How do the graduates of California’s public research universities contribute to California’s economy over the course of their careers, and how have their economic outcomes differed for alumni from different demographic groups and with different college majors? This topic brief visualizes a novel database linking the student transcript of every student to graduate from one such university – the University of California, Irvine – to wage and employment records over the four decades following their graduation. The resulting dashboards generate many new insights into the UCI educational experience and the economic successes achieved by its undergraduate alumni over the decades following graduation.
Longitudinal enrollment at UC Irvine
While history books are filled with the institutional trajectory and legacy of UC Irvine, less is known about the tens of thousands of undergraduate students who have graduated from Irvine over the past 60 years, particularly after they leave Irvine’s campus. The previous dashboard shows the number and demographics of UC Irvine undergraduates since the university was founded in the 1960s, showing how the campus has grown and diversified over time. You can see these alternative demographic views by toggling the parameter in the upper-right-hand corner.
The purpose of these dashboards – part of a series that will eventually cover all ten UC campuses – is to provide a clearer picture of what happens to UC Irvine’s students after they leave campus. You’ll see that, by the end of their careers, almost one in three UCI natural science majors are working in the Health Care industry, and that social science majors who have taken several Humanities courses tend to have higher wages than those that chose not to. You’ll also see the stark decline in the prevalence of Humanities at UCI, from 40% of course enrollments and 36% of majors in the late 1960s to 11% of enrollments and 7% of majors in the 2015 cohort, while engineering and professional degrees have grown in popularity over time.
But the most obvious takeaway of these data is the broad economic success of UCI graduates, and their contributions to the state as a whole. By their late 20s, UCI graduates working in California have higher median earnings than the state median household income, and almost a quarter earn over $200,000 per year by their mid-career. Around 20 percent begin their careers in finance and business services, and by the end of their career about 10 percent work for universities and other higher education institutions. More than 15 percent work at one point or another in California’s K-12 education system.
This series of dashboards uses newly-digitized and compiled data from the UC ClioMetric History Project to visualize Irvine alumni’s UC experiences and alumni outcomes in the state of California. Take a look at our methodology, and its associated disclaimers and caveats, on our Data and Methodology page. All of the presented visualizations are restricted to UC Irvine undergraduates who completed at least 10 courses at the campus.
The second dashboard below shows the distribution of students’ majors and courses while at Irvine since the 1960s. The humanities long played an important role in the UCI education, but that role has declined sharply over the past decades, largely replaced by the growth of professional fields like public health, business, and education. The natural sciences have shrunk as well, though the popularity of Irvine’s engineering programs has risen proportionally. The ‘Advanced Toggle’ allows you to restrict the data to students who took courses in the specified number of academic departments.
Longitudinal course and major choices at UC Irvine
The third dashboard visualizes the distribution of Irvine graduates’ inflation-adjusted California wages from graduation through retirement. Irvine alumni exhibit gender and ethnicity gaps that mirrors that of the state and the nation – you can see this by toggling the `baseline’ and `comparison’ distributions to different genders or ethnicities – but wages are generally high and exhibit strong growth in the early years of students’ careers. The median Irvine graduate working in California was earning wages above the California household median by age 29, and almost 10 percent of graduates earn over $300,000 by age 50, providing spillover benefits across the state economy. In addition to the ‘Advanced Toggle’ described above, here you can also restrict the comparison student sample to those who took specified numbers of courses in specific disciplines (like the Humanities).
The data also show evidence of UCI’s strengths in the natural sciences. Students in the biological sciences tend to have low average wages for the first couple of years after graduation, when many of them are likely in training programs or graduate degrees, but they shoot upward in their late 20s and early 30s, substantially exceeding the school’s averages by the middle of their careers. Chemistry majors see a similar pattern, with more than 10 percent earning over $400,000 by the late years of their career.
Longitudinal UC Irvine alumni wage outcomes
Next: in what industries were UCI alumni earning their wages? The fourth dashboard shows the distribution of UCI alumni’s careers in California, again following alumni all the way through retirement. Graduates’ first jobs might be in Food, Accommodation, or Retail, but after a couple of years they’re much more likely to be working in Business Services, Health Care, and Higher Education, including between 1 and 2 percent who work for UCI itself. While students with majors in professionally-oriented fields are more likely to work in related industries, the relationship is far from perfect; students from every major end up employed in every segment of California’s economy.
Longitudinal industry of employment for UC Irvine alumni
Finally, how stable were the careers taken by UCI graduates? The last dashboard below visualizes the frequency with which UCI alumni switched between employers, industries, and geographic regions. At age 30, only 40 percent of UCI’s alumni had been working for their employer for five years, though that number rises to 80 percent at age 55. Indeed, a third of UCI alumni switch industries between ages 35 and 40, with science majors (and especially computer science majors) more likely to switch at every stage of their careers.
Longitudinal employment stability for UC Irvine alumni
In sum, these new visualizations present a new perspective into the educational experiences and lives of alumni of the University of California, Irvine. You can see similar dashboard series for other UC campuses from the UC longitudinal alumni dashboards landing page. In all, these data provide a more complete picture of the studies and California employment trajectories of the hundreds of thousands of alumni who have flowed through the state’s research university system.