Recent College of William and Mary graduates have been more successful finding jobs than College graduates a decade ago, according to annual senior surveys conducted by the Sherman and Gloria H. Cohen Career Center. While the College employment rate has been on the rise since it hit its nadir in 2002, however, it is lower than it was 15 years ago.

“2009 was a hard year,” Associate Director of the Career Center David Lapinski said. “But it also wasn’t as bad as 2008 or the early to mid-2000’s.”

76.4 percent of 2010 graduates are either employed or continuing their education. This is 17.4 percent fewer than the 93.8 percent of 1994 graduates who were employed or in graduate school within six months of commencement. It is also 9.6 percent fewer than the 86 percent of 2009 graduates.

College graduates are faring worse in the job market than the national population. The 2010 College graduate unemployment rate was 24.1 percent. This percentage includes those students who are job seeking, not job seeking, are unemployed, and are not attending graduate school. In comparison, 90 percent of 2010 Harvard graduates, 76 percent of 2010 Virginia Tech graduates and 66 percent of 2010 Duke graduates are either employed or continuing their education.

“The economic recession definitely had something to do with the number of graduates who are not employed,” Lapinski said. “But it is getting better.”

To combat the relatively high graduate unemployment rates, Lapinski identified several steps the Career Center is taking.

“We are identifying those areas that are increasing their demand for employees in order to bridge the gaps between student and companies,” Lapinski said. “We are also increasing the number of career fairs and strategic partnerships with businesses to enhance the number of job opportunities. We are trying to find ways to better serve students and increase outreach. One of our main jobs is to cultivate employee relationships.”

In addition, Lapinski noted that the Career Center plans to look to industry experts and anecdotal data to determine where the demand for employment is. The Employee Advisory Board of the Career Center composed of alumni also serves as a guidance and networking tool to the Career Center. 24 companies will be attending the upcoming “Just In Time” Career Fair.

Current College seniors have mixed opinions about the Career Center’s efficacy in assisting them with post-graduation plans. Jessie Boylan ’11, who was accepted to several law schools and will defer her enrollment at her top choice institution to spend a year teaching English in Korea, appreciated the assistance she received at the Career Center.

“They really helped me out along the way,” she said. “I made an appointment after I had been accepted, and I was like, ‘well, I’m happy I got into law school, but I’m not sure I should rush into it.’ [The counselor] gave me all these links to applications to programs abroad and I decided, ‘yeah it’s the right decision for me to defer a year, experience the world, and then go. Eventually I want to work for the FBI; the Career Center set me up with an awesome guy who took me step by step through the whole process.”

Boylan feels that her positive experience is the exception rather than the rule, however.

“I think that William and Mary is not very good about the majority of their students,” she said. “I think I basically lucked out. I had my own plans, I studied on my own. I think William and Mary kind of leaves their students in the dark, and you need to push yourself if you want to find out about their great resources. A lot of my friends are struggling, they’re really stressed.”

Among students not certain what they will do after graduation is Erica Wickman ’11, a music major considering eventually going to graduate school for music therapy or early music vocal performance.

“I’m taking a year or two off to figure out what exactly I want to do with my life,” Wickman said. “I don’t feel like I should invest the money in grad school unless I’m sure that’s the path I want to take, and I don’t even know that there’s a career out there that I want, so I’m taking a step back.”

While she considers a degree from the College to be an asset in the job market, Wickman is not satisfied with the Career Center’s post-graduation advising services.

“I went to the career fair last semester, and they only had one organization I was interested in because there was only one arts-oriented one,” Wickman said. “I have a bias against [the Career Center] thinking that they don’t have a lot of guidance for music majors, but I haven’t really tried and I probably should.”

Lapinski identified financial services, non-profit service work, consultation, education, and government as the five main industries where College graduates most commonly find jobs. Many students also choose to pursue more advanced degrees.

“I have seen that a mix of students – not a majority – decide to go to graduate school because they cannot find a job and think graduate school is an alternative to unemployment,” Lapinski said. “That is why in the past our survey treated graduate school as part of those students who were unemployed.”

The average response rate to the senior survey from the past ten years is 77.7 percent, but only 53.5 percent of 2009 graduates responded to the survey this past year. The response rate for the 2010 survey was 72 percent. For this reason, the Career Center cautions viewers against drawing conclusions from the results of the four years’ worth of senior surveys which they have displayed on their website.

The 2009 student unemployment numbers reflect a skewed increase from previous years due to a decision by the Career Center to include students attending or applying to graduate school as a percentage of students seeking employment. 2010 student unemployment numbers were calculated based on the total number survey responses.

“Students don’t realize how important responses to these surveys are,” Lapinski said. “These responses feed our rankings in Business Week and others.”

The Career Center categorizes senior survey responses into four separate areas. Seniors are classified as employed, attending a graduate or a professional school, seeking employment, and other. According to Lapinski, “other” is composed of those students doing research or who have fellowships.

_This article was edited Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. to include recently released information by the Career Center regarding the 2010 senior surveys._

By the middle of registration week, students are beginning to feel the pressure. Registering for classes can be a stressful process with students trying to create the perfect schedule complete with GER requirements and major classes. In an attempt to make the process easier, the administration instituted some changes to this spring’s registration process.

The few changes made were added in an effort to make the registration process as fair as possible. Each social class will now only have 24 hours to register for classes.

“The goal is for that first week to give people across the board a fair shot, not advantage or disadvantage anyone but also to let the departments get a more accurate understanding of what seats are needed,” Office of the of University Registrar employee Sara Marchello said.

By allowing students to register only during a 24-hour window, departments hope to have a better understanding of class demand.

“Departments are using data to gauge how many seats to offer,” Marchello said. “That will probably be transparent to the students but we are trying to have the right number of seats be available to students each day.”

The change is also meant to increase fairness among social classes so that students now only compete with members of their own class during the registration period.
Some students are concerned that this change won’t allow them to change their schedules during the first registration period.

“I don’t like it,” Danny Greene ’12 said. “There is no room to change your mind. I guess they are trying to prevent us from holding spots, but I feel like that has always been a part of registration.”

Courtnie Gore ’12 agreed, stating the benefits of registering early from were being taken away from upperclassmen.

“It takes away incentive of registering early,” Gore said. “One of the privileges of being an upperclassman is being able to have your schedule together to graduate on time before the underclassmen. Now you are locked into whatever schedule you have.”

Other students felt the change would create a more fair process overall.

“I think it is pretty fair. Students should look at their registration time slot ahead of time anyway and know exactly what they have to do,” Annie Kim ’13 said. “It will make the process much more efficient.”

In addition, classes will now be restricted to students declared in that major for the entire week, not just the junior and senior days of registration. This change was implemented in response to complaints from sophomores unable to register for their major classes.

“Department chairs were pointing out to us that increasing numbers of sophomores were declaring their majors,” Marchello said. “They wanted to leave those restrictions on for the whole week.”

Both of these changes were implemented as a result of student feedback at the end of the fall semester. When deciding how to change the process, the registrar took into account feedback from both an open forum and a student survey.

“Because attendance was a little light at the forum, we did a survey so people could respond to the survey at a convenient time for them,” Marchello said. “We didn’t even hear from 100 students, but the students who did respond wrote pages and pages of feedback.”

After registration, the administration will continue to monitor student feedback, and see if these changes helped or hurt the overall registration process.

“We will know a lot from the feedback that we get. I think the people who complained in the fall will let us know how they feel-if the process was as stressful,” Marchello said. “If the departments feel that they are able to manage the demand better, we will know that it is a success.”

These changes are intended to make the process more fair and manageable for faculty and students and to allow students to take all of the classes they want and need.

“At the end of the day everyone is full time,” Marchello said. “The vast majority of our students graduate in four years. That doesn’t mean that all of them are getting to take that dream class they really want. That’s when we want to make sure the registration process is as equitable as it can be.”

A report issued by the Chronicle of Higher Education Dec. 5 showed that the College of William and Mary ranked second nationally among 1,400 public institutions in graduation rates. However, due to a decline in the national graduation rate, United States Vice President Joe Biden has made higher education reform one of his top priorities.

“Right now we’ve got an education system that works like a funnel when we need it to work like a pipeline,” Biden said in a press release. “We have to make the same commitment to getting folks across the graduation stage that we did to getting them into the registrar’s office. The dreams and skills of our college graduates will pave the way to a bright economic future for our nation.”

A recent study performed by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that the national higher education graduation rate hovers around 63 percent. On average, the graduation rate at the College ranges from 89 to 91 percent each year.

In addition, the College boasts a four-year graduation rate of 82 percent.

“We have very good students who are motivated to do well at the College,” Provost Michael Halleran said. “We have an excellent faculty that strives to promote such a high graduation rate.”

Halleran also mentioned that the College does not offer a part-time program. As a result, all students must make a full-time commitment to pursuing their diplomas.

When compared to other Virginia schools, the College has the second highest average graduation rate.

James Madison University averages 81 percent per year, Virginia Tech 79 percent, and Virginia Commonwealth University ranks low with 49 percent. The University of Virginia is the only public school in the nation that outperforms the College: its graduation rate is 93 percent.

Biden included an increase of 8 million undergraduate degrees by 2020 in his Higher Education Agenda. In addition, Biden wants the Obama administration to collaborate with state governors to pursue financially sound plans to achieve this goal.

The Virginia General Assembly passed higher education reform legislation in a bipartisan effort in early February. The Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2011 provides a new higher education funding policy and calls for an increase in college degrees for Virginians.

“Every Virginian deserves the opportunity to access higher education and pursue their dreams,” Governor McDonnell said in a press release. “This legislation will put us on the path to awarding 100,000 more degrees over the next 15 years.”

When asked how the College will cope with this recent policy change, Halleran stated the changes would be modest. For the next four years, each freshman class will increase by 50 students.

“We probably will not have to change our policy because we already have an excellent graduation rate,” Halleran said. “Those schools that do not have such high graduation rates will most likely have to change their [policies]. A higher selectivity process for admitting students correlates with a higher graduation rate. The College really cannot improve on [its] current percentages.”

Last Friday and Saturday, hundreds of graduate students from the College of William and Mary and 15 visiting institutions gathered at the Sadler Center for the Tenth Annual Graduate Research Symposium. The event was designed to be an interdisciplinary exchange between the sciences and the humanities, giving graduate students the opportunity to share experiences and to network with their peers.

This year’s event, with the theme “Preparing Scholars, Presenting Excellence,” featured 51 speakers from institutions such as Georgetown University, Hampton University, George Mason University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“The symposium has developed into a highly successful student-organized event focusing on graduate students’ innovative and top-notch research,” Dean of Graduate Studies and Research Laurie Sanderson said in a press release.

The Graduate Research Symposium, first held in Jan. 2002 has come to encompass the research of College graduate students from all programs, including American studies, anthropology, computer science, biology, history, physics and public policy.

“Our students contribute seriously to human understanding on their way to advanced degrees. Then they keep doing so as teachers and scholars,” College President Taylor Reveley wrote in a letter to the William and Mary community. “The Symposium provides an opportunity for our graduate students and their peers from other schools to present their work.”

The symposium’s presentations covered a wide range of topics from the personal hygiene of Victorian prostitutes to a prototype system for cardiac telemetry and from research on the effects of cannabinoids on adolescents to race relations in Chappelle’s Show.

The two-day event also featured an awards luncheon Saturday, which presented several College students with awards recognizing excellence in scholarship or undergraduate mentoring. Erik Seidow of the department of anthropology and Wei Wei of the department of computer science both received awards for their scholarly contributions to the fields of social and natural sciences, respectively.

The Graduate Studies Advisory Board presented Adam Stackhouse, American Studies, ’04 M.A. ’10, Zachary Elmore, Biology and Fengyuan Xu, Computer Science, Ph.D. with awards for excellence in undergraduate mentoring.