Federal Daily News
Few college students plan to work as feds
A recent survey indicates that only a small fraction of college students indicate they plan to work for the federal government.
According to results of a survey conducted last year by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, only 2.3 percent of student respondents indicated that they plan to seek federal employment after graduation. The results were detailed in a joint issue brief released this month by NACE and the Partnership for Public Service.
The finding is drawn from the 2011 NACE Student Survey, which asked 35,401 students from 599 U.S. colleges and universities a battery of questions about their employment plans. In 2011, the NACE survey for the first time asked specifically about students’ federal employment plans.
“The results are both alarming and replete with challenges for federal hiring managers and human resources professionals who are charged with attracting a new generation of skilled employees to our government,” a summary of the survey’s findings concluded.
On the other hand, about 30 percent of the respondents to the survey said they plan to seek work in the private sector, and about 18 percent are looking at non-profit work or teaching. The rest are considering graduate school, the military or other options.
Federal internship experience seems to have an influence on students’ plans. About 17.9 percent of former federal interns said they plan on working for the federal government. Even so, a larger share of former federal interns (23.5 percent) still rank public service employment behind employment in the private sector.
And while the federal government once may have been a destination for coveted science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) grads, of the 6,868 STEM majors polled in the survey, only 3 percent said they intended to seek work in the federal government. The largest share, 36.7 percent, said they would head to the private sector. Another 33.69 percent said they planned to attend grad school after graduation.
When it comes to employment in the public sector overall—taking in the local, state or federal levels—a mere 6 percent of the students surveyed said plan to work in government at any level.
That’s the lowest percentage since NACE first asked the question in 2008, according to the organizations. About 8.4 percent of the respondents in 2008 said they planned to work at the local, state or federal level. After rising to 10.2 percent in 2009—the number fell to 7.4 percent in 2010 and 6 percent in 2011.