As students are weighing their college acceptances/choices, one of the variables frequently mentioned is the college’s career outcome report, to consider how many of the school’s graduates are employed and what are their average salaries (usually starting salaries, though some also look at later career grads). While these reports can be an interesting metric, one needs to do a deeper dive and to be careful to recognize the limits and potential flaws with these reports. First and foremost, it is limited by the # of students responding to the surveys. As this excellent article Colleges’ career success stats don’t tell the whole story about how their graduates are doing after they get their degree notes, “This is, perhaps, the greatest selling point for any institution of higher education. Students consistently say that finding a good-paying job is among the top reasons why they go to college.
As scholars of career education, we believe it’s important for students and families to know there may be more under the surface to those career outcome statistics.”
This is referred to as the “knowledge rate” or “the percentage of graduates who each year shared their outcomes with their college after graduating and that the college can reasonably verify. Think of it this way: If a college boasts 100% career success for a graduating class, but their knowledge rate is only 50%, then that “100% career success” becomes a lot less impressive, as it represents only half the class”. While many colleges send their students the the NACE first destination survey First-Destination Survey recent reports state that the average # of students providing their outcome is only 56%. And if one is using the WSJ’s “best value” report that some feel helps look at a school’s ROI, their report is flawed by the absence of noting how many students responded to their college’s career success survey (read “the conversation” article linked above for a more in depth explanation).
and as the Georgetown Center for Education in the Workforce also notes, “College tends to be a good investment, but it involves significant risk based on program of study, level of educational attainment, and occupation after graduation”. they recommend taking these 10 steps: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/10rules/ . Note that while this was released in 2021 and may not completely represent the current economic climate, it does have some excellent pointers.
Question:
How much weight did you as parents, and/or your rising college freshmen put in a school’s outcome data, the WSJ’s or other ROI metrics, or in the College scorecard’s report (also limited) Search Fields of Study | College Scorecard to make your decision? What other information did you use, or did you ask when speaking with the admissions staff in evaluating this piece of the puzzle?
Career readiness was important to us as a family but more importantly my D wanted a school with a hands on approach to her major. Those two things seemed to go hand in hand.
We did look at first destination surveys but more to see which companies were hiring, what segment of the industry, and what parts of the country grads landed. That was more important to us than salary, since schools were not consistent with what was included in that information.
Do you think this metric helps a student who doesn’t have a clear sense of their academic path? What would you feel is better to consider? Student happiness? retention rate?
My kid was more focused on research, experiences, volunteering etc.
When I did check, it turned out that her actual salary was much higher than what was posted for her major. She worked for a few years before returning to school.
I don’t think that metric helps those who are unsure of a path, but that’s just my opinion.
If my D hadn’t been sure about her major, I would have tried to steer her to a school that had a lot of flexibility. A program where you don’t declare a major until late sophomore year or where switching is straight forward.
At most colleges, major has a greater influence than college name in job and career prospects. So a student considering several majors may want to be aware of how they affect job and career prospects after graduation, even though that should not be the only consideration when choosing a major.
This also means that college post-graduation survey results are not that useful if they do not show results by major.
In practice, some majors require starting on the prerequisite courses from the first semester in order to avoid delaying graduation if that major is chosen. So the undecided student still needs to plan carefully in order to make progress in every possible major that is still under consideration until a major is declared.
Of course, it is still desirable if there are not high barriers (usually due to capacity limitations) in front of declaring or changing into any of the possible majors.
We did not look at outcome reports either because (a) we were familiar with the limitations of these self reported metrics and (b) it didn’t matter whether one school claimed its graduates from a stem major had a starting salary a few thousand more or less than another. That said, both of our kids changed their majors… INTO engineering!! One considered physics when applying, the other considered being premed so was planning to be a chem major. So the outcome data would not have mattered, especially since they (and so many kids) change their majors.
These outcome reports are often mentioned on CC with regard to neuroscience and biology majors- the point being that the salaries are low regardless of the school.
Most of the jobs are those obtained by premeds/prehealth prior to returning to school.
I don’t know if ‘most’ or just ‘many’ bio or neuroscience majors are med school bound and have low paying jobs for a couple of years between undergrad and med school, but I’m sure it’s a not insignificant proportion. It’s frustrating when many on CC always bring out the tropes ‘salaries are so low’ and/or ‘you need grad school’ with those majors and disregard the fact that the med school aspirants working in low paying jobs are bringing down the averages. Plenty of opportunity for bio and neuroscience majors with bachelor’s degrees. (although I note the great cutback in governmental research investment, and that might impact things negatively)
The reality is - schools publish reports for a reason. They are businesses. Students are consumers. Certain individuals may not use them but as a whole people do - and that’s why they are published. That’s why a parent will come on here and say UCB Math is $140K or UNL Raikes is $104K.
The data isn’t always great - some may be salary, others include a sign on bonus. Some have limited respondents.
But you work with what you have and there’s a reason a UIUC or UW will list the #s for engineering, etc. as an example.
And those who say they don’t - but then they’re talking about Tulane, not Tarleton State, so there’s an inherent bias there to begin with toward a rank.
But to think that people aren’t using placement reports would be naive in my opinion. Colleges know this and that’s why they share stats in admissions presentations and more.
Do most?
Likely not because most simply go to a local or state school.
But for those on the competitive track, enough use it and schools are using them to get rankings and for customers to justify their high fees.
We didn’t dive into those metrics. Our kids are both writers (not in the same field or context) and internship, employment and coop opportunities (as well as academic departments)were looked at in terms of gaining both skills and personal insight into how they would pursue their craft. They knew relevant experience while an undergrad would be vital.
The limitations of such statistics seem amplified in broader liberal arts majors. We know English majors who are published poets, communication specialists, journalists, teachers and investment bankers.
We didn’t look at the salary data either. Both kids went to LACs and didn’t know what they would major in, or what their career paths were going to be. We were happy to invest in them as they figured it out, we felt that getting an education was itself a fine ROI. One is successfully launched, and one more to go (who did transfer out of their LAC…we didn’t look at salary data at transfer schools either.)
Bingo. On all fronts. As explained with the several links to very reputable resources in the OP, these “outcome” reports can be and often are deeply flawed, and people who rely on them may get what they paid for (so to speak). I was a neuroscience/psychology double major (neuroscience had a different name back then) and then went to grad school, so the only metric I would have reported back when dinosaurs roamed the earth was that I was attending grad school. But in this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to go right from undergrad to grad school in my field. College grads wanting this career path will have to take one of those low-paying intro hospital jobs, or work for low or no pay as a research assistant or whatever it takes to build the resume/history to get a prized spot in a very competitive graduate program (it was very competitive when I attended, its even more uber crazy competitive now). And, as @Mwfan1921 noted, the programs in the sciences will be very unpredictable in the coming few years.
It is articles like the ones cited in the OP that are there to pull the curtain off the “data” tha can be very misleading and “lie” by omission of some key factors affecting their “numbers”.
Outcome reports were not something we considered with either of our kids.
For the musician, it was just not a predictable metric at all.
For the younger kid, she started off as an engineering major. If we had looked at that metric, we would have been quite duped, as she picked up a second major more suited to her actual interests. She will never be an engineer, so looking at that metric would have been useless at the end of the day.
We wanted both of our kids to go to colleges with strong core course requirements. We wanted them to experience areas that might not otherwise have been explored. And we wondered if something might pique their interest other than their freshman major.
I don’t think those reports mean much because I believe it is only kids who are doing well that fill them out. If you read that the average salary for your major is $75k and you are only making $55k, are you going to send it in? How about if you still haven’t found a job yet or one that you need a college degree for? I think the numbers are all biased high.
And FWIW, I asked my kids and they both say they’ve never even received a survey.
