An Alumni Satisfaction Model for Computing Departments

The perception of Alumni about the extent of learning and the usefulness of the knowledge gained is a key measure for education institutions to assess their success. Alumni are important stakeholders, specifically for Higher Education Institutions, as they work in industry and can provide valuable feedback on education and service offerings, including course content. The importance of Alumni satisfaction in relation to the success of universities makes it imperative that the factors driving satisfaction be determined. The purpose of this paper is to measure Alumni satisfaction in a department offering Computer Science and Information Systems qualifications and identify areas of improvement. A hypothesised model of the factors influencing Alumni satisfaction was proposed and used to guide the quantitative research study. The research was exploratory and eight factors affecting Alumni satisfaction were investigated. A questionnaire was distributed to department’s Alumni who work in the IT industry. The results indicate that the Alumni agreed that the academic staff maintained high academic standards, the degree programmes and modern technologies prepared them for the world of work. One factor that should be improved upon is departmental communications with the Alumni network. Technology and education are rapidly changing and departments must regularly determine Alumni satisfaction.