Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

Although they currently account for just a tiny portion of the career center’s overall funds, a significant and growing number of respondents to NACE’s 2017-18 Career Services Benchmark Survey have implemented employer partnership programs, and the trend is for more schools to add such programs.

Among respondents, employer partnership programs account for just 1.2 percent of their overall funding.

Yet, this year, 27.9 percent of respondents indicate their career centers have established employer partnership programs. (See Figure 1.) This continues a steady climb, up just 1.3 percent from last year, but a jump of 6.7 percent from 2011.

By Carnegie Classification, these programs are most common at high research institutions. (See Figure 2.)

The 2017-18 Career Services Benchmark Survey Report for Colleges and Universities is a comprehensive report detailing various components of college and university career services operations, including office structure, services offered, first-destination survey implementation, staffing, budgets, fees, assessments, the use of technology and Internet applications, and international student support. Data were collected from September 27, 2017, to January 19, 2017, from NACE member institutions; there were 666 respondents, representing 34.6 percent of all eligible respondents. Participating institutions receive complimentary copies of the report (see MyNACE > Research Reports); an executive summary is available on NACEWeb.

Figure 1: Percentage of Career Centers With an Employer Partnership Program

Figure 2: Percentage of Career Centers With Employer Partnership Programs, by Carnegie Classification