into senior positions. The metric requires tracing alumni directory information, consisting of a person’s full name, degree name, and graduation year, to public data that includes employment histories, before computing the number of months prior to promotion into a senior SE position. The metric was developed and evaluated on a mix of six degree programs, including undergraduate and graduate computer science, software engineering and data science programs. The metric was further evaluated by assessing the impact of a graduate’s number of months of industry experience prior to graduation. The results suggest that, independent of prior industry experience, specialized education that targets advancement in a specific career class, e.g., software engineering, leads to faster career progression than general education.