You can have success after graduation

Given the extraordinary stresses in our economy, including the high rate of unemployment and the low rate of job creation, Pace students are concerned about their job prospects. Here’s what we know so far.

Without question, the economy has made job hunting slower. Even in good times, it often takes up to six months to get a full-time, professional job, especially if by graduation you haven’t already started an organized, full court press of networking and self marketing.

Still, nearly 45 percent of students who answered a survey of the undergraduate class of 2009 at graduation already were employed or in graduate school. This compares extremely well to the national average of only 20 percent.

When we surveyed bachelor’s graduates three to six years out a year ago – the classes of 2002 to 2005 -- fully 89 percent of them were employed full-time. Though they had started their earning, they had not stopped their learning: 43 percent had finished or were currently enrolled in graduate or professional degree programs.

You should know, by the way, that our Career Services office offers alumni lifelong help. Alumni using that office have increased 20 percent over last year.

“Our graduates’ earning potential puts them among alumni of the country’s most selective schools.”

At the master’s level, last spring’s graduates showed a higher level of employment than undergraduates – 70 percent -- because many of them attended part time and had jobs while they studied. Year after year fully 98 percent of our School of Education graduate students pass their teaching exams and 100 percent of our nursing graduate students are employed within six months.

Pace graduates earn good salaries. In fact, a recent Business Week survey found that our graduates’ earning potential puts them among alumni of the top 50 colleges in the nation. The average annual salary of a Pace graduate is $53,200, on a par with graduates of the country’s most selective schools.

Working in great places. Perhaps most important, the odds are high that Pace graduates will play important roles in important places. We have young alumni who are managers at pharmaceutical companies and accounting firms, village administrators, directors of education, editors at publishing houses, and entrepreneurs.

A recent political science major is a communications specialist in the New York State Senate, a biochemistry major is a research technician at a medical college, a communications major is an account coordinator in a PR firm, a computer science major is a technical analyst at JP Morgan Chase, a human resources major is an investigative assistant at the US Secret Service, a performing arts major is the associate general manager for “Shrek, The Musical,” and Pace graduates are managers at both World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. and the NFL.

Peaks of Pace graduates’ achievement are symbolized for all of us by the people for whom Pace schools have been named – Joseph I. Lubin ’21 established the nationwide accounting firm of Eisner and Lubin and was a major factor in the development of Park Avenue; Gustav O. Lienhard ‘26 was president of Johnson & Johnson and later head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Charles H. Dyson ’30 was one of the first financiers to create what we now call leveraged buyouts; Ivan G. Seidenberg ‘81, is Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications, Inc.

Geared to job markets. To be sure, the Pace contribution to the success of our graduates is to provide the education, training and springboard. Drive, brains, hard work and other personal characteristics are very important. Yet as the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last year, “an information revolution has increased the economic rewards of education and punished those who lack it.” We get increasing comments from employers who think their employees from Pace have a distinct edge.

We constantly search for ways to do better at helping our graduates find not only jobs but careers. One technique involves courses that are growing up here and around the country that study specific academic skills like decision-making and apply them to managing one’s professional life.

Pace has geared its curriculum offerings to job markets since we began in 1906, preparing accountants for an industrializing US economy. Right now, there is a national shortage of nurses, and this fall our nursing enrollment is up by about 70 students, the fourth year with significant increases. Our new Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies will feed the increasing demand for people who have the education and training to bring our world into a better environmental balance.

Careers founded on a Pace education are building blocks of rich lives. Ultimately, that is what all of us here wish for you.

We welcome reactions in letters to the editor, and President Friedman invites comments at President@pace.edu.