It seems to me that the question of “what counts as a job in your field” is a simple one. On the survey you send out to graduates, you just ask “Are you currently working in the same field as your major?”, and let the alumni themselves determine what counts. Because surely, their opinion is the one that matters.
If I got a degree in philosophy and now I am a lawyer, I’d say “no”, but that doesn’t mean my degree was useless. It may have prepared me veey well for law school and then for my professional life.
This question is too vague.
A better question would be: “You graduated from our university, and we gave you a diploma. In your job today, would you have been hired without your diploma?”
This covers the English major now working as a salesman, as well as the engineer working in his specific field.
The problem with any of these questions is as I outlined above. Namely survey response and self-selection. Be honest, if you’re out of school, have you ever responded to a follow-up survey? Typically, only two types of peoplevrespond in numbers, the very dissatisfied and the uber-cheerleader. The first is mad at the school and wants to give it a piece of her mind and the second exaggerates to make the school look good. The murky middle which is where the real data lies is busy living their life. A good part of the time we don’t even have their real address - we have their in-town apartment and they may or may not choose to forward their mail. Email is just as shaky and with the advent of social media as the primary communication tool of this cohort it might not even be checked.
So we can discuss survey questions all we wish, but the bottom line is that the data is still going to come back bad and unrepresentative. Anyone of any size that is touting their placement rates is fudging numbers or guessing. Test pass rates are a better indicator, but again largely are dependent more on the type of student you accept rather than your educational prowess. In some ways they can produce counter-intuitive results (For instance, let’s say you’re a school that serves largely poor minorities with low chance of success. You could be dragging these kids through college and providing programs that keep them in school and make them achieve way beyond their apparent potential. It’s likely that they’ll still fail tests at a higher rate than the wealthy white and Asian school that accepts only 4.0 students and shoves them in a room with a test prep book and no guidance. It’s not exactly a surprise thar kids successful before college tend to be successful during and after college as well. So what you find with the numbers is not a reflection of the actual quality of education. You as a consumer simply look at the numbers or rankings and make a decision, but it’s a decision based on flawed premises.
Here’s an analogy. Let’s pretend that the best soccer coach in the world is put in charge of my son’s 11 year old team. Let’s pretend they put me in charge of Man City. After a year, our teams play. Well, I hate to tell you, but my Man City team would wipe the floor with thise 12 year olds. This does not mean I am the better coach, I just had better players. The stat sheet does not reflect my ability to teach, but only my ability to recruit. Colleges that intentionally handicap themselves by serving the poor or minorities or the borderline student are always going to lose the stat wars. Consumers take that to mean that their quality is less when in fact it may be higher than those who intentionally exclude poor or minority students.
I like this question better than the “Are you working in the same field as your major?” question. But it requires someone to read their hiring manager’s mind. Like, there are many people who work in occupations where a college degree isn’t necessary. How are they supposed to know if they wouldn’t have been hired without their diploma?
I’m an example of such a person, except that in my case it’s an advanced degree. My job does not require a graduate degree. The guy who had my job before me didn’t have one. I certainly think my degree has helped me in my career, but I can’t say it is essential to me doing my job.
I just thought of another problem with requiring a placement report for universities and colleges. The confounding effect of post-graduate programs. It’s great that 80% of a school’s graduates wind up with jobs in the fields. But if 100% of this number had to go to graduate school (which is the case for most science majors), then whoopty-doo.
I think there’s too much focus on whether or not a degree helped you get your job, and not enough on whether the akills you learned have contributed to career success. I could have gone to a shittier college and half assed my way through a program and still gotten my first job out of college. But I am much better at my job because I had a good college education, and the trajectory of these last twenty years was based on those skills. It’s true that after your forat job, no one cares where you went to school . . .but they care what you can do, and that starts in college.
To piggy back on this, I don’t think ending up with a job outside of one’s major is neccessarily a sign that the major was a flop. It could actually indicate that the education a person received was good enough to equip them with a broad base of knowledge, thereby allowing them more employment options.
I got a job with a forestry firm right after I graduated, even though my area of study was marine biology. It just so happened that one of my elective courses was botany, which really got me interested in tree identification. I would think a university would want to get “credit” for something like this rather than see it as some kind of failure.
Not to mention general life happiness. I have a friend who co-owns and co-runs a family business, which she’s been working in since she was a teenager. She went to college and majored in an unrelated subject that she’s always been interested in, and which she thought she might pursue in graduate school or in a different kind of job. As it happened, she chose to stick with the family business instead.
But her major subject has always been a sort of second-career sideline and abiding interest for her, and she’s very happy that she got to study it with some excellent scholars. You can get a lot out of your college education even if it never has a direct bearing on how you earn your living.
Yes, I think that the more information that students have, the better. In particular, students should receive more information about the relative value of different majors.
Of course, a freshman can find that information by researching it if they really want to, but there’s no reason why the college shouldn’t post the information prominently in a place where all students will see it. Some may consider it common sense that math and engineering majors earn higher average salaries than music or anthropology majors, but there are surely many 18-year-olds who don’t know such things. Better information can’t hurt.
Well, it can, if it’s stripped of context–like which majors require post-secondary work (a math degree with no relevant work skills is not a slam-dunk to a high paying job), or important information about the field (petroleum engineering and aerospace engineering pay more than average, but both have pretty bad “boom and bust” cycles that, say, mechanical engineering does not). Some pay very well but you aren’t going to get into that field just by picking a major off a list. You need specific internships.
You know what universities should fund? Whole departments filled with professional advisers who can work with students as well as companies that are hiring to develop a whole sequence of career supports, from resume writing to internships to co-op to interview support, starting early in a student’s college career and extending through graduation and placement.
Wait, shit, they do.
From what I’m seeing most colleges information is pretty general. Like what the national average is for jobs in that general area. They also dont mention where those jobs are like how some jobs are really only in states like California.
What I LIKE about the LATI stats was they showed employment in just South Dakota.
I agree and what the LATI stats do not show is who just went to work for the family business. Ex. many degrees from those schools are farm based such as Precision Ag.
Oh no, they have these big labs where students practice on the things for the career. For example this one for Aviation Maintenance, check out the lab floor plan where they have 4 different airplanes to work on. I never saw such an awesome “lab” at any college!
Well there is another alternative, just giving scholarships to students based on if after graduation, they agree to live and work in that state. In South Dakota they offer the Dakota Build scholarships for that.
Schools are in a weird place . . .academically mediocre rich kids are the ones that care about amenities . . . But in private schools, at least, they are paying a huge percentage of total revenue. So modest expenditures to attract those kids have an outsized inpact on bottom lines. It’s what attracts the kids who write the checks that pay the scholarships for the poor kids who don’t give a damn about having a gym with a juice bar.
Collecting all that data–for specific jobs, in specific regions–and keeping that data current, requires resources, and it doesn’t make sense for each college to be doing that separately on its own. If they have transitions services, (or counseling), they should be just meeting with each student and letting them what the data is and where to find it. E.g.
In combination with regional data sources which drill down into specific job prospects in specific areas, with the most recent data available, such as this one for different counties in California, where you can see things like specific area pay rates, how many job postings there have been in the area recently, which companies are hiring which positions, how many positions they are hiring, etc.
In fact, high schools and adult education schools should be doing this, so that students get this information before they even decide what career pathway to take, and before they even start to look at specific schools. The problem is that most community colleges (which have many short-term trade certificate programs) are underfunded, and private trade schools just want to convince you to study with them.
Great information. Thanks
Though some of that administrative bloat is necessary and good. When I went to college, you had little recourse if you were sexually harassed by your professors. There was little support for a kid with ADHD or first generation college students.
My daughter is at a small private liberal arts school - without a ton of amenities - they athletic center was built in the 70s and looks like it, the cafeteria is good, but its the one that they’ve had for decades. But they have added more suite housing in addition to the dorms (you do pay more for suite housing). They’ve added enough mental health professionals to guarantee that their students can get to a therapist - since its difficult to reach one off campus from where they are. They are dealing with more ADHD and kids on the spectrum than they have before - and their student accessibility services team is staffed for coaching those students - anxiety and depression, kids showing up who are in recovery, gender and sexuality issues. And we, the parents who send our kids there, want those things at this school - a lot of us have sent our slight weird kid to this particular school because they are set up to deal with it.
And this. Colleges need some full pay students - the ones that want nice dorms, nice athletic facilities, good food, a pretty campus. The ones that aren’t TOO concerned if they get a philosophy degree or are working in their field post graduation, because they “know” they are going on to law school or an MBA, and the undergrad degree is just a support degree for their grad school application. And yes, the academically mediocre ones who are also going to want a good writing center and math center and some Econ tutoring. Colleges need them for two reasons - one, they help pay for the students who don’t have resources now, and two, they and their parents are more likely to have money to support the school later. And getting those kids is competitive - it involves having a campus that a seventeen year old kid and his parents see as a place worth being at.
There is another factor here that I’m seeing first hand in my home for the first time since we dropped her off Freshman - college life has to be worth being there for. And college life at this sort of school is not getting your welding certificate and moving on, like it is for my son - its a four year immersive experience in “college” where much of what happens isn’t in a classroom. If the student isn’t enjoying the 150 hours a week they aren’t in the classroom, if they don’t have friends and activities that keep them engaged, they aren’t going to make it through to graduation. And smart parents look at a college like that. Because a school that places a lot of people in jobs that 50% of students don’t graduate from is not a good use of time or money.
I have two very different kids, and my two very different kids need two very different kids of post high school educations.
I would add on an additional category, around here many students opt to go to a junior college and knock off the first 2 years, then transfer to university for the final 2.
OR, they just live at home and drive to that school. Here in Overland Park Kansas we have a great Juco calledJohnson County Community College. Not many good stand alone tech programs, but its a great place to knock out your undergrad credits like English Comp. Plus many students drive, carpool, or take a special bus to Lawrence Kansas, home to the University of Kansas. The bus is called theK-10 connector.
Obviously those students are also not interested in the “college experience”. I think for most students when they start looking at the tuition bills, those great “college experiences” arent so great after all.
Fun fact from The Catch-22 of Community College Graduation Rates
Now, not everyone who goes to a community college ever intends to go on to a 4 year–some just want their associates degree and to get out. However, if you drill into the numbers here:
You see that after 6 years, 27% of community college students get a degree at the school they start at and 12% get a degree at the school they transfer to (that’s the 60% of 25% above). 61% have dropped out, transferred to another school where they still haven’t gotten a degree, or are still enrolled.
Now, Community colleges can be a great option–but, ironically, not for the sort of kid that usually goes there: the kid that isn’t quite “ready” for a 4-year school. Four year schools often do a better job of supporting a less mature kid because they have that in loco parentis mindset. Community College expects you to be an adult, and if you just drop off the radar, no one goes looking. If you sign up for 6 classes that don’t do you any good, aren’t needed for your major, and won’t do you any good if you transfer to a 4-year, they don’t mention it. They often have lots of very good, dedicated individuals working for them, but as institutions, they don’t have the resources. Jesus, just the website of our local CC makes it almost impossible to get registered if you aren’t a black-belt in bureaucracy.
If a kid is focused, knows what they want, and knows enough about college to do the research to take the right classes now, CC can work really well. But if you take a kid who doesn’t know much about college, who vaguely knows he’s “supposed” to go to college and that CC is where you “take the basics”, he’s going to spin his wheels for 2-4 years and not get anywhere closer to a degree. He’s also likely to end up a low-level manager at the local tire store by that point, and after a while he just does that. If you take a kid who isn’t entirely sold on going to college but whose college-educated parents insist, he’s going to enroll in slightly better chosen classes (because his parents can advise), but he’s going to get lots of reinforcement for the smoking pot and playing video games life style, which means pretty soon he’s racked up a bunch of Cs and Fs, ruling out a transfer to a 4-year. That kid is not going to go anywhere at all until his parents kick him out. He’ll get a job bussing tables and move in with his girlfriend.
You know, some people are affluent. I don’t understand lots of things people spend a ton of money on, but I tend to assume they aren’t collectively stupid–they know what they are spending, and it seems worth it to them. And it’s also really, really hard to generalize about college costs. It’s quite possible–common, even–for an “expensive” private school to cost less than a public school, when financial aid from both is considered. At elite private schools, literally 75% of tuition dollars, total, are paid by students who graduate from the top 150 private high schools in America–places that have tuitions of $25k/up a year. When you’ve been paying that for 12 years already, $60k/year isn’t a huge leap. The other 25% of tuition dollars are spread amongst the much larger pool of students who went to pubic schools and lesser privates. They are all getting substantial financial aid.