The counterintuitive side of engineering

ucbalumnus
Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:14:37 +0000

NegativeSlope:

Does anyone have a good estimation of the job placement rates at places like USC and Stanford?



What [Stanford](http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/cdc/jobs/salary)'s career center shows is limited in terms of this type of information. USC seems to provide even less of this type of information campuswide, although a few departments or schools there appear to conduct their own surveys.



NegativeSlope:

I would think that grads from good private schools will be better off, since they would want their grads to get good jobs (so that they would be likely to donate to the school later on). Is that right, or are they no better than the top UC schools?



It may have more to do with the students’ purposes and motivations in going to school. If a school is full of “academic idealists”, “medical school or bust” pre-meds, smart but lazy students, etc., then job placement rates may not be that high. On the other hand, a good school full of career-focused students may have a higher job placement rate.

Choice of majors at each school has a big effect on job placement rate at graduation, and may hint at student purposes and motivations. From the common data sets (section J, Degrees Conferred) at each school:

[Cal Poly SLO](!IR Home | Institutional Research) 2010-2011:
Engineering 24%
Business/marketing 15%
Agriculture 12%
Architecture 7%
Biological/life sciences 6%
Parks and recreation 5%
Social sciences 4%
Psychology 3%
all others each <3% (including Computer and information sciences 2%)

[UC Berkeley](http://cds.berkeley.edu/) 2009-2010:
Social sciences 20.8%
Biological/life sciences 13.8%
Engineering 11.4%
English 5.7%
Interdisciplinary studies 5.0%
Psychology 4.8%
Business/marketing 4.5%
all others each <4% (including Computer and information sciences 1.0%)

[url=http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2010.html#degrees]Stanford[/url] 2010-2011:
Social sciences 21.65%
Interdisciplinary studies 15.91%
Engineering 13.50%
Biological/life sciences 7.06%
Physical sciences 5.46%
Computer and information sciences 4.94%
Psychology 4.54%
all other majors each <4%

Oddly, USC’s common data set is nowhere to be found, unless you want the other USC (South Carolina).