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, Santa Barbara – since the 1980s to wage and employment records over the three decades following their graduation. The resulting dashboards generate many new insights into the UCSB educational experience and the economic successes achieved by its undergraduate alumni over the decades following graduation.
Longitudinal enrollment at UC Santa Barbara
While much is known about the institutional history of UC Santa Barbara — founded more than 125 years ago as a teachers college, UCSB has grown into a university powerhouse of scientific research, among other distinctions — until now, less was known about the tens of thousands of undergraduate students who have graduated from Santa Barbara over the past decades, particularly after they leave Santa Barbara’s campus. The previous dashboard shows the number and demographics of UC Santa Barbara undergraduates since the 1980s, 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 Santa Barbara’s students after they leave campus. You’ll see that, by their late 40s, about one in six employed UCSB alumni – and one in four Hispanic UCSB alumni – work in California’s K-12 schools. You’ll also see that more than half of UCSB alumni have always earned degrees in the social sciences, though the natural sciences have trended upwards over the past 30 years (while the humanities have trended downwards).
But the most obvious takeaway of these data is the broad economic success of UCSB graduates, and their contributions to the state as a whole. By their early 30s, UCSB graduates working in California have higher median earnings than the state median household income, and more than half earn more than $100,000 per year by their mid-career, with more than 10 percent achieving annual earnings above $300,000. Around 5 percent work in California’s Tech industry, and by their mid-40s over 15 percent are working in California’s K-12 schools.
This series of dashboards uses newly-digitized and compiled data from the UC ClioMetric History Project to visualize Santa Barbara 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 Santa Barbara undergraduates who completed at least 10 courses at the campus.
The second dashboard below shows the distribution of students’ majors and courses while at Santa Barbara since the 1980s. The humanities have always played a substantial role in the UCSB education, but that role has been persistently shrinking. Instead, there has been substantial growth in the natural sciences, with about 40 percent of all course enrollments being in science courses in recent years. Nevertheless, more than half of UCSB students persistently earn their degrees in social science fields. 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 Santa Barbara
The third dashboard visualizes the distribution of Santa Barbara graduates’ inflation-adjusted California wages from graduation through their late 40s, the latest available records. Santa Barbara 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 Santa Barbara graduate working in California was earning wages above the California household median by age 30, and more than 10 percent of graduates earn over $200,000 by age 35, 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 the value of UCSB’s broad liberal arts curriculum. Changing the `Advanced Toggles’ shows that students who took courses in 11-14 departments tended to have higher lifetime earnings than those who only took courses in fewer than 10 departments. This was especially true for natural science majors; those who took classes in a small number of departments had higher wages in their first jobs, but by their 40s their wage distribution was substantially lower than that of their natural science peers who took courses in a broader variety of courses. You can see this yourself by toggling ‘Baseline’ to natural science majors, toggling ‘Comparison’ to natural sciences, and then clicking through the “# course departments” toggle for the comparison alumni.
Longitudinal UC Santa Barbara alumni wage outcomes
Next: in what industries were UCSB alumni earning their wages? The fourth dashboard shows the distribution of UCSB alumni’s careers in California, again following alumni all the way through their late 40s. 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 Internet and Technology, Health Care, and Higher Education, including around 1 percent who work for UCSB itself. While students with majors in professionally-oriented fields are more likely to work in related industries – for example, about one in three Economics majors takes a first job in finance, insurance, real estate, or business service firms – 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 Santa Barbara alumni
Finally, how stable were the careers taken by UCSB graduates? The last dashboard below visualizes the frequency with which UCSB alumni switched between employers, industries, and geographic regions. At age 30, only 40 percent of UCSB’s alumni had been working for their employer for five years, though that number rises to over 70 percent by their late 40s. Indeed, about one in four UCSB alumni switch industries between ages 35 and 40, with communication and economics majors more likely to switch at every stage of their careers.
Longitudinal employment stability for UC Santa Barbara alumni
In sum, these new visualizations present a new perspective into the educational experiences and lives of alumni of the University of California, Santa Barbara. 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.