Universities are encouraging efforts to improve their overall quality, including their graduates’ profiles. The absorptivity of graduates in industries or users has become one of the indicators of graduates’ profile quality. This tracer study aimed to get data from graduates dealing with compatibility of knowledge and skills acquired with their job. This program was carried out with the awareness of the university for the graduates’ empowerment. Some of the common problems found in conducting this program were collecting data from graduation books (making the data is less accurate), many telephone numbers could not be contacted or were not active, the time required by respondents while answering questionnaires over calls, and the total number of respondents being less than the expected target. This is because the processes used in the tracer study can be tedious for the respondents (alumni), and they lose interest. The method used in tracer study consists of four stages: (1) preparation, (2) implementation, (3) analysis, and (4) evaluation of results. The preparation stage covers updating graduate data, developing questionnaires, and arranging for and training invited surveyors. The implementation phase consists of deployment, monitoring, and the remaining processes, while the analysis stage is the process of analyzing and recapitulating the questionnaire. The final evaluation phase is the overall reporting and assessment stage of the program. All graduates are expected to be able to be tracked through this method.
Keywords: graduates, tracer study, university