Careers Fair

I went to the university careers fair today. I was there late and it was just about to close (which has been the case for the past 3 years) but managed to pick up a handbook called graduate opportunities 2006. I was interested in the graduate employment statistics and here's some bits off it. It's called "Median starting salaries of bachelor graduates in first full-time employment and aged less than 25, in Australia 2004". Numbers in brackets are starting salaries of the different degrees.

Medicine graduates are the ones which the highest employment rate of 99.6% (50K), followed by pharmacy 99.3% (38K), veterinary science 97.1% (36K) and dentistry 96.4% (60K).

From the other end of the table, we have arts and design 56.8% (32K), mathematics 65% (40K), humanities 65.5% (35K) and biological sciences 67.4% (36K) forming the bottom 4.

The median salary was 38K, 39K for males and 38K for females. At first glance I thought these salaries were actually low. And I still feel that they are low. Including taxes it would be much lower!

At the careers fair there were no small companies, only the big (and D U L L, Australian tax office, AusAid, MasterFoods, Ford, blah blah.. zzz) ones. The ones that provide-a-stable-income-so-that-you-may-shut-up kind of company. Why?? I would rather work for a small one than a big one. I walked past 2 companies that actually have purchased software that I've developed. They just have no idea! I suspect most if not all the people who were advertising were minions.

Anyway back to work!!