Return on Investment for Programs

We find that Generation programs have an ROI of 3-7x against counterfactuals, and graduates earn 6-22x more income upon graduating from Generation over five years, compared to their baseline situation (90% are unemployed prior to joining Generation programs).

Return on investment for a program is the net added value the the program creates for every dollar invested in it.

To understand this, we look at what happens to people who don’t go through our programs vs those that do. These are called counterfactuals and we have a few different ways of doing this analysis — through impact evaluations, we have assessed the outcomes for people who were eligible for our program but we could not accept due to number of seats, people who went through other similar programs at the same time and accessed government data on people who have a similar profile.

Where we have not conducted these evaluations as yet, we look at the before and after for our alumni — how did their employment and income progress over time compared to where they started? When learners join Generation, 90% are unemployed, with half being long-term unemployed. Three months after program completion, graduates have a 73% employment rate, rising to 83% within six months.

These outcomes are durable over time – two to five years after graduation, 76% of Generation alumni remain employed.

These sustained high outcomes drive a high ROI for our programs.

We achieve high ROI through durable graduate outcomes (career growth, wages, job quality), robust employer partnerships, and cost-effective scaling powered by data and technology.

At 2-5 years post graduation, 76% of our alumni continue to be employed globally. 58% of employed alumni have advanced beyond entry level jobs by two years after graduation, reaching 71% by year 5. This career growth is also evident in wages – 73% of employed alumni are earning above a living wage at two to five years post program, with annual wage growth rate compared to their first salary after Generation at 9% globally.

These durable outcomes for our graduates are fuelled by the strength of our employer relationships. We have engaged with 21,000+ employers globally to date and 79% of our graduates in the last 12 months have been hired by repeat employers, i.e., employers who have hired our graduates previously. Generation employers affirm the talent of our graduates through qualitative surveys as well, with 87% stating that they would definitely hire Generation graduates again.

As we scale, we have leveraged our data and technology to reduce our program costs while improving program delivery. Our Shared Delivery Platform(content, systems, tools) enables consistent quality across countries. Nearly half of our programs are now delivered fully online, achieving comparable outcomes to in-person programs at a lower program cost. We are also embedding AI tools—including a job-matching system, interview roleplay coach, learner chatbot, and multilingual podcasts—to strengthen learner support, build workplace skills, and improve long-term employment outcomes.