Some degree holders likely to stay in state

A recent study by the Indiana Business Research Center in IU’s Kelley School of Business wielded telling results about the work outcomes for the state of Indiana’s public college graduates.

Using data collected from 2000 to 2005, the study, “How Education Pays: The Work Outcomes of Indiana’s Postsecondary Graduates,” found that Indiana’s public colleges produced 220,974 graduates. The majority, 55.3 percent, received bachelor’s degrees.
Among those with bachelor’s degrees, 59.1 percent remained in the state for work one year after graduation. Five years post-graduation, 43 percent were still working in Indiana.

“Further analysis of remain-rates by degree for the 2000 to 2005 time frame presents a telling pattern,” author Tanya Hall wrote in the report. “Certificate and associate degree recipients are more likely to still be in the Indiana work force one year ... after graduation than any other degree — 81 percent and 81.7 percent, respectively.”

Although the results “do not correlate 100 percent with the context of what’s happening in the current economy,” because it has been six years since the second round of data for the study was collected, Hall said her findings “solidified what we had assumed has been occurring.”

Hall said this assumption was that students are leaving Indiana for jobs elsewhere, and the study represents the first official data set analyzing graduate retention and work outcomes.

The study also found that the manufacturing industry had a dominant presence among the top five industries to award the most jobs to college graduates of all degrees. In addition, the education and health care industries hired the most college graduates during the time period studied.

“I think that this is to look at the wages that a person can expect to earn in a particular industry and keep that in perspective to what they want to do,” Hall said. “The study, more than anything, shows where our students are going to.”