National Survey of College Graduates

For the past 43 years, the National Survey of Colleges has been conducted in order to track and identify specific trends of college graduates.

This survey was officially launched in 1970, and over the years thousands of companies and non-profit organizations have used the results from the survey as part of their business planning and marketing research.

Let's take a look at what the survey tracks and what is included in the survey results.

One of the things the survey tracks is how specific degrees impact future career opportunities. In the 1970's for example, graduates who majored in education and accounting had a better chance of getting a job and having a successful career then graduates who majored in other disciplines such as art, history and archeology. This trend gradually started changing however in the late 1980's and early 1990's. By this time more and more graduates started majoring in fields like business and finance because more job opportunities were opening up in these areas.

The survey results from the past five years however show that more graduates have started majoring in various fields of engineering and technology. It has been suggested that the launch of companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter may be partly responsible for this changing trend.

Other academic trends the National Survey of College Graduates covers, is the number of graduates entering the health and medical fields. Some of the parameters and guidelines used to conduct this particular research included tracking graduates with bachelor degrees or higher and also past graduates who had reached 76 years of age.

In addition, there are also many other key variables used to in the National Survey of College Graduates surveys. Some of these variables include native country and citizenship, marital status, current occupation, number of children, level of job satisfaction, employment sector, additional educational history, immigration status, geographic location of current job, ethnicity, gender and demographic group.

After the surveys are analyzed using these key variables, the staff at NSCG are able to identify specific patterns and outcomes and also identify specific trends. This information has proven to be very useful in putting together educational forecasts.

It should also be noted that a percentage of the information used by the NSCG staff comes directly from census data and the American Community Survey.

All completed surveys are available for use in a down-loadable statistical format.

To learn more about the National Survey of College Graduates, go to http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvygrads/. On the homepage you will see a link for the latest news updates and also instructions on how to order specific publications.