Question:
Where should I look to find newsgroups or organizations that collect
data about the types of jobs college students accept after graduating. I
want to locate people interested in measuring how well our universities
are doing at training young people. Where and how do I look? I need a
push in the right direction.
Answer:
Cornell University compiled a very illuminating record of the
postgraduate activities of its 1993 Arts and Sciences graduates,
organized by major. That can be found at the URL shown below.
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/admin/careers/careers.htm
Not being as experience as Gary, I found this a little hard to
comprehend. Well, I guess I don't. I just wanted more information.
It basically said about a third of students decided to go to grad
school (of those who replied to the questionnaire). It would
be interesting to compare that to (1) other liberal arts schools
(since this was taken from the College of Arts and Sciences) and
(2) Cornell's College of Engineering. The reason is that I think
more engineers would go get a job because of the potential to make
money. Now, the computer science field (which lists only 10
grads, presumably because most of them are affiliated with the
engineering school) shows 40% (4 out of 10) going to grad school.
It would also have been interesting to look at salaries and
occupations 3 years after graduation, 5 years, and 10 years, just
to see how people do over the long haul. What percentage of
majors completed a master's degree after, say, 5 years? How
many were still trying for a Ph.D. or had received one in 5
years time?
I guess the easiest measure of comparing one college to another
is to compare percentage of people employed or in graduate work, and
of those employed, average salary. I think, for some, an essay
like summary would be easier than getting the information out of
charts. People would rather read "The average Cornell student
majoring in computer is twice as likely as a student from SUNY
Buffalo to go to graduate school, and 20% more likely to be
employed in a computer related job. The salary is about 10% higher.
Current unemployment rates for those 3 years out of college are...
The kinds of jobs that Cornell graduates get fall into blah
category, etc.". I think people like to read stuff that is
interpreted for them, at least I do, with, of course, the option
to read the numbers for themselves to see if I would draw
the same conclusion.
