Ten Years After College: Comparing the Employment Experiences of 1992-93 Bachelor's Degree Recipients with Academic and Career-Oriented Majors. Postsecondary Education Descriptive Analysis Report

摘要

College graduates enter the job market well positioned for labor market success, and most earn more than their non-college-going peers within a few short years. In 2004 full-time workers ages 25-34 with bachelors degrees earned 60 percent more, on average, than their counterparts who were high school graduates (U.S. Department of Education 2006). Employment experiences vary, however, in relation to graduates major field of study (Horn and Zahn 2001; Thomas and Zhang 2005). This report examines college graduates work experiences in the first 10 years after they graduated. It describes their labor force status, employment stability and intensity, occupations and industries, salaries and benefits, and perceptions about their jobs. The report focuses on differences across undergraduate majors, comparing the experiences of graduates who had academic versus career-oriented undergraduate majors, and within these general categories, specific majors when sample size permitted. The report uses data from the 199293 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:93/03), a longitudinal study of students who earned a bachelors degree during the 1992-93 academic year. Base-year information on this cohort was collected as part of the 1992-93 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:93). Graduates were interviewed again in 1994, 1997, and 2003. The estimates in this report are based on the results of interviews with approximately 9,000 bachelors degree recipients, representing about 1.2 million bachelors degree completers from 1992-93. All comparisons made in the text were tested using Students t statistic. All differences cited are statistically significant at the p