SINGAPORE – A total of 95 per cent of students from the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) who graduated last year were able to find employment despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

This includes those who were enrolled in the SGUnited Traineeships that provides recent graduates or those who will soon graduate with opportunities to gain industry-relevant work experience.

This is compared with about 95.9 per cent of graduates from the Singapore University of Technology and Design and about 93.6 per cent of those who graduated from four other local universities last year.

SIT graduates also commanded higher starting salaries than the previous year, with those from the Computer Science programme earning a median gross monthly salary of $5,000, up from $4,200 in 2019.

On average, fresh graduates in full-time permanent employment earned a mean gross monthly salary $3,675 last year, up from $3,598 in 2019.

These results were released last Wednesday (Sept 15) as part of an annual employment survey of graduates around six months after completing their final examinations.

A total of 1,882, or 86.6 per cent, of the university’s cohort of 2,172 graduates from SIT and its nine Overseas University partners.

Several SIT degree programmes such as Marine Engineering and Game Design as well as the pioneer batch of graduates from three SIT-conferred degree programmes in allied health reported 100 per cent overall employment.

One of these graduates from an allied health programme is Mr Jasper Tan Ying Jun, 32, who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy and is now working at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).

His interest in working with young mental health patients was sparked during a stint at IMH’s Child and Adolescent Inpatient Ward under SIT’s flagship Integrated Work Study Programme (IWSP), which gives students up to 12 months of relevant work experience.

On the positive results, Professor Chua Kee Chaing, SIT president-designate, said: “It is encouraging that SIT graduates remain sought after by the industry and enjoy competitive salaries despite current economic conditions.”

More than 43.6 per cent of employed graduates, excluding allied health graduates, received job offers from their IWSP companies before graduation.

For Mr Bhati Yash, 26, who graduated with a Bachelor of Hospitality Business, finding a job was initially challenging because of the bleak outlook facing the hospitality industry.

So he switched to searching for jobs in IT project management and secured a traineeship for six months at Singtel doing project management and fintech business planning inits Business Analytics team.

Citing IT skills learnt during an eight-month IWSP at Marina Bay Sands, Mr Yash, who is now a business analyst at technology company The Software Practice, said: “I sincerely credit the following experiences in SIT that helped me to make the switch into IT project management.”

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