More graduates likely to receive jobs
Triangle News Desk
Issue date: 4/21/06 Section: News
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Topping the list of highest-paid graduates are chemical engineers, with an average starting salary of $55,900 followed by electrical engineers at $52,899. Mechanical engineers are in third place, with an average starting salary of $50,672. Liberal arts majors finished last with a starting salary of $30,828, an increase of 6.1 percent from last year.
"The job market remains strong," said Peter Franks, director of the Steinbright Career Development Center.
Civil, electrical and computer engineering held the top recruiting spots at the spring career fair, which took place April 4. Business also remains a strong field, but the number of employers recruiting on the University's campus will decrease tremendously because the demand for these fields has been so great that most of the University's co-op students have already been hired at firms when they completed their co-op experiences, Franks said.
More than 280 companies came to the Daskalakis Athletic Center Oct. 5 to recruit over 1,500, students and 200 companies returned to the DAC April 4 to recruit 1,200 students.
Some students expressed concerns about the lack of specific employers at the most recent career fair.
"Despite the decline in the number of employers recruiting for business majors at the career fair, there is still no national decline in hiring employees with business degrees," Franks said. "The decline can be attributed to the fact that employers recruited heavily earlier this year for these positions and have met their needs."
Data compiled by SCDC indicated a decrease of 24 firms for accounting, 15 for finance, 27 for marketing and 13 for operations management.
Over 300,000 college students attend more than 83 higher education institutions in the greater Philadelphia area. Among them, Drexel University has the largest academic career fair. SCDC, through its strong ties with local, national and international businesses through the University's co-operative education program, is able to organize the fairs. The co-op program is the second largest in the nation, comprising 1,500 employer organizations in 42 states and 20 international locations.
NACE conducts its surveys quarterly. Final numbers for starting salaries for the class of 2004-05, which includes any college student who graduated between Sept. 1, 2004 and Aug. 31, 2005, will be released in September.
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