College Graduate Salaries

College remains the ideal path toward mental and spiritual enlightenment. But after all the beer, bills, and hours of grinding study, today’s college grads are stepping out with one other advantage - high salary positioning. The young person clutching a bachelors degree is being hired, on weighted average at a tidy $43,841 annually, according to Compensation Resources, Inc.’s 2007 College Graduate Salary Survey.

Despite this high remuneration, a good two thirds of the responding organizations planned to hire another 15 or more college grads in the upcoming year. This shows a marked increase from 2006.

Since its founding in l989, Compensation Resources, Inc., the Upper Saddle River-based executive compensation consultant, has been finding out who’s paying what, and more. The firm’s available surveys range from severance packages, and long term incentives to board member salaries and turnover rates. Visit www.compensationresources.com.

To achieve their 2007 College Salary findings, the company’s founder and Managing Director, Paul Dorf examined 3500 jobs, and 102 specific companies. With over 40 years in human resources, Dorf brought both statistical acumen, and a long sense of business history to these annual studies. The companies and job positions were divided into twelve industry categories. Additionally, companies were sorted by size, with for-profits and not-for-profits represented. This study focused primarily on salaries, not options, bonuses and other incentive packages. And while such perks are typically low for new college-graduate hires, their absence may play a part in comparisons.

“If this study shows anything,” says Dorf, “it is that anyone with a college degree, particularly in New Jersey, can get a job. It may not be in his particular desired field, but truly work is out there waiting.”

Who pays?
Counter to popular belief, the biggest players do not offer the highest rewards. Companies with a gross ranging between $100 to 500 million annually in 2007 showed themselves as giving college grads the highest salaries, with $50 million to $99.9 million hot on their heels. Firms of $501 to $1 billion gave slightly less, and firms of over $1 billion gross came in lower still. “A lot of that comes from the assumed prestige factor,” Dorf explains. “Companies with that Fortune 500 clout feel their name holds an extra value to the new hire.”
More surprises came from the non-profit arena. While publicly traded companies paid the highest for college grads, non-profits were not that far behind, and privately held firms came in paying considerably less than both. “The myth that non-profit means a dirt wage has been broken by so many charity organizations taking a much more professional stance,” says Dorf.

Salary trends
In the past decade, salaries for new hires with a bachelors degree have truly taken off. Today’s grads are asking for, and getting typically $10,000 more than their mid-l990’s counterparts. An interesting $1000 downturn registered from the 2006 survey, Compensation Resources analysts feel, is due to a more than doubling of the survey size in 2007. It may also reflect this year’s bonus surge. 24 percent of responding 2007 companies gave signing bonuses averaging just shy of $10,000 - compared with last year’s 14 percent giving an on-board bonus of just under $3,500.

The best odds by far of finding that high post-college wage lie on the east and west coasts, with the central states’ offerings falling markedly below. This rather expected differential has remain unchanged and shows no trend toward reversing.

Fields Hot & Not. If starting salaries are any guide, America is backing off from its shift into an entirely service economy. The telecommunications industry, which started off its college graduates off at an amazing average of $56,500 annually in 2006, dropped an equally amazing 39 percent from that salary rate in 2007. Business services starting salaries fell a dramatic 26 percent since the past year, and information technology (software designers, etc.) came down 10 percent. “The truth is, opening salaries in these fields have been bloated for years,” says Dorf. He sees this as mostly an appropriate correction.

On the more profitable hand, healthcare positions took top honors for single-year salary boost, scoring a whopping 23 percent remuneration increase over 2006. As the American population ages, pharmacists, radiology technologists, nursing, and similar skilled care positions are in desperately high demand, with ever-higher lures offered to fill needed slots.

Despite dire economic predictions, financial positions continued to rise, taking a huge 15 percent salary step up from last year. The third greatest, and definitely most surprising increase, was engineering with this field’s college graduates pulling down 9.5 percent more in 2007 than 2006. This last figure fuels the arguments of those who feel that a nation of 280 million people must manufacture. We can’t all make money taking in each other’s washing, they constantly tell the service-economy advocates.

These kids today
Every generation brings its own expectations to the workplace and today’s college grads definitely have their own. As Dorf views it, generally this generation are workers with a great hunger, and little patience.

Current graduates tend to be cautiously selective, wanting just the right fit, which may give rise to their cry that no jobs are out there. “Once a graduate finds that right fit, he will work long hours,” says Dorf. “But you had better give him an incentive, or he’ll be gone in six months.”

Compensation Resources, Inc. now starts its own 2007 college graduate trainees off at $38,000 with expectations of reaching $40,000 in six months, and doubling that in a few years. Ten years ago, Dorf notes, they were offering grads $28,000 for roughly the same work.

In short, for the young person with a sheepskin, employment prospects continue to rise. Remuneration in different fields may vary, but even in non-profits the odds of finding a much more than livable wage are excellent. Thus, rather than try to second guess the highest paying arena, today’s college student might better follow that path toward mental and spiritual enlightenment. After all, the doors will continue to open for the eager individual with a well honed mind.

Paul Dorf, has developed an uncanny sense of exactly how to reward individuals at all levels of employment. A native of New York, Dorf earned his bachelors in business administration and labor relations from Hofstra University in l961. Upon graduation, he joined the U.S. Marines, going from Private to Captain in barely four years. “It was here that I really learned what motivated people,” he recalls.
Dorf then studies law at La Salle University in Philadelphia and later gained his MBA in Industrial Relations from the University of Bridgeport and the College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in Management Analysis from Cambridge International University and Walden University.

From l965 on, Dorf served several corporations as Human resource and compensation expert. In 1983, he took the entrepreneurial leap and founded the first version of what is now Compensation Resources. He sold the company in l985, then bought it back in l989 and has served as managing director ever since.
For the past 27 years, he has been on the faculty and taught human resource and compensation courses at various universities, including Boston University, Temple University, and Rider University. For the last eight years he has taught at Seton Hall.

Article Summary
Compensation Resources gives an accurate nationwide picture of education’s fiscal perks. For graduates, here an ideal guide to finding the top salaried fields. For employers, here is what you had better start paying your new hires to lure in the top talent.