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From Student to Employee: The Vital Role of Career Services

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For many institutions, gone are the days where the mission of the career service office is "placement." Instead, colleges and universities are focusing on "career education" which teaches students how to manage and take responsibility for their career paths. This month, our guest expert, Andrew Ceperley, discusses this theme and other important topics related to career services on campus.
Andrew Hibel, HigherEdJobs: Mr. Ceperley, please explain some of the major responsibilities you have in your career services role at the University of California, San Diego.

Andrew Ceperley, UC San Diego: I provide leadership for a team of over 100 professionals in a Student Affairs Cluster charged with providing experiences that foster student self-discovery and delivering programs that help students develop the personal, academic, and professional skills and relationships needed for successful transition into diverse and global communities. The Experiential Learning Cluster is comprised of Academic Enrichment Programs, the Office of Academic Support and Instructional Services, the International Center, and my home organization, the Career Services Center.

Hibel: In addition to your position at UC San Diego, you are the president for NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers¹. What do you feel is the most vital part of the NACE's mission?

Ceperley: NACE leads a community of professionals focused on the employment of the college educated by providing access to relevant knowledge, resources, insight, and relationships. Each component is so very vital to our members. More and more, employer and college members alike are looking for career development and recruiting solutions that are grounded in evidence. The NACE research department represents a critical area of interest and growth around benchmarking, trend analysis, and customized survey reporting. As well, members are always interested in the latest resources that will help them better serve their constituencies. And, with steady turnover in the profession, members are eager to find ways to connect with one another to share best practices and common challenges. Whether through our LinkedIn community, the annual conference, the NACE webinar offerings, or other engagement platforms, we try to make it as easy as possible for our increasingly global membership to establish connections

Hibel: A recent NACE press release said that employers project a 13 percent increase in hiring new 2013 college grads compared to last year.² How does this news affect college career service offices and the students they assist?

Ceperley: Well, it definitely implies more traffic through our online jobs portals, our campus job fairs, and our on-campus interview programs. With a somewhat healthier job market in certain industries, we still need to make very sure our students are aware of the opportunities when they become available and are prepared and motivated to pursue these opportunities, often just in time.

Hibel: Although there are hiring increases across many areas, there are "high demand" areas such as engineering, finance and computer science. What do you think are the trends that we may see in these areas in the future?

Ceperley: We are definitely seeing a number of trends in this area. One is the stronger cross-campus relationships with industries that increasingly recruit across traditional academic disciplines as opposed to simply within discrete majors. A campus-wide career services office is typically best equipped to provide an introduction between an employer with substantial hiring needs and the various campus stakeholders who together are able to assist with talent sourcing. In the future - actually even today - employers in STEM and other areas are developing their pipelines in the K-12 setting by supporting schools, coordinating science festivals for kids, and establishing pre-college internship programs.

Hibel: During this election year, there has been a lot of campaigning about how small businesses are a big part of the driver of new jobs. How are career services centers working with some of the smaller business to get those jobs into the hands of graduates?

Ceperley: Two words: "easy access." Smaller, typically more local employers represent terrific partners in offering students internships, special projects (often team projects), and permanent jobs at graduation. Career centers need to scale their employer-facing services to demonstrate added value to these organizations. Flagship job fairs, well-attended information sessions, and filled on-campus-interview schedules may easily overwhelm smaller employers whose talent needs may be few and whose hiring cycle may be just in time (as in next week!). Providing these employers with free online job postings, special boutique events on campus, and other customized programs can connect them to the campus and at the same time educate students that employment opportunities are not exclusive to big brands.

Hibel: If you were presenting to a team of colleagues, what are some best practices related to the area of career development that you would share?

Ceperley: Like many traditional campus departments, career centers need to remain relevant by demonstrating the positive impacts their services and programs have on students and employers. We need to be dynamic, lively campus spaces with complementary online spaces - both website and social media platforms - that inform our students, inspire them, and facilitate some of the essential connections they need to land that first post-graduate job opportunity. In my view, the most high impact career centers have rich industry and alumni partnerships, exceptional campus-wide relationships, and innovative high-visibility programming.

Hibel: Referencing another NACE press release, it said, "60 Percent of Paid Interns Get Job Offers."³ This is an encouraging statistic. What can career service offices do to help their students increase the chance of obtaining an internship?

Ceperley: Educating students on the strategy and process behind the internship search is an excellent way to prepare them for the higher stakes job search a year or two down the road. All the teaching ingredients are present: the importance of search strategy, industry research, networking, and impeccable communications (resume, cover letter, interview, and follow-up). Career services offices need to ensure that students are aware that related work experience (aka internship) is no longer a luxury. It represents an important component of a successful candidacy for a permanent position.

Hibel: What are your thoughts on the responsibility of the career services office versus the student in the job search process?

Ceperley: The job search is largely the responsibility of the student, as unpopular as some may find that sentiment. Gone are the days when career centers were called "placement offices." We view ourselves as educators providing resources, connections, and insight to help our students determine and pursue their professional aspirations. Many of us are applying a coaching methodology to our once counseling-focused individual consultations to ensure that our students are clearly in the driver's seat in navigating their futures.

Hibel: Career Services offices are often required to submit placement statistics within their institution for marketing purposes as well as to outside accrediting agencies. Since there is a lot pressure for high numbers and often times "judgment" that goes along with these statistics, inflation can occur. How do you think these statistics correlate with how a school is doing in educating their students?

Ceperley: You've touched on a very hot topic in higher education. The NACE advocacy committee has taken this on and has developed a workgroup to look at national trends around destinations surveys. Currently, at the undergraduate level there are few if any standards around survey protocol, so our outcomes data is very apples to oranges at this point. When we look at placement data from graduate business schools and law schools, we see more consistency in the reporting and adherence to standards. Of concern is the reliance on salary data to justify educational success. Success is highly subjective, and the real metric for a high impact campus will rarely become apparent in the first generation survey but in surveys that graduates complete one, two, and five years after graduation. Graduates at those points are better able to respond to more significant questions about the value of the school's academic and non-academic preparation for career and for life.

Hibel: How do you think institutions of higher education are doing in educating students on how to be effective managers of their own careers? And how do you think career services offices can help further that goal?

Ceperley: This is an interesting question. On the one hand, most career services practitioners consider themselves to be educators, delivering programs designed to empower students, to connect them with bona fide opportunities, and to inspire with an awareness of the multitude of options they might pursue with their degrees. On the other hand, the college market has become increasingly consumer driven in recent decades, and we have bolstered our programs with considerable assessment around convenience, satisfaction, and post-graduate job destination. Though most in our profession have transformed our missions from "student placement" to "career education," we still navigate expectations from parents, students, and even campus colleagues that our career services units can guarantee placement upon graduation. We are at our best when we leverage assessment to demonstrate that our resources, programs, and services have a positive impact on students' abilities to determine, pursue, and achieve their career dreams.

Hibel: In the area of career services, career counseling to students and alumni with varied backgrounds is common. How does your team approach guiding, for example, an inexperienced undergraduate compared to a seasoned professional who may be seeking a career change?

Ceperley: It's always important to identify a student's readiness for personal career development. Often defining moments in a student's life will trigger proactive behaviors that boost career-readiness, such as writing a resume, conducting self-assessment, or attending a career workshop or event. These trigger moments include parental influence, peer pressure, happenstance opportunities, and often the realization that graduation is not far off (panic!). It's true that one size does not fit all in delivering counseling and programmatic services to students. Our menu of services does not categorize activities by year in school but by over-arching needs - such as finding an internship, preparing for an interviewing, considering the connection between major and career, etc. Professionals who are mid-career are typically in a very different space, and we recognize that our primary program offerings best serve students from their first term on campus as freshman through their first few years after graduation.

Hibel: You lead a large staff at UC San Diego and worked at several other universities prior. What have you learned over the years in order to become an effective leader?

Ceperley: Talk less. Listen more. Never underestimate the importance of telling the story of your career office. Go beyond the traditional annual report, and develop an annual year-in-the-life brochure pointing to trends, outcomes, and new initiatives. Most students are not lacking for campus services to pursue. It is up to us to convince them that their personal career development is worth their time and attention. It's important to build an eclectic staff of student peers, graduate interns, and professional staffs who come at career services from different areas of expertise - we need communicators, educators, connectors, social media gurus, and plenty of evangelists - people who take pride in having a tremendous impact on the college experience.

Hibel: In your biography page, you have some words of wisdom for students. "Plan. Set professional goals. Make your future happen. But be open to the inevitable happenstance along the way." What inspired these words and would you share any different words with your colleagues throughout your school?⁴

Ceperley: The words hold water for any audience. For years we became so focused on the notion of career planning - encouraging students to develop plans, to set goals, and to track their progress. That's sage advice then and now with the caveat that our personal and professional lives often steer us away from the "Plan." Goal-driven students need to have their eyes up and their ears open to opportunities that sometimes just happen. And when they do, they need to be open to at least considering them. As Thomas Jefferson once said, "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." Enough said.

Hibel: For someone wanting to start a career path in the area of career services, what are some tips you could share on what to expect from this field as well as the biggest rewards?

Ceperley: The rewards are many. There is really no occupational area on a college campus that I can think of that serves as such a rich liaison for students, transporting them from life on campus to what comes next. With the rising cost of college education nation-wide, parents and families are looking for evidence of return on the college investment. Well run, innovative career centers not only symbolize but also demonstrate this return. For those interested in what has now comprised 25 years of my professional life, I strongly encourage visiting with career centers staff, even for an informational interview. Check out their websites. Take a look at NACEweb.org. Understand that sometimes the best way to break in is to volunteer, as I did when I was in graduate school. I would not be here today if I didn't say, "Sure I'd love to spend 10 hours a week in your career office learning the ropes." I'm very glad I did.

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From Student to Employee: The Vital Role of Career Services

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For many institutions, gone are the days where the mission of the career service office is "placement." Instead, colleges and universities are focusing on "career education" which teaches students how to manage and take responsibility for their career paths. This month, our guest expert, Andrew Ceperley, discusses this theme and other important topics related to career services on campus.

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BENEFITS OF QUALITY PLACEMENT

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Published: Thursday, 17 April 2014 08:49

Written by National Centre for Universities and Business

Examples of these benefits are demonstrated in the case studies within this report.

BENEFITS FOR THE STUDENT

From the student perspective, high quality placements can bring a range of benefits and positive impacts. There is strong evidence to suggest that placements and work experience are extremely valuable to students, both in terms of their academic performance and their employability skills. 1 The Wilson Review of higher education argues that such opportunities may alleviate barriers to employment for graduates, and notes that both sandwich placements and student/graduate internships hold considerable value for the students personal and professional development, and should be encouraged and provided as opportunities to all where possible. At a high level, the benefits for students include:

Placements give students the opportunity to gain skills specific to their subject or industry of choice as well as the employability skills required for real-life work. It also increases their knowledge of an industry or sector, allowing them to make better informed decisions about future career choices.

Research undertaken at the University of Aston also explored the possible causal link between placements and academic achievement, and found that placements do improve degree performance. However, the research suggested that more able students are more likely to undertake placements in the first place, and that degree performance is not improved by a placement per se, but by a successful placement.

Increased understanding and awareness of the world of work, accelerated personal maturity, self-awareness and ability to articulate skills and achievements.
Placements provide the opportunity to be involved in team-based working, which provides a welcome contrast to the typically more individual-centric approach taken to academic study. This kind of experience is beneficial, and builds on the self-management and problem solving skills typically gained at university, with the ability to work collaboratively.

A clear beneficial output for students from undertaking a placement is the ability to effectively evidence their experiences on their CV, providing documented contextual proof for their skills and abilities, coupled with a reference. Placements can also provide useful examples to use in competency based job applications or interviews.

Completing a placement can sometimes lead directly to subsequent employment with the same employer following graduation. It can be "a foot in the door" that could lead to a temporary or permanent contract.

Interaction with other professionals while on placement can also bring strong benefits in terms of networking. For example, engaging with professionals in their chosen career-field can provide a foundation of contacts on which to build and draw upon in a future career.

Placements may also have a significant economic impact on graduates throughout their careers, and contribute to improved social mobility and success in later life. It is estimated that the average salary of students who have completed sandwich placements is 8% higher than those that did not, six months after graduating. Other evidence that suggests that placements can and often do lead to firm employment opportunities include the Real Prospects 2011 survey (involving 22,000 graduates) which found that the number of respondents indicating they had worked for their employer whilst a student had risen to 22 per cent; and of these, 45 per cent had been on a work experience placement or internship and 27 per cent had been on a placement as part of their degree programme.

BENEFITS FOR THE INSTITUTION

Placements play a role in improving student satisfaction in general, and in aiding healthy retention and achievement rates.

Raising the institution's profile.
Providing placement opportunities enhances an institution's reputation for graduate employment as quality placements are felt to improve student employability, therefore institutions benefit from more satisfied students and graduates having had a better quality HE experience. In theory this also translates into better performance in league tables based on student employment levels post-graduation. This could significantly improve the attractiveness of the institution to prospective students, who are increasingly mindful of the value of their studies to employers, and improving their job opportunities.

High-quality placements can improve a university's broader engagement and relationships with business. If a placement experience is high quality, employers are more likely to come back year after year with additional placement vacancies, as well as look for other opportunities to link with the university.

Placements can form an important part of building constructive relationships with local and regional organisations, in particular with small and medium-sized enterprises, and large organisations with whom a variety of income-generating mechanisms may be developed. As such, placements are mentioned in most institutional strategy documentation and frequently sit alongside other types of activity, such as knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs), CPD, consultancy and work-based learning.

BENEFITS FOR THE EMPLOYER

The benefits to an employer from the high-level skills a graduate can provide are maximised in a high quality placement which is carefully conceived and the best candidate identified so that the student's knowledge or interests are relevant to the business.

An inherent strength of a fixed-term placement is that it allows the employer to draw upon a temporary, and thus flexible, source of talent. Businesses often have discrete project requirements that lend themselves perfectly to a temporary appointment, particularly for an articulate individual with higher level skills.

Add significant value to their business
Placement students that bring new ideas and an additional resource to a business will frequently in turn add significant value to the employing organisation.

A route to support future recruitment
Taking on a placement student holds considerably fewer risks than recruiting a new full time employee and a high quality placement has the potential to identify key staff over the longer term that will eventually lead the business and help it grow. This is coupled with the benefit that little initial training is needed to convert a placement student into a fully-fledged member of a graduate programme, given their prior familiarity with the business.

Supporting students to gain employability skills.
Placements form an important part of a business's ethos, corporate social responsibilities and identity by developing the skills of local students or those that are important to the future of their industry.

In conclusion, ultimately a high-quality placement should provide benefits for all parties involved.

References
[1] Wilson, Review of university-business collaboration, p. 37
[2] Driffield, N., Foster, C., Higson, H., Placements and degree performance: Do placements lead to better marks or do better students choose placements? (2011), p. 1.

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National Centre for Universities and Business

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What are the benefits of a quality placement?

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Details Published: Thursday, 17 April 2014 08:49 Written by National Centre for Universities and Business Examples of these benefits are demonstrated in the case studies within this report. BENEFITS FOR THE STUDENT From the student perspective, high quality placements can bring a range of benefits and positive impacts.

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Keene State College released its first placement survey of a graduating class this fall, with plans to annually track graduates' post-collegiate career outcomes. Of the 235 graduates from the class of 2012 who generated usable responses from the survey, 94 percent reported being employed or engaged in further education.

At Syracuse University, where outcome surveys have been administered for at least 30 years, 84 percent of the class of 2012 was working or attending graduate school.

Any comparison between the two universities -- or between virtually any two colleges -- would be futile.

As just one example among several, "placement" at Keene State means that a graduate has found full- or part-time employment, a paid or unpaid internship, is a full- or part-time student in graduate school, or is completing a year of service.

At Syracuse, only a graduate who secures full-time employment or enters graduate school as a full-time student is considered placed. Each of the reports, however, were generated with responses from less than half of the institution's graduating class. At Syracuse University, 43 percent of the class of 2012 responded; at Keene State, 38 percent.

Defining Success Broadly
Gallup is pitching another approach
to measuring graduates' quality
of life (and colleges' success
in producing them. See related
article.

With tuition prices continuing to rise and greater numbers of graduates struggling in the job market, families, students and policy makers -- most visibly President Obama -- are increasingly questioning the "value" that colleges are providing.

In response to that mounting pressure, more colleges and universities are turning to alumni outcome surveys. But widely differing survey methods and various interpretations make it hard for students or national policy makers to draw conclusions about how a college degree from one institution prepares graduates for the work place compared to a degree from another college.

Many directors of career service programs recognize the flaws in outcome surveys, but say there's no choice but to continue the surveys to appease the public while working to improve their quality and accuracy. Some national higher education organizations are developing guidelines so surveys can be used to compare one college to another. And individual colleges are revamping their surveys to gather more data and thoroughly analyze the results.
External Pressure
Federal lawmakers and national policy groups have called for laws that would require colleges to provide data on the post-collegiate lives of their alumni. This August, the Obama administration announced its plan to create a federal college rating system. The system could use measures such as the proportion of students receiving Pell Grants, the average amount of tuition, scholarships and loan debt, graduation and transfer rates, the salaries of graduates and the extent to which graduates get jobs and pursue advanced degrees. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he wants to have a final ratings system by December 2014, and to launch the system in the 2015 academic year.

Critics of the proposal question the availability and quality of data that would be used to measure colleges.

Previously, some members of Congress and think tank groups called for legislation that would require colleges to release similar information, as well as for a student-level "unit record" system that would track graduates as they entered the work force. The 2008 renewal of the Higher Education Act included a provision that forbid the creation of such a federal data system, but that could be revisited when Congress reauthorizes the law, a process that began this fall.

Keene State's director of institutional research, Cathryn Turrentine, says the college began its survey to stay ahead of that curve. Its Board of Trustees expects to see the employment rates of graduates, she says, and the college anticipates that the federal government will eventually require colleges to report outcomes. In the future, the survey will ask about salary, as requested by the governing board, she says. The college also plans to survey alumni five years after they graduate to develop a fuller picture of students' lives after they leave Keene State.

In its infancy, the report from Keene State lists the proportion of students in each type of employment, as well as responses to questions about whether students' jobs are closely or somewhat related to their studies and what other career-related experiences, like volunteer work or research, a student completed while in college.

About 75 percent of employed respondents said their current position is either somewhat or closely related to their studies at Keene State. Of the respondents seeking postgraduate education, 87 percent felt that their studies at Keene had prepared them well or very well. When asked what career-related activities they participated in at Keene, respondents said part-time employment (43 percent), summer jobs (33 percent), paid or unpaid internships (26 percent) and student teaching (21 percent), among others.

The survey also asked recent alumni to describe other activities they are finding meaningful, aside from employment and further education. The college listed students' answers, which included various hobbies, like art or beer brewing, as well as volunteer work and physical exercise.

The report from Syracuse is 82 pages longer than its counterpart from Keene State, but it has much in common with it. Both reports ask students if their work relates to their career goals (Syracuse) or their field of study (Keene State). Students are asked when and how they found a job.

Syracuse's placement report goes quite a bit further. It details students' placement type (full-time employment, part-time employment, internship, still looking, graduate school, or not seeking employment), provides the average salaries by school and college, and includes the companies or graduate schools where alumni are employed or enrolled, as well as a geographic summary of where alumni work.

Graduates from the School of Architecture reported the largest percentage of students placed, 97 percent, compared with a 69 percent placement rate for recent graduates of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Even then, the comparisons are not direct. Only 27 percent of graduates from the College of Visual and Performing Arts responded to the survey, compared with 69 percent of graduates from the School of Architecture.

Comprehensive as it is, Syracuse's survey is being re-examined. Career Services Director Mike Cahill says the university is reworking its survey this year, recognizing a "need to beef everything up."

While the overhaul stems from increased pressure to show outcomes data, Cahill says he uses the survey to illustrate to prospective students and their parents that a student's major does not predict job outcomes. Then, he says, he transitions into a conversation about how the university helps students prepare for life after graduation.

Administrators at DePaul University likewise have discussed how to increase the usefulness of the data the university collects and provides. Its most recent report, for the class of 2012, says 85 percent of graduates have found employment or are pursuing further education. Like Syracuse, DePaul provides separate reports for graduates of different colleges. It also lists the average salaries for each major, as well as a list of sample employers and job titles.

Career Center Director Gillian Steele says the university looks for trends in employment - like a move toward self-employment or the likelihood that internships led to jobs - to inform the services DePaul offers students. Internally, DePaul pulls data on specific groups of students, broken down by demographics such as race or first-generation status, to make sure they are helping all students, she says.
More Surveys - and Differences
The variety of job placement surveys is increasing in proportion to their number. Some colleges survey students before graduation, others as part of an exit checklist, and others six months after graduation. Not all surveys ask the same questions: Some are concerned with students' opinions on the value of their education; others want to know specifics of students' jobs or graduate programs.

Collected data, too, is summarized differently. For one university a "placed" student may mean anyone who is employed -- whether in a full-time job, a part-time job or an internship. Some colleges ask whether students are using their degree in their new job. Other universities yield a high enough number of responses to break down data into specific programs.

Many campus officials concede that the differences limit the usefulness of the data. "It makes comparing information across universities or for any group to speak on behalf of higher education communities literally impossible," says Manny Contomanolis, director of Rochester Institute of Technology's office of cooperative education and career services.

Colleges and universities need a standard model that includes consistent definitions for what the survey measures as well as timelines for conducting outcome surveys so national groups and prospective students can compare outcomes at various colleges, he says.

Increasing the comparability of the job placement reports wouldn't solve all the problems with them, others say.

Jeff Strohl, director of research at Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce, questions whether surveys accurately portray recent graduates' lives.

"We can imagine that people who place well are more likely to brag and report," he says. "Those who are working at Starbucks or dog-walking might not." (Turrentine of Keene State says a follow-up analysis she conducted of non-responders found no statistical difference between those who responded to the placement survey and those who did not.)

Any placement reports for those one year out of college are inconsequential, says Phil Gardner, director of the College Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. Today's graduates are likely to hold several different jobs before establishing a long-term career about five to seven years after graduation, he says.

Gardner recommends that universities collect data at least five years past graduation to determine whether students are benefiting from their education. But he doesn't anticipate seeing a shift to longitudinal analysis, which can take time and money, when one-year-out surveys seem to appease the public and politicians.

"That's what everybody is using because it's probably the easiest number to get and you can manipulate it," he says. "They've jumped on this because they think it's easy and they think it tells them something. But it really doesn't."

Strohl agrees that those looking at survey results should be wary. He says he would "discount automatically" the average salary reports of graduates, as larger universities with more programs are going to see greater variations between the earnings of majors.
National Standards?
Some national organizations, including the National Association of Colleges and Employers and the National Career Development Association, are looking to release recommendations for outcome surveys that balance individual colleges' needs while allowing for some comparisons between colleges.

"One of the things we need to be somewhat cautious about is there seems to be a lot of emphasis on placement and salary, and higher education outcomes are much broader than that," says Lisa Severy, president of the national career development association. "But because these are concrete and measurable, they tend to come up first."

After releasing standards, NACE would want colleges and universities to provide survey results to the national organization so it could conduct its own analyses, says RIT's Contomanolis, who heads a task force on job placement surveys for the NACE. Among the best practices advocated by Contomanolis is a move toward "knowledge rates" instead of response rates.

Rather than relying on students filling out surveys, he argues, colleges can attain a better sense of students' outcomes by using faculty members' and employers' reports on students' post-college paths, as well as including what students are reporting on professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Contomanolis recommends that information-gathering efforts should continue until six months after graduation.

At career centers, many administrators are aware of the shortfalls of their surveys and as the squeeze for data continues, some are fine-tuning methods.

The University of Colorado at Boulder, where Severy is director of career services, has hired a research program manager to conduct a project on graduates' destinations. The aim is to get a broader idea of what students are doing when they graduate, she says. The university gives some general information about its graduates and wants to be able to answer more questions - from students or national higher education policy analysts - about its graduates.

Some states are involved with outcome data as well, most notably Virginia, where the State Council of Higher Education compiled data on graduates' earnings 18 months following degree completion and data on earnings of some graduates at five years post-graduation.

The "first generation" of these reports is being used to establish a fact base, says Tod Massa, director of policy research and data warehousing at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. The effort is a "refined, albeit limited" look at the earnings from graduates at specific institutions or in specific majors, Massa says, and students should use the tool to understand what earnings range a certain degree could put them in. But it won't tell them much of anything, he says, about the effectiveness of a university.

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Colleges report job outcomes, but results are of limited value

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Keene State College released its first placement survey of a graduating class this fall, with plans to annually track graduates' post-collegiate career outcomes. Of the 235 graduates from the class of 2012 who generated usable responses from the survey, 94 percent reported being employed or engaged in further education.