Page 194 - Crisis in Higher Education

Building Bridges to Potential Employers • 165

content of the courses and/or having a fuller understanding of what the
career involves. These events usually increase completion time and costs.
They are difficult to eliminate completely, but it is possible to minimize
these delays and extra costs by providing as much placement and job data
as possible. It is worth the time to investigate and make better decisions
because enrolling in even one course that does not count toward gradua-
tion can cost a few thousand dollars extra.
Universities should be required to offer placement and job data for their
graduates and alumni. Data from recent graduates are relatively easy to
collect as students apply for and are cleared for graduation. They may
chose not to respond, but most will, and nonrespondents can be counted
and reported as such. However, it is more difficult to collect data for
alumni who graduated several years ago. The good news is that universi-
ties invest considerable effort and spend large amounts of money to track
alumni for the purpose of fundraising. The same system can be used to
collect placement and job data for alumni. Once again, some may chose
not to respond, but that can be addressed. These data provide applicant,
students, and graduates with useful information about jobs, salaries, and
careers. It is also true that these data are likely to contain biases and errors,
but the intent is to show big differences in outcomes that may cause a stu-
dent to select a different field of study.
Job information and placement data are also available in the Occupational
Outlook Handbook (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/), which is published by the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is a rich source of information on hun-
dreds of jobs, and it provides a national perspective on current and future
job markets, but it is not broken down by university. The information in
the handbook is summarized here and is a useful complement to the uni-
versity data.

1. Pay: The median salary as well as the salary floor (the “lowest 10%
earned less than” amount or the 10th percentile) and the salary ceil-
ing (the “highest 10% earned more than” amount or the 90th percen-
tile) are available.
2. Job outlook: Discusses the job market broadly and breaks it down by
occupational title. This includes short-term job prospect as well as
10 years in the future. It provides the estimated percent change in
employment (job growth rate) as well as employment by industry.
3. What holders of the job do: Describes the duties and responsibilities
of the job.