UNM graduates just can't get enough of the University.
A graduate survey administered by Career Services found the majority of graduates are employed at UNM.
The survey was sent to all 2,414 spring 2003 graduates, and 814 responded.
After UNM, the top employers were Albuquerque Public Schools, Sandia National Laboratories and the State of New Mexico.
The survey took five months for Career Services to complete and was administered in several ways.
Leslye Ellison, Career Services director, said the first wave of surveys was sent via e-mail. One hundred and twenty people responded online, 245 by mail and 84 through the Anderson Schools of Management.
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"The Career Services staff spent four evenings just calling people," Ellison said. "We got 365 surveys done this way."
Ellison said they were lucky to receive so many responses because graduates tend to scatter.
"We received a 33.7 percent response rate, which is considered to be statistically significant," she said.
Ellison said a main focus of the survey was employment and continuing education.
"If they're employed, we wanted to find out where they are employed," she said. "We also asked if their career is related to their degree and if they are satisfied with their education."
Of the 814 graduates who
responded, 514 say they are professionally employed. Two hundred and seventy said they are continuing their education through master's or doctorate degrees. Eighty-three said they are employed and do not feel their degree is being utilized. Seventy-two are either unemployed or not seeking employment.
According to the survey, most graduates who chose to continue their education stayed in the Southwest. UNM was the most popular choice, followed by TVI, UNM-Taos, University of Arizona and the University of Phoenix.
Ellison said most details of the survey have not yet been released to the public, but some salary information was available. The average reported salary of all graduates is $33,390. Lawyers had the highest average salary with $44,474 a year. Thirty-nine nurses responded to the survey and reported an average salary of $44,464.
First-year engineering graduates came in with a $37,963 average per year.
Ellison said the plan is to do the survey for every graduating class, hopefully getting to the point where it is done six months after graduation.
She said providing departments under accreditation renewal with statistical information was just one reason the survey was administered.
"It's good for prospective students," she said. "If you as a student want to work at any of these places, then UNM would be a cool place to go."
She also said it is very helpful for the Career Services office because the survey reflects which employers hire UNM graduates, and it creates a list of contacts for students looking for a job.
