QUALITY ASSURANCE DIRECTORATE FINAL REPORT ON GRADUATE TRACER STUDIES 2025/2026 GRADUATING COHORT

Graduate tracer studies provide an evidence pathway between programme delivery and the realities graduates encounter after completion. For a quality assurance directorate, the value of a tracer study lies not only in reporting employment rates but also in identifying how quickly graduates enter work, whether their roles correspond with their fields of study, which competencies are most useful, where skills gaps remain, and how employers perceive graduate readiness. The resulting evidence needed to feed directly into curriculum review, student support, career development, internship design, stakeholder engagement, and institutional planning. Catholic University of Ghana operates in a changing labour market in which employers increasingly expect graduates to demonstrate disciplinary competence together with communication, digital literacy, analytical reasoning, teamwork, adaptability, ethical judgement, and the capacity to learn continuously. A robust tracer mechanism therefore needs to assess both employment outcomes and the quality of the transition from university to work. This report framework aligns graduate outcomes with programme relevance and provides a structured basis for annual institutional learning. The study design adopted a census-first approach for the eligible graduate cohort, supported by structured employer outreach across all twelve municipal and district assemblies in the Bono Region. Graduate outcomes were organised around labour-market status, transition time, programme-to-job match, competency use, graduate satisfaction, entrepreneurship, further study and employer assessment. The analytical dataset contained 1,248 graduate records and supported institutional key performance indicators together with faculty and programme-level disaggregation. The results section presented the complete reporting logic used for graduate outcomes, skills relevance, employer feedback and institutional quality-improvement priorities