Pressure mounts on colleges to track and report where graduates find jobs

Mr. Savage took on the placement project because he saw some "very, very talented" doctoral students graduate without jobs. At the time, placement information for graduates of the sociology program was spottily recorded. He decided he needed to know more.

"I just started collecting data," says Mr. Savage, who is an affiliate faculty member at the Graduate Center. "That's what sociologists do."

The data he has collected document the bleak reality that many people already know about the academic market: A full-time job as a professor isn't a given for those who want one. In fact, since 1980, fewer than half of the sociology graduates hold full-time tenured or tenure-track jobs. But the data, which were most recently updated last year, also reveal some good news: The program's record of placing students in full-time jobs inside and outside academe has shown improvement over the years.

Just over half of the 59 graduates who earned Ph.D.'s between 1980 and 1984, for example, were full-time professors or in full-time administrative, research, or nonacademic positions when Mr. Savage last tracked them down (11 of those were retired). Two held part-time academic positions, four were independent scholars or self-employed, and 21 couldn't be located.

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Chronicle of Higher Education