Good news for current seniors looking for work after graduation: Wittenberg graduates are getting hired. According to the most recent reports from Wittenberg Career Services, after a year since their graduation, the class of 2012 is reporting 97.6 percent of its graduates are either employed full time or enrolled in post-graduate studies. This statistic was compiled from the 84.2 percent of the class of 2012 that responded to this survey.
“This is the largest number of graduates employed or enrolled full time a year after graduation we have had at Wittenberg,” says Director of Career Services Wendy Smiseck. “It is also one of the largest numbers of survey responders and data we have been able to collect from recent graduates.”
Just as promising as the high number of employed and enrolled graduates is the report that 93.1 percent of the respondants are “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their career status.
Although career services is designed to help students and recent graduates find employment and other opportunities, Smiseck credits the various academic departments and other Wittenberg graduates for helping the members of the Wittenberg community find opportunities after graduation. “It’s a collective effort to help direct Wittenberg students to opportunities they will enjoy,” says Smiseck.
The positive numbers of employment for Wittenberg graduates is a possible sign that the job market in America is improving. Average percentages of Wittenberg graduates employed or enrolled full time a year after graduation as been around 90 percent in the past 10 years. This jump to 97.6 percent reflects national statistics that indicate a growing job market.
Smiseck says fields such as education and business are some of the most popular for Wittenberg graduates. The number of students choosing to achieve a higher level of education after graduation has also been rising in recent years. “We find that when the job market does not look as promising, students will often go to graduate schools in larger numbers to try and wait for the job market to improve or to make them stand out more to employers,” says Smiseck.
Even though Ohio proved to be the largest destination of employment and enrollment for recent graduates, Wittenberg students are still being employed all over the world. This data, as well as information on pay levels of recent graduates and employment and enrollment statistics, are all included in the report from career services. This report can be found as a link on the Wittenberg website.
What they don’ tell you is that 97.6 percent employment just means if you have a job or not and that means any job. If someone responds in the survey that they are a waiter in a restaurant it goes into the data as “employed.”
That could be true but as I included in the article the survey also asked them about their satisfaction level of their employment in which 93.1% said they were either satisfied or very satisfied. However, because the 97.6% was concluded in part by checking recent graduates LinkedIn or from asking academic departments and not from the survey, we don’t know how many of the 84% of students who were recorded as either employed or in grad school actually did the survey which would have asked them how satisfied they are. For now this is the only statistic we have to analyze the approval of recent graduate’s jobs. Having looked at the list of jobs the class of 2012 reportedly have I can say that most appear to require a college degree with the majority either working in business or education. This report included information broken down my major, career field, compensation, and location and can be found on the Wittenberg University website if you would like to see exactly what the class of 2012 is doing.