As the state of the U.S. economy and its Wall Street mainstays continues to sour, it appears that the Class of '08 has not necessarily been suffering from this trend: Average starting salaries rose 7.6 percent from last year, according to the Salary Survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
A recent article published by MSN Careers reported an eight percent increase in hiring as well, driven in part by more interest in engineering services, accounting, consulting and financial services on a national level.
National statistics aside, it appears that recent Tufts grads have been fairly successful in obtaining jobs right out of college, said Jean Papalia and Donna Milmore, director and assistant director of Career Services, respectively.
"At the time of graduation, Institutional Research conducts a survey of seniors about their future plans," Papalia and Milmore said in an e-mail to the Daily. "The 2008 data indicates that 61 percent planned to work full-time and 17 percent planned to attend graduate school full-time."
Another survey conducted in August by Career Services found similar results: Nearly 60 percent of 338 respondents reported being employed full-time, and 72 percent of these respondents said that they received job offers after May graduation.
One new alumnus, Michael Gelman (LA ‘08), was offered a marketing coordinator position for the corporate marketing group of Dow Jones and earns between $45,000 and $50,000 a year, he said. For graduates with a B.A. in economics, like Gelman, that is standard: MSN reported that the average starting salary for an economics major from the class of 2008 is $52,926.
"My job involves a variety of things, including managing the group's budgets, sending invoices, scheduling meetings, conducting qualitative market research, assisting with running focus groups and brainstorming sessions and participating in a variety of other projects dealing with things like advertising campaigns or updating different logos and brands," Gelman said.
Despite the increase in starting-level income, Gelman and other seniors admitted that it was the job hunt — not employers' salary offerings — that posed the most worries post-graduation.
"The job search was much more laborious than I thought it would be," Gelman said. "I was looking and interviewing for jobs for six months straight prior to getting hired by Dow Jones."
In spite of his starting salary, Gelman said his experience in the job market was generally discouraging.
"It seems like it is much harder for people to get full-time jobs right now and salary is less important than finding a decent job at all," Gelman said.
"In my department, people were really stressed out about finding jobs," Renato Montenegro (E ‘08) said. "You really do have to go out and pound the pavement. At times, I was put off and my friends were put off. Salary wasn't a huge worry ... The thing that I found was on most people's mind was if they would even have a job or not."
Currently employed as associate director of Greenwich Education and Prep, a K-12 tutoring center in Greenwich, Conn., Montenegro tutors children and performs administrative duties like IT maintenance.
"I really can't complain," he said. "It's a cool job, I have a great boss. It's fun working with kids, and I have a decent salary with benefits."
While the increase in expected salary hasn't gone entirely unnoticed by Tufts graduates, many students have yet to begin the search for a salary-paid job and instead are still considering their future plans.
A clinical psychology major and communications and media studies minor, Dan Clionsky (LA ‘08) has yet to secure a long-term position, continuing to work as a full-time residential counselor at Wayside Youth and Family Services — the same organization he worked for as an undergraduate — a non-profit human service agency that provides counseling services and residential programs for youth and families.
"When I went to Tufts, I worked around 12 hours a week," Clionsky said. "When I left, I realized I really didn't know what I wanted to do yet, and they said, ‘We'll hire you for 40 hours a week."
Though he does not get paid much as an hourly human services employee, Clionsky said his bachelor's degree provided him with a shortcut through the counseling system.
"I would say that I get paid slightly above average," Clionsky said. "I have taken on many responsibilities, and so I have been promoted through the system. Having a degree in clinical psychology, in a way, erased two years of necessary experience to get to the point I am now."
Although Clionsky is most interested in entering advertising and has been compiling his portfolio when he is not working as a residential counselor, he kept future salary earning power in mind when deciding on a major. According to the MSN Careers article, the average psychology position yields an annual salary of $30,877.
"I did specifically choose psychology over other majors," Clionsky said. "If I do still want to go practice psychology, there is money in that, and it's not a horrible profession to get into. I chose psychology because I liked it. It's not a big-time, get-rich profession. It is something I enjoyed, and it has the potential to have decent pay."
While salary is a consideration for Tufts undergraduates, it does not top the list, Milmore and Papalia said. Instead, the most important factors are job content, the opportunity to contribute to society, location, colleagues and opportunities for training and education.
According to Clionsky, he isn't alone in delaying entrance into the salary-earning work force.
"I think a lot of us aren't on salaries yet because we aren't sure about entering the work force yet," Clionsky said. "At this point, we need money now. Even people who left college with good grades are having trouble finding jobs."
