SGA aims to gauge student job demand, expand professional opportunities
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Syracuse University’s Student Government Association began surveying students about their internship, co-op and employer-connection interests as part of a larger push to expand professional opportunities for students.
The anonymous survey, sent in a Thursday campus-wide email on behalf of SGA Vice President Max Lachut, asks students about the industries, careers and professional experiences they’re interested in.
The responses will help identify where student demand is strongest and determine how to prioritize its efforts with university partners, SGA President Emily Castillo-Melean and Lachut said in a joint statement to The Daily Orange.
The survey’s preliminary responses have highlighted barriers students face in finding professional experiences. About 54% of respondents so far said they have not completed an internship or other substantive professional experience, Lachut and Castillo-Melean said. They said the most common barriers among survey takers were not knowing where to start and having difficulty finding opportunities in their field.
“That matters because it tells us this is an access problem, not an effort problem,” the pair said. “Students aren’t opting out. They’re looking for a door and not finding one.”
The association created the survey hoping to address barriers students face in gaining professional experience before graduation.
“The question underneath this survey is whether a college degree reliably leads to a career that uses it,” Castillo-Melean and Lachut wrote in the statement. “Nationally, the answer for a lot of graduates is no.”
SGA cited research from the Burning Glass Institute that found 52% of recent bachelor’s degree holders were working jobs that did not require a degree one year after graduating. The research also found graduates who had completed at least one internship were 49% less likely to be underemployed.
“The first job largely sets the trajectory, and graduates who never get a foothold in their field often don’t get one,” SGA leaders said in the statement.
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SGA said expanding career access is one of its main priorities this academic year. The conversations across the university showed broad support for providing students with more professional opportunities, but Lachut and Castillo-Melean said it lacked data about where students’ needs were concentrated.
“It’s hard to ask for something specific without knowing what students specifically need,” the pair said. “This is us doing that homework first.”
Students have also expressed interest in professional experiences beyond traditional internships and co-ops. Lachut and Castillo-Melean said mentorship opportunities and site visits ranked higher than formal co-ops in the preliminary responses.
SGA is currently in conversation with several university offices about the initiative, but declined to identify the offices while discussions are ongoing.
Lachut and Castillo-Melean said they plan to use the survey responses to develop a clearer picture of student demand by school and industry and bring that information into conversations with university partners.
“What I can say is what we’re aiming at: more employers connected to Syracuse students, more structured ways to get real professional experience before graduation, and fewer students leaving here without a foothold in the field they trained for,” the two said.
While they did not identify specific programs or opportunities that could result from the initiative due to ongoing conversations, Lachut and Castillo-Melean are encouraging students to complete the survey so that responses represent a more diverse group of students.
“The broader the representation across schools and majors, the stronger the case we can make,” Lachut and Castillo-Melean said.
SGA’s first assembly meeting of the semester will take place Monday at 7:30 p.m. in the Maxwell Auditorium.
