HFT Stuttgart Graduate Survey

HFT Stuttgart strives to offer a needs-oriented range of courses that ensure our students graduate well prepared for the job market or a further course of study. The experiences gained by former students during their time with us enable us to identify areas where there are opportunities for us to improve.

It is with this in mind that HFT Stuttgart has elected to carry out a Graduate Survey of former students who graduated 1-2 years ago. The survey is being conducted as part of the nationwide project “Kooperationsprojekts Absolvent:innenstudien” (KOAB), which is coordinated by the Institut für angewandte Statistik GmbH (ISTAT). Graduates from the class of 2023 will be surveyed in the period between October 2024 and February 2025.

If we have sent you an invitation to participate in the current survey, we would be delighted if you could take part using the following link:

To the survey

It takes about 30 minutes to answer the questions.

If you have any problems logging in or during participation, please contact: qm(at)hft-stuttgart.de.

We have compiled further information on the project here:

The "Kooperationsprojekt Absolvent:innenstudien" (KOAB) is an academic research project involving the participation of about 80 higher education institutions (HEIs) throughout Germany. Working in cooperation with participating HEIs, the project aims to use and continually refine a survey tool that yields valuable insights into quality management and course development at the respective HEI. Each year the project surveys a total of nearly 60,000 higher education graduates who completed their studies around 1.5 years earlier.

The project is coordinated by the Institut für angewandte Statistik GmbH (ISTAT), whose responsibilities include the execution of the online survey, the evaluation and anonymization of survey results and the creation of a Scientific Use File for research purposes.

The survey results will be presented to participating HEIs in anonymized form. The use of a standard set of key questions that can be supplemented according to the requirements of individual institutions facilitates anonymized comparisons between HEIs.

The field phase of ISTAT’s graduate surveys is conducted between November and February. During this period HFT Stuttgart will write to students who graduated during the previous examination year to invite them to participate in the Graduate Survey. Each former student will be contacted up to four times during the survey period in order to ensure a good response rate.

The survey can only be completed online on the ISTAT platform. Each graduate will be given a personalized access code for the survey, which can be paused at any time and completed at a later date.

The survey covers the following topic areas:

Current employment
Correlation between studies and professional life
Satisfaction with studies
Course of study (including preparatory elements)
Overall conditions for study
Transition to the world of work or a further course of study
Jobseeking after graduation
Job satisfaction
First job after graduation
Sociodemographic data, information on the respondent’s educational biography

Participation in the survey is voluntary and anonymous. Contact details and survey data will be stored separately in order to ensure anonymity. The access codes for the online survey will be allocated by HFT Stuttgart at random and cannot be matched to survey participants.

HFT Stuttgart will allocate and dispatch access codes in an invitation and up to three reminders. This is the only purpose for which graduates’ email addresses will be used. Graduates’ contact details will not be disclosed to ISTAT. The mailing list containing the access codes will be deleted after the field phase of the study.

The responses submitted by graduates during the survey will be stored on a server operated by ISTAT. ISTAT will not have access to personal data such as respondents’ names and addresses. The survey data will be processed by ISTAT, anonymized and transmitted back to HEIs. This approach will prevent the matching of personal data to survey responses.

The following data will be transmitted to ISTAT for the purpose of quality management in accordance with § 5 (4) LHG:

PIN (personalized code used to access the survey)
Graduation-related data: Type of qualification (bachelor’s/master’s degree), subject, month and year of graduation

The evaluated results will be published in a form that prevents them from being matched to specific individuals. To give an example, course-specific results will not be published in cases in which a question is answered by less than five respondents who graduated from that course.

Graduates can opt out of being contacted by HFT Stuttgart in connection with the Graduate Survey by sending an email to that effect to qm(at)hft-stuttgart.de.

Detailed information on data protection is available in our Data Protection Policy (PDF-Download).

Why should I participate in the Graduate Survey?

Your feedback will give HFT Stuttgart an indication of the extent to which your course prepared you for the world of work. By sharing your experience, you will provide us with valuable knowledge that enables us to enhance not only our overall conditions for study and the structure and content of our courses, but also the transferability of the education received by our students to practical and professional scenarios. This will benefit future students and employers alike.

Who is invited to take part in the Graduate Survey?

What is the access code for?

Each person HFT Stuttgart invites to participate in the survey will be given an individual access code generated by ISTAT. The access code will enable you to take part in the Graduate Survey. The survey can be paused at any time and completed at a later date.

Rest assured: Your anonymity is ensured by the fact that HFT Stuttgart will not, at any time, know which responses were submitted using which access code. We will only be notified which access code was used to access the survey, which will enable us to ensure that reminders are only sent to graduates who have not yet completed the survey.

Why have I received up to four emails about the Graduate Survey?

HFT Stuttgart and ISTAT have agreed to maximize the survey response rate by sending out an invitation and up to three reminders. Please note that as soon as you have completed the survey ISTAT will inform HFT Stuttgart that your code has been used to access and submit the survey. HFT Stuttgart will then remove you from the mailing list for reminders.

How will you make sure the Graduate Survey is anonymous?

Access code allocation and the addressing and dispatch of access codes in an invitation and up to three reminders are the responsibility of HFT Stuttgart. ISTAT will not, at any time, know who has been written to or received which access code. By the same token, HFT Stuttgart will not, at any time, know which responses were submitted using which access codes. HFT Stuttgart will only be notified when an access code has been used and therefore needs to be removed from the mailing list for reminders. The mailing lists will be deleted once the field phase of the survey has ended (here: no later than the end of July in the year after the survey began). ISTAT will only provide HFT Stuttgart with an anonymized report on the survey results.

How will the results be published?

ISTAT will provide HFT Stuttgart with an anonymized report on the survey results. The most important results applicable or specific to HFT Stuttgart will be published on our website. ISTAT will also generate a full data set containing the responses submitted by all participating graduates from all participating HEIs. This anonymized data set will be used exclusively for academic purposes within the context of research into HEIs and their graduates. All ISTAT publications will be published in a form that prevents data from being matched to specific individuals or HEIs.

Where did you get my contact details?

The invitation to take part in the Graduate Survey and any subsequent reminders will be sent to you using the email addresses you gave as contact details when you were a student at HFT Stuttgart. Invitations and reminders will be dispatched using a mailing list specially generated for our Quality Management department. The mailing list will only be used to invite or remind former students to participate in the Graduate Survey. §5 (4) LHG entitles us to use your contact details for quality management purposes. You can opt out of the use of your contact details in connection with the survey at any time by sending an email to that effect to qm(at)hft-stuttgart.de. Once your email has been processed you will not receive any further correspondence from us in connection with the Graduate Survey.