The unemployment rate is nearly twice as high for college graduates 25 and older than it was in 2000, so what does that say about the career services options they are getting on campus?
The 2016 Gallup-Purdue Index Report, now in its third year, says only 52 percent of college grads report visiting the career services office even once while enrolled, and of those, as many say it was “not at all helpful” as “very helpful” (16 percent).
A slight majority of respondents among the random sample of 11,483 interviews gave the career office middling remarks: 37 percent said it was “somewhat helpful” and 27 percent said “helpful,” according to a summary of results.
Those who graduated between 2010 and 2016 had the highest percentage of visiting their career office at 61 percent, with graduating classes from the 1980s through 2000s in the 50 percent range.
But not a single decade of graduates since the 1960s has given the career office high marks, with combined “helpful” and “very helpful” ratings in the low 40 percent range for four decades.
The findings give colleges a reason to beef up the resources offered by their career offices: Those who rated their experience with the office “very helpful”
are 5.8 times more likely to strongly agree that their university prepared them for post-collegiate life, nearly 3.0 times more likely to “strongly agree” that their education was worth, and 3.4 times more likely to recommend their alma mater.
Read the summary and full report.
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