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Career Survey Report - Class of 1997

Survey & Responses	Methods of Obtaining Current Position
Employment Status	Graduate School
Location of Employment	Appendix A: Respondents by Major
Fields of Employment	Appendix B: 1997 Graduate Schools
Relation of Position to Academic Major	Appendix C: Summary Sheet For All Respondents
Preparation	Salary Data
Employer Listing

Survey & Responses

Each year the Career Services Office undertakes a survey of the previous year’s graduating class to determine the career and employment status of the new graduates. The 1997 survey was mailed out in early January to 1,125 alumni representing bachelor degree graduates from January, May, and August 1997. A second mailing was sent out in February, a reminder post card in early March, and follow-up phone calls were made in late March. In addition, this year we created a web site on-line survey that allowed graduates to send their results to us over the Internet. These efforts yielded a total of 598 replies, a response rate of 53 percent. Appendix A provides a comprehensive listing of the majors included in each field of study and the number of respondents from each major. The chart below offers a short summary of the respondents.

Fields of Study	# of Respondents
Social Sciences	185
Education	169
Management	115
Humanities	89
Sciences	40

In this report, information is provided about graduates’ employment status, the fields and location of employment, the techniques used to secure employment, and respondents’ opinions about how well Bridgewater prepared them for their current position. Results are reported for the entire group and, when appropriate, for individual fields of study

Employment Status

Six months to a year after graduating, almost 90 percent of the 1997 graduates are employed. Of those employed, 77 percent are employed on a full-time basis and 11 percent are employed part-time. Approximately 10 percent indicated that they were not employed and they fell into the following categories: attending graduate school, could not find employment in their field or in their desired location or were not currently seeking employment.

Of the Class of ’97 respondents, the highest percentage of part-time employment was in the Humanities: 15 percent, Social Sciences follow at 13 percent, Education at 12 percent, Sciences at 10 percent, and Management at 4 percent. There was a large decrease in the part-time employment in the field of Education, from 23 percent in 1996 to 12 percent in 1997. It appears that the improved teaching job market may have played a role in providing more full-time opportunities.

As the local economy has continued to improve both in Massachusetts and New England, so has the unemployment rate for BSC graduates. The unemployment rate for the Class of ’97 was 3.7 percent. This rate was below the Massachusetts unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, the New England unemployment rate of 4.5 percent, and the national average of 5.0 percent as noted in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 1997 report. The graph below illustrates the decline in the BSC unemployment rate.

Unemployment Rates of BSC Graduates: 1993-1997

Location of Employment

As one might expect, Bridgewater graduates continue to work in the Commonwealth and contribute to the vitality of the Massachusetts economy; approximately 82 percent of this year’s respondents are employed in the state.

For the 1997 graduates, only 3 percent indicated that they were employed in other New England states and 6 percent outside the Northeast.

Fields of Employment

As always, this year’s respondents are employed in a variety of fields. Thirty-seven percent indicated that they were employed in Business, either manufacturing or non-manufacturing. Twenty-seven percent reported employment in Education and 11 percent in Human Services. Given the educational preparation of these graduates, these results are not surprising. The vast majority of respondents were Management Science, Education, and Psychology.

Relatively few graduates indicated that they were self-employed (2 percent), in the Military (0.3 percent), or employed by the government (3 percent).

Relation of Position to Academic Major

Respondents were asked to identify the degree to which their current position was related to their academic major. Approximately 82 percent felt that their current position was either directly or somewhat related to their academic major. This is almost a 20 percent increase from the 1996 graduates. With the strong job market and the low unemployment rate, graduates have had the opportunity to find and secure positions more closely related to their field. When looking at this question by field of study their were no significant differences. The results ranged from 78 to 89 percent.

BSC Preparation

Graduates were also asked how well they thought BSC prepared them for their position by responding to the statement, "The academic program at BSC prepared me for my current position" using a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Overall, 84 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. Last year the results dipped to 64 percent in response to this question. This year’s data is far more consistent with the range of 80-85 percent from prior years’ results. It appears that since many were able to find employment in their chosen field, graduates felt good about their overall academic preparation. When broken out by fields, responses ranged from 81 percent in Humanities to 88 percent in Education.

Salary Data

Consistent with national studies and past alumni surveys, Management and Science graduates earn slightly more than their counterparts in Humanities and Social Sciences.

There was an increase in Education majors’ salaries this year over last year but still one out every six Education graduates is earning less than $12,000. Approximately 20% of Education graduates earn between $12,000-$18,000 annually and another 60% earn $18,000-$30,000 per year. As reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, salaries went up in 1997 for most fields especially in the technical professions of engineering and computer science. Increases in starting salaries were seen in almost every field. The BSC Class of ’97 survey results show that twenty-nine percent of the graduates employed in the field of Management earned more than $30,000, up two percent (28%) over the 1996 survey and up five percent (25%) from the 1995 survey.

BSC Salary Data for Graduates Employed Full-Time by Field of Study
(Percentages include only those graduates who provided responses)
(Percentages include only those graduates who provided responses)

	Social Sciences	Humanities	Sciences	Education	Management
Less than 12,000	8%	9%	9%	17%	4%
12,000-17,999	15%	15%	3%	20%	3%
18,000-23,999	35%	33%	22%	24%	21%
24,000-29,999	29%	27%	31%	36%	44%
30,000-35,999	8%	11%	16%	3%	13%
Above 36,000	5%	6%	19%	1%	16%

Methods of Obtaining Current Position

Graduates were asked to reveal what they considered to be their primary source used to obtain their current position. Twenty-five percent of the graduates indicated that they obtained their current position from networking. An additional 5 percent indicated that their primary source was a job fair. Twenty-two percent, obtained their current positions from newspapers or professional journals and another 14 percent indicated that they used direct application.

Only 3 percent of our graduates indicated that they used an employment agency to obtain their current position. This is not surprising given that most third party agencies primarily recruit experienced workers. As we have seen before graduates are using a variety of employment methods to find their jobs and networking continues to be an important strategy in finding the first job.

Graduate School

Approximately 15 percent of the respondents were enrolled full-time (6%) or part-time (9%) in graduate or professional school at the time of this survey. This percentage is slightly above last year’s 13 percent. The consistent trend shows that from 1993-1997 between 12-17 percent go on to graduate study shortly after leaving Bridgewater. In our work with alumni, it is clear that the vast majority of graduates who are considering graduate school usually wait a year or two. This is not surprising given that many graduate programs prefer candidates who have some professional work experience in their field.

Beginning last year, the number of part-time graduate students exceeded the number of full-time graduate students.

Appendix B outlines some of the graduate programs and colleges where our students are enrolled.

Graduate School Enrollment 1993-1997

Note:

Included in Appendix C is a Summary Sheet of the responses to survey items for all graduates. For any major with more than 10 responses we can provide a similar summary. Please contact Brian Salvaggio, Career Services at 697-1328 for details.

Acknowledgment:

Special thanks to Pat O’Brien and the staff of the Office of Institutional Research who assisted us with the data compilation and the preparation of this report. I would also like to thank the following Career Services Staff for their assistance with this project:

Elizabeth Leatham (former graduate assistant)
Jennifer Datres, Assistant Director, Career Services
Madelyn Dias, Clerk III
Denise Diliddo, Part-time Clerk III