Fields of Study for Men and Women with Bachelor Degrees in Herkimer County

In looking at the graphic below, note the top two or three fields of study for men and women in Herkimer County among residents age 25 and older. Also note how they vary according to age of the degree holder - for example, while Science and Engineering are the second most popular fields for getting a bachelor's degree among Herkimer County females, it is the TOP field among younger females. In fact more young females (age 25 to 39) have bachelors degrees in science and engineering in Herkimer County than do males in the same age range.

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How Employers View Online Versus Traditional Degrees

With recent data suggesting there has been a decline in college enrollments, perhaps some students, as well as employers, will find themselves looking at the value of online degrees more seriously. many of the local colleges offer online course work, which can be used of course to attain a degree. The question becomes how employers view those online programs when hiring employees.

This info-graphic from Drexel.com suggests that there are three vital criteria employers are looking for when an application comes across their desk from a potential worker who has an online degree: whether the program has accreditation; whether it has a bricks and mortar campus, and whether it has an established brand.

 

The Value of a Two Year Degree

An article at CNN.com about two year degrees suggests that, at least in some cases, a two year associates degree can result in a better pay off than a four year degree. The study, by CollegeMeasure.org, is largely based on a data collected in Texas concerning graduates of technical programs and with certificates in technical fields.

 

The results of the study suggest that the degree a student earns matters, but that there are important variations in returns by program and by institution. This report documents some of the differences in first-year earnings ranging from certificate programs through master’s programs.

 

Among the findings are:

 

• Technical-oriented associate’s degree programs are helping many students successfully enter the labor market by equipping them with skills that are in demand. On average, a year after graduation, students with two-year technical degrees have first-year median earnings of more than $50,000, just over $11,000 more than graduates of bachelor’s degree programs across the state.

 

• Graduates with these two-year technical degrees earn, on average, about $30,000 more than students who completed academically oriented two-year degrees and are now in the labor force.

 

• Certificates are one of the fastest-growing credentials offered by community colleges. The median first-year earnings of certificate holders often exceed those of graduates from academic and technical associate’s programs.

Locally, here's some numbers, broken down by the gender of the graduate, that shows the numbers of Associate Degrees among those age 25 or older in Herkimer and Oneida Counties.

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Welcome to the Real World: New Graduates and Unemployment Rates

A study just released by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce lays out the employment prospect for recent college graduates. The Georgetown report used the American Community Survey (ACS) data from 2010 and 2011 for its analysis. For recent graduates, it looked at 22- to 26-year-olds who had bachelor’s degrees, and for more experienced college graduates it looked at 30- to 54-year-olds with college degrees. The report offers a reminder that while lots of young people will spend an inordinate amount of time deciding where to go to college, it’s perhaps more important to figure out your major once you get there. That decision can have a life long impact of your ability to find a job once you graduate.

For example, in the graphic below which comes from the report you can see the recent majors with the lowest and highest overall unemployment rates. For example, Information System, Architecture and Anthropology degrees have the hardest time finding employment, while students getting a bachelors in Nursing, Elementary Education, and Parks and Recreation/Physical Fitness have the best chance of finding jobs right away.

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 Taking the analysis a step further, the report looks at employment prospects within majors by whether the graduate has any work experience as well as if they may have gotten a graduate degree. It's interesting to see how those with some sort of work experience in their chosen field fare so much better than those that don't.

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Of course this is all national level data. To provide a local perspective, below you will find two tables. The first provides a breakdown of the types of majors for people holding bachelors degrees in both Herkimer and Oneida Counties. The second shows the basic majors held by men versus women.

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