National Survey of College Graduates

The National Survey of College Graduates is an effort by the National Science Foundation to gather data on the employment particulars of individuals with college degrees of various levels. It's a massive survey with tens of thousands of respondents (according to the Office of Management and Budget), and for the past three months, the Census Bureau has sent me a few pieces of snail mail encouraging me to take the survey. Last weekend, I finally did (well, the online version anyway--I'm sure it's the same). It was kind of fun, actually.

As I clicked on various responses and entered information, I thought about the work my college degrees prepared me to do, and every few pages, I sat back and thought about the trajectory of my life over the past twenty years. I thought about several jobs I had--the ones closely related to my education and the ones that weren't. I thought about the degree to which our society values the work I do. I considered how rewarded I am by the work I do--that's a series of questions on the survey, actually: all about salary, benefits, and satisfaction. I considered those I know who aren't satisfied by their work--those with work thanks to their degrees, and those with work unrelated to their degrees.

The results are available for download here at this NSF webpage. When I get around to downloading and reading this thirty-seven megabyte file, I'll post an update.

One more thing: Besides gathering data on college graduate employment, I'm sure there's some interesting research going on into the workings of a survey this big. I mean, how does one manage a voluntary survey this large?

Perhaps with rhetoric like this: