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Tracking PSM Grads via Social Media Sheila Tobias NPSMA-Denver 2012. Early Measures of “Success”. Willingness of faculty/deans to mount program Willingness of students to enroll, pay tuition Availability of local business/industry government professionals to provide
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Tracking PSM Grads via Social MediaSheila TobiasNPSMA-Denver 2012
Early Measures of “Success” • Willingness of faculty/deans to mount program • Willingness of students to enroll, pay tuition • Availability of local business/industry government professionals to provide program advice, internships; assist in students’ job search; hire grads
Tracking Grads Local/Haphazard • With the exception of a few programs, from 2002 when first grads went onto job market until now, alumni tracking was haphazard, inadequate to maintain a data base • Exceptions: Rice, Oregon State, MSU-Math. • Overall, program directors had strong indications that graduates got jobs. Where? Doing what? Tracking was not yet a priority
What Program Directors did know • Names of their own Graduates • When and how many they produced • 2011 estimated total: 4,600 PSM graduates
“Tracking Grads Project”begins early spring 2011 • Overall goals: • To get base line information on a selection of PSM grads; to test social media system(s) for locating them; to cost-out the process; to provide information (not data, not findings) to program directors who were not tracking their own grads; and to selected outsiders.
A Probe, not a Study • Our work is a Probe, not a Study, certainly not an Evaluation: • Where grads are working; Employers • What grads are doing; Job titles • Whether they’ve remained in the state where they got their PSM- of particular interest to university chancellors; business leaders; governors; other stakeholders
Selection Criteria • Older programs- grads out 4+years • Focus on Job titles for “workforce enhancement”, ”jobs creation” • Deselected: grads whose companies sponsored them (expecting them to stay in the company); interesting for later probes • Most Bioinformatics – which have different “flavor” – fewer “plus” courses
Size of Sampling Overall 44 campus programs with single or multi-track programs 2,463 graduates named 1,840 (76%) graduates located using multiple on-line search strategies Late-appearing in our study: 372 KGI MBS graduates Total 2,212
Reporting • Only program directors who provide names get full picture of grads including names; outsiders, get sanitized lists of summaries without names of grads, names of companies, only aggregated findings • State retention data of particular salience to system heads, state economic development entities.
Where are They Living? Location of 79% of Grads found
Where are They Working? Employment type for 75% of Grads found
Top Employers for KGI Graduates Sample contains 346 employers
More Details - Top Employers for the “Bio” Program Sample 849 Records 79% completeness (Missing information for 186 graduates)
More Details - Top Employers for the “Applied Math” Program Sample 641 Records 73% completeness (Missing information for 173 graduates)
More Details - Top Employers for the “Analytics” Program Sample 723 Records 76% completeness (Missing information for 169 graduates)
Continued - Employers Health: generally small sized employers Small set of graduates – limited number of employers Environmental and Forensic programs set too small to show as each employer has only hired only one PSM graduate
Broad Categories of Job Titles Percentage given for all records (count of 2464 individuals) 62% of Graduates had clearly identifiable job titles
Job Titles Telling a Story With time PSM leading to senior positions in employment
Conclusions in re PSMs PSM programs lead mainly to private sector employment in both large and small companies. Fewer grads in government (7%) though undercounting probable since gov’t professionals may not be on social media Foreigners returning to their home country are hardest to track.
What about Reliability of Self -reporting on Social Media Cornell study showed that resumes submitted to LinkedIn are more reliable due to public vetting that self-reporting by interviews A local U of Arizona effort to track graduate teachers showed <15% on standard professional sites. Different jobs-finding strategies; more standard career trajectories
Other uses for Graduates’ Tracking Data on graduates’ career development by program, by field. Attracting nation-wide employer advisory boards based on graduates’ placement Grouping PSM Alumni as Ambassadors Gaining Higher National Profile (Media Coverage and Long-term Financing)