Abstract
Alumni connections are important resources that
contribute to university evaluation. Even though alumni
connections represent networks, they have been mostly
evaluated as tabular data (e.g. by providing average
salary, employment rate, etc.). This ironically
disregards all qualities of a network, from which an
alumni network gets its name. It is desirable to evaluate
an alumni network as a network, because networks have the
potential to provide very insightful information.
Evaluation of alumni networks as a network has not been
feasible in the past due to data fragmentation (neither
universities nor companies willing to share meaningfully
significant data in its entirety). Recently the
feasibility of such analysis has changed, due to new
trends towards democratization of information,
accelerated by the Web 2.0 user-generated content
phenomenon and crowd-sourcing mentality. Utilizing
web-crawlers, we actively harvested data and assembled a
dataset on alumni in leadership positions in
technology-based industries. Moreover, we included a high
proportion of startup companies, which allowed us to
evaluate alumni networks with respect to entrepreneurial
as well as technology involvement. We show that by
analyzing alumni connections as networks, it is possible
to uncover new patterns, as well as provide a new way of
examining the old
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings |
Subtitle of host publication | IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON 2011 |
Publisher | IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers |
Pages | 606-611 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-61284-643-9 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-61284-642-2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |
MoE publication type | A4 Article in a conference publication |
Event | IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON 2011 - Amman, Jordan Duration: 4 Apr 2011 → 6 Apr 2011 |
Conference
Conference | IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON 2011 |
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Abbreviated title | EDUCON 2011 |
Country/Territory | Jordan |
City | Amman |
Period | 4/04/11 → 6/04/11 |
Keywords
- Alumni networks
- engineering
- entrepreneurship
- network analysis
- network visualization
- university metrics