Future Plans for Bachelor's Degree Recipients

All students earning a baccalaureate degree are asked to respond to a comprehensive survey via the Internet where they rate their academic career and their college-life experiences at Texas Tech. They are also urged to comment in detail on what they liked best and what needs improvement. Furthermore, these graduating students are asked to reveal their future plans in considerable detail. The surveys are conducted just before the May, August, and December graduation commencements, and the latest response rate is 19%.

The information available goes far beyond the seven general categories of this national website in describing student futures. Those with employment goals list their new job title, their employer, their city, and their starting salary. In addition, they rate their satisfaction with the job, how closely it relates to their degree, and how well prepared they feel.

A separate alumni survey shows that of those whose goal is employment, 49% had a job lined up at graduation, 60% had a job within one month of graduation, over 70% had a job in two months, and 81.5% had a job within 3 months after graduation. The greatest number of graduates said their job was “highly related” to their major. They were “very satisfied” with their employment, and they judged themselves to be very well prepared for their work.

For this report, which is national in scope, we will just mention just a fraction of the national and multinational employers listed: Alcon Laboratories, Anadarko Petroleum, Apple, Baker-Hughes, BNSF Railway, BP America, Bureau of Land Management, Charles Schwab, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, Dell, Devon Energy, El Paso Corp., Eli Lilly & Company, EnCana, Ernst & Young, Exxon-Mobile, Farm Credit Administration, Fidelity Investments, FMC Technologies, Halliburton, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell International, IBM, Intel, the IRS, Jacobs Engineering, James Avery, KBR, KPMB, Lockheed-Martin, NASA, Neiman-Marcus, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Saks Fifth Avenue, school districts and universities throughout the state and country, Schlumberger, Texas Instruments, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Walt Disney, Weber Aircraft, and Wells-Fargo. The full list runs from A (Abel Design Group) to Z (Zep, Inc.).

Those continuing their education report which additional degree(s) they are going to be pursuing and where they will be going to school. All major Texas schools are represented, so the following is a sample of the out-of-state graduate and professional institutions where Tech Tech students are attending: Arizona State, the Academy of Art, Columbia, Colorado, Creighton, Duke, Florida, Harvard, Illinois, Loyola, McGill, Notre Dame, New England Conservatory, Oklahoma, Rice, UCLA, USC, and William & Mary. A series of follow-up alumni surveys show that students are well prepared for additional education and that they rate a degree from Texas Tech as above average when comparing themselves to those with degrees from other institutions.

Distribution of Future Plans:

(Graduating Student Survey for December 2010 through August 2011)

Employment	65%
Starting or Raising a Family	1%
Military Service	0%
Volunteer Service	1%
Further Undergraduate Study	2%
Graduate or Professional Study	31%
Other	1%