Education: After College

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Last week, as many a college senior sprawled on campus grass, musing on his graduation next month, the U. S. Office of Education held up a glass through which he might look at his future. It had made (with WPA's help) the first national study of how college men and women fare after graduation.* It got its answers from some 46,000 alumni, vintages 1928 to 1935, of 31 representative institutions including Boston University, New York University, University of Chicago and University of Southern California; State universities such as Vermont's and Illinois'; small institutions such as Duquesne, Mercer, Colorado State; but not such colleges as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Smith, Wellesley.

The report confounded defeatists who moan that U. S. collegians can expect nothing but frustration. If the typical college graduate is unlikely to become rich, he is still better able to get a job, earn a living and stay married than are his non-college contemporaries.

Highlights of the report:

> Of the men and women graduates who wanted jobs, some 95% were temporarily or permanently employed. Some three-fifths had never been idle. Only 2% of the men and 1% of the women had ever been on relief.

> About one man in four and one woman in three found, in his or her first job, the kind of work he or she wanted, but nearly a third of the men and a fifth of the women took unsatisfactory jobs because no others were available.

> Biggest single group (one-third) got their first jobs by going out and hunting for them. One-fourth got jobs through experience gained in self-support during college, about one-fifth through college placement bureaus, one-tenth through family influence, 2% through fraternity contacts.

> One-tenth of the men started their own business or professional office the first year out; by the eighth year nearly a third were their own bosses.

> College men earned an average of $1,314 the first year, $2,383 after eight years. College women averaged $1,092 the first year, $1,606 the eighth.

> Best-paid careers for men ($2,500 or more after eight years) were dentistry, medicine, law, public office, architecture, insurance, research, forestry, business, :elephone work. Poorest-paid (averaging under $2,000): journalism, the ministry, clerical work. Biggest single group (17%) went into teaching, averaged about $2,000 eight years after graduation. Best-paid occupations for women were nursing and teaching. Big-college graduates were better paid than alumni of small colleges.

> Of the whole group (out of college one to eight years), less than half the men and about a third of the women were married. After eight years out, a quarter of the men were still bachelors, half the women still spinsters.

>Divorces were fewer among these college graduates than in the population at large. Divorce rate: 19 out of 1,000 marriages. More alumnae than alumni were divorced. Nearly three-fifths of the married college men and even more of the married college women had no children. However, most of these alumni have not been married long, still have plenty of time for children and divorce.