Fresh graduates from private schools seem to lag further behind their public university counterparts in finding full-time employment after finishing their education, a recent survey found.
According to the report released by the Committee for Private Education on Tuesday (Apr 3), more private school grads are working part-time than the full-time ones. Only less than half of them (47.4 percent) found full-time and permanent jobs within six months after graduating from college. This figure falls behind the 78.4 percent of those who graduate from three publicly funded universities – the National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Singapore Management University (SMU).
Private school grads also fared worse than post-national service polytechnic graduates, who recorded a 64 percent full-time employment rate within the same period.
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Another findings from the survey revealed that fresh graduates from private schools received median gross starting salaries of $2,650 a month, much below compared to the $3,400 for graduates of NUS, NTU and SMU. However, this number is slightly better than the post-national service polytechnic graduates who take home $2,480 a month.
Around 37 percent of 10,171 private school students who graduated from full-time external degree programmes between May 2016 and April last year participated in the survey that was conducted from November last year to February 2018. Of all the respondents, 2,800 were fresh graduates.
Overall, more than 3 in 4 (79 percent) private school fresh graduates were employed, either in full-time, part-time, or on a temporary or freelance basis jobs, within six months after finishing their studies. Public university graduates remains fare better with 88.9 percent, The New Paper reports.
These results come after the first survey of private school graduates by the committee came out in November last year. The previous study found that six in 10 of the graduates were hired full-time within six months after completing their studies. Their median starting pay was $2,550 a month.
