The QS Graduate Employability Rankings 2022 take a closer look into how well universities are preparing students for the world beyond higher education, using various ratings of employer partnerships, sectoral leaders among alumni and location-adjusted graduate employment rates.

An all-American top three has been determined once again in 2021, with Stanford University and UCLA claiming the second and third spots.

QS’s examination of the “work universities are doing to cultivate propitious pathways into high-quality employment” saw two universities from Australia continue their stay in the top 10 for a second year.

The University of Sydney came up just short of the top three, claiming the fourth best graduate employability, and the University of Melbourne in eighth.

“Australian institutions [performed] better at the top than British ones”

However, British universities are noticeably absent from the top ten, apart from the University of Oxford, which is the only institution in the UK to feature, in seventh place.

“With Australian institutions performing better at the top than British ones… it is clear that it is valuable to shine a unique light on outstanding employability performance,” Ben Sowter, director of research at QS, said of the rankings.

“With students becoming increasingly conscious of the competitiveness of the global graduate jobs market… it has become correspondingly crucial that independent data of this sort is available to them”, he added.

Other notable appearances in the top 30 were Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey at 26th, which significantly outperformed its place in the overall QS rankings for universities around the world, and climbed 14 places from its 2020 employability ranking.

Institut Polytechnique de Paris was top in continental Europe, ranked number 12, with University of Toronto (21st place) top in Canada, and American University of Beirut (73^rd place) highest ranked in the Arab Region.

China’s Tsinghua University was joined by the University of Hong Kong as the Asian institutions to make the top 10.

Tsinghua came in sixth place, and Hong Kong clung on to its top 10 ranking after being knocked down to position 10 by Cornell, yet another US institution placing high in the table.

Sowter also commented that “Latin America and Asia outperforming their overall rank” also warranted the survey’s value, and that it “rewards institutions successfully fulfilling this critical aspect of their mission”.