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Make More Money After Graduation

by Stephen Cantine, M.A.
Director of Career Services, Utica College

As a student you were probably driven to go to college for many reasons: your parents wanted you to, your friends were all going or maybe you wanted to make a difference in society. For others, maybe the reasoning was as simple as being able to leverage your education into a bigger paycheck upon graduation. Regardless of your reasoning, I don’t know if there is a student out there that would argue against an opportunity to better his/her chances of getting a job and making more money in a chosen profession. Am I right? OK- so what is this magical thing and where can I get it? The answer lies not in your ability to be a great negotiator, although that won’t hurt, or how well you did in school, although, once again, good grades wont hurt you either (see last month’s Bag That Job column, "Good Grades = Good Job – Right?"). The answer depends on how well prepared you are for life after graduation. Have you ever had someone tell you or have you ever heard the expression "no experience equals no job and no job equals no experience"? What if I were to tell you that there is a way to overcome this catch-22? That there is a way to gain the experience that will not only help your chances of getting a job but might just mean a bigger paycheck as well? What I am referring to is an internship or co-op, an experiential education experience.
Co-ops and internships are terms that you may or may not be familiar with so let me start by defining these terms. The National Society for Experiential Education defines an internship as "a carefully monitored work or volunteer experience in which an individual has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what he or she is learning throughout the experience". As stated in the definition, an internship can be a paid or non-paid experience, and it may also be done for academic credit, depending on your program and/or institution. Some schools will allow you to do an internship for academic credit and for pay, while others will limit it to only academic credit, which may or may not be required for graduation. If you are unsure of which situation fits you, ask your Academic Advisor or Program Director.
Similar in nature to an internship is a co-op, which stands for a cooperative educational experience. A co-op as defined by Northeastern University, home of one of the biggest and most respected co-op programs in the country, is as follows, "Cooperative education is an educational program in which you alternate periods of academic study with periods of employment in positions related to your academic, career, or personal interests. The combination of academic study and work produces an overall learning experience that gives grater meaning to your studies and more direction to your career development." There are two things I would add to this definition: by federal guidelines, co-ops must be paid experiences and some co-op programs are run as parallel programs. In parallel programs, a student takes classes as well as participates in a co-op experience at the same time. Once again if you don’t know if your school or program requires you to participate in or will allow you to receive academic credit for co-op experiences, speak to someone from your academic department. Utica College, for instance, grants students who participate in a co-op transcript notation signifying that they have completed a co-op experience.
Hopefully, after reading these definitions and speaking to someone from your academic program you will have a better understanding of what is meant by internships and co-ops and how they can benefit you. One thing I can’t state with enough emphasis is that even if you are not required to do an internship or co-op to graduate and aren’t able to get academic credit for your experience, you should still participate in at least one of these types of experiences prior to graduating. Why, you ask, would I want to devote my precious little free time to doing a co-op or internship that I might not even get paid for? The answer is simple; it will help you overcome the catch-22 of "no experience equals no job and no job equals no experience" and it will also help you negotiate a higher salary. But I already told you this right? Who am I and why should you believe me? Well, let me add some weight and fact to my statements. According to a 2005 Experiential Education Survey conducted by the National Association of College and Employers, 45% of employer respondents said they "offer higher salaries to incoming hires with intern/co-op experience than those without such experience…On average, converting from an intern or co-op to full-time hire means adding 6.5 percent to the starting salary." So, let’s say you are looking at a starting salary of $40,000. Add 6.5% to that, and what you are really looking at is a starting salary of $42,600! Not bad- an extra $2,600 for participating in an experience that will help you further define your career path, gain experience and help you get a job.
In closing, let me add another cheesy cliché. Besides potentially making the difference in having the experience necessary for getting a job and adding to your starting salary, participating in an internship will help you keep up with the Joneses and the Browns and the other students you will be competing against for those opportunities. This is because the level of internship/co-op participation among recent graduates continues to rise; it is now somewhere in the 70% range for May 2005 graduates and surely to rise in years to come. This is a topic that I will touch more on in weeks to come- I hope you enjoyed this!