Private schools, such as the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM), James Cook Australia Institute of Higher Learning (JCU) and the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS), already conduct similar graduate employment surveys internally to track the development of their graduates.

These surveys also focus on whether the private schools' graduates found jobs within six months, and their salaries.

SIM has been conducting its own surveys since 2010 and the results are used for "internal monitoring and quality improvements".

Its survey for the Class of 2014 noted that 73 per cent of its graduates had found full-time jobs within six months. It also reported an average gross monthly salary of $2,766 for graduates in full-time jobs.

MDIS did not provide the salary details of its graduates, but said that in 2014, about eight in 10 of its students had found full-time or part-time jobs six months after graduating.

At JCU, its survey of students who graduated at the end of 2013 and in 2014 found that more than seven in 10 were settled in jobs within six months. About half had salaries of between $2,001 and $3,000, and about 30 per cent made less than $2,000 a month.

These figures are lower than those of the autonomous universities, which conduct and publish their graduate employment surveys annually.

The National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University reported a consolidated gross mean salary of $3,333 a month for the Class of 2014.

More than eight in 10 of their 10,126 graduates surveyed found full-time jobs within six months of their last exam.

The Singapore Institute of Technology reported a gross mean monthly salary of $3,010. Almost 92 per cent of its graduates were employed within six months. Data for the Singapore University of Technology and Design is not available as its first batch of students graduated only last August.

Pearl Lee