ACT ALUMNI OUTCOMES SURVEY REPORTS - click here

ALUMNI PROFILES (go to 2008 Alumni Profiles)

Alumni Profiles answer some broad questions about where alumni live, if they
are employed or enrolled in educational programs, and how much they value their UW-Madison
education. Alumni Profiles are available for every school and college and most undergraduate
major program. The Alumni Profiles may eliminate the need for academic programs to maintain
expensive shadow systems and may reduce some costs associated with running alumni surveys. 
The Alumni Profiles provide a starting point for more detailed analysis of available
information. Among UW-Madison alumni who graduated within the past 10 years:

  • 92% answer yes or definitely yes that the their UW-Madison education has improved the
    quality of their life, regardless of any financial benefit
  • 92% are employed or enrolled in a degree program or both
  • 22% are enrolled in on-going education either full-time or part-time; 44% are not enrolled
    but have plans for further coursework
  • 88% are employed full-time (81%) or part-time (7%).  Nearly half of alumni have provided
    detailed employer and job title information (get details at http://waa.uwalumni.com/lists/). 
  • 80% of those employed say that the skills they developed at UW-Madison in problem solving,
    written and verbal communication, and other general skills are related or highly related to
    their current position
  • 59% of those employed say that their current position is related or highly related to the
    major of their UW-Madison degree
  • 78% of those employed say that their current position prepared them well or exceptionally
    well for their current employment
  • 84% of those employed earn $30,000 or more annually; 34% earn $60,000 or more
  • 48% live in Wisconsin

Alumni Profiles are a starting point. Get more detailed information at http://waa.uwalumni.com/lists.

The Alumni Profiles project is a joint effort of the Office of Academic Planning and Analysis and the
Wisconsin Alumni Association.  Extensive information on the background and development of the
Alumni Profiles project is provided below.  

Alumni Profiles and Alumni Information for Assessment and
Academic Policy Support

Academic Planning and Analysis (APA), in collaboration with the Wisconsin Alumni Association
(WAA), are working on ways to expand the collection of information on alumni and to use
that information for program evaluation and assessment and for research and analysis on
issues related to academic policy.

Team Members:

  • Jocelyn Milner, Director of Academic Planning and Analysis (since 2004)
  • Clare Huhn, Policy and Planning Analyst, Academic Planning and Analysis (since 2004)
  • Heidi Zoerb, Sr Director of Marketing and Research, WAA (2004-2006)
  • Angie Nash, Vice President for Information Systems, WAA (since 2004)

This project was supported by grants from the UW-Madison assessment fund in
2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07.

  • 2004-05 Assessment Fund proposal (pdf file)
  • 2005-06 Assessment Fund proposal, including a progress report on work in 2004-05 (pdf file)
  • 2006-07 Assessment Fund proposal, including a progress report on work in 2005-06 (pdf file)

Phase I: The focus of the 2004-05 academic year included a feasibility study to:

  • evaluate the content and structure of the alumni data base,
  • test strategies for connecting the alumni data to the student record data,
  • use the alumni data to do research related to a policy issue, the geographic
    distribution of alumni
  • develop a prototype Alumni Profiles, a program-level data profile prepared
    for every undergraduate and graduate major.

The outcome of that preliminary work was to demonstrate that the project was feasible and
that additional information was needed to make the product useful to the university community.
Results were presented at a slide presentation at an Assessment Council brown-bag seminar
in April 2005. At that meeting we introduced a prototype Alumni Profiles.

Phase II: The focus of the 2005-06 academic year was to make enhancements to the existing
data set. Our vision for the WAA alumni information collection site was affirmed by the interest
expressed by the deans at an April 2005 deans’ council meeting for a broadly available,
campus-wide web-based alumni survey. The assessment council has expressed interest in
developing a common set of questions that could be used in many ways. One of those uses
would be to include them at the WAA information collection site. A tiered survey that would
allow additional program specific questions to be added is an anticipated enhancement for
future development.

We developed a set of common alumni survey questions that were embedded in the WAA directory.
This information was collected from UW-Madison alumni who visited the WAA directory starting in
summer 2006.

Phase III: In 2006-07 we developed the pilot version of the Alumni Profile for each school and
college and each academic major using the information provided by alumni who visited the WAA
directory and other sources.

  • Showcase 2007 Poster: ALUMNI PROFILES
  • 2007 Alumni Profiles - The first annual profile collection were replaced by 2008 Alumni Profiles

Phase IV: Starting in Spring 2008, with financial support from the Chancellor's Office, the Alumni
Profile team started a year-long project to review the embedded directory questions.
The goal is to enhance the collection of employment information and to add
questions inviting a perspective on the Wisconsin Experience.


The Alumni Profiles will be increasingly useful as more alumni provide information through the WAA directory.
One possible future enhancement is to extend the Alumni Profiles to graduate and professional programs.

ACT Alumni Outcomes Survey Reports

ACT Alumni Outcomes Survey, 2007

In the summer of 2007, UW System Administration contracted with ACT to field the ACT Alumni
Outcomes Survey. UW-Madison data includes responses from 184 alumni who graduated with a
bachelor’s degree in two or three years before they were surveyed.
Results of the survey are summarized in:

ACT Alumni Outcomes Survey, 2005

In the summer of 2005, UW System Administration contracted with ACT to field the ACT Alumni
Outcomes Survey. UW-Madison bachelor's degree recipients from 2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03
were included in the sample. Results of the survey are summarized in: