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Looking back: What do geoscience graduates value most
from their academic experience?
GSA TODAY | JUNE 2016 Carl E. Renshaw, Dept. Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover,
New Hampshire 03755, USA, carl.e.renshaw@dartmouth.edu
Rising tuition and the advent of online learning alternatives are
compelling geoscience departments to define and quantify the
value of their degrees (Arum and Roksa, 2011). Because the value
of a college education is multidimensional, no single metric can
capture it in its entirety. For example, course evaluations have
long served as the primary means of assessment in higher educa-
tion. But course evaluation data provide limited, and sometimes
contradictory, insight into the overall value of an academic degree,
particularly because most evaluations focused more on teaching
rather than learning (Benton and Cashin, 2012; Denson et al.,
2010; Renshaw, 2014).
A more direct approach to measuring a key dimension of the
value of a college degree is to ask graduates what aspects of their
academic experience they found most useful in developing the
skills and abilities they use in their careers. Such studies are
uncommon, so results from even a relatively small sample provide
a rare lens on the value of a college geoscience degree.
With this goal in mind, in 2014 the Department of Earth
Sciences at Dartmouth College surveyed all of its alumni (under-
graduate and graduate) for whom we had up-to-date contact
information (n = 817). In addition to the usual questions on post-
Dartmouth education and careers, we asked alumni to reflect
back on their academic experience. We asked both general and
detailed questions on what aspects of their training were most
helpful in supporting their careers.
For alumni who graduated after 1995, the survey presented each
respondent with an individualized list of earth-science courses
they had taken at Dartmouth and asked them to assess the effec-
tiveness of each course in developing the skills and abilities they
use on the job.
For all courses offered in the fall of 2009 or later, we were able to able) reveals interesting trends. For example, alumni were more
compare alumni retrospective assessments of course effectiveness
with end-of-course evaluations. Nearly half of the alumni
completed the survey (n = 369). About one-third of our alumni
were pursuing careers outside of the geosciences. Among those in
geoscience careers, the distribution of employment sectors was
broadly similar to national averages (Gonzales and Keane, 2010).
Additional details on the survey design, implementation, and
results are given in the GSA Supplemental Data Repository1.
GSA Today, v. 26, no. 6, doi: 10.1130/GSATG253GW.1.
1 GSA Supplemental Data Item 2016061, survey design, implementation, and results, is online at www.geosociety.org/pubs/ft2016.htm. You can also request a copy
from GSA Today, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA; gsatoday@geosociety.org.
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Conventional wisdom often posits that students only appreciate
the long-term value of a course after they graduate and join the
working world. However, repeated studies have shown that end-
of-course student ratings are strongly correlated with retrospec-
tive ratings of the same course provided years later by the same
students (e.g., Overall and Marsh, 1980). Only rarely do a course’s
ratings improve with time.
Our survey adds another dimension to our understanding of
how alumni value different courses. We found that regardless of
course content, end-of-course ratings of overall course quality,
teaching effectiveness, and amount learned were all significantly
(p <0.001) correlated with alumni ratings of how effective those
courses were for their career.
To further explore why alumni valued some courses more than
others, we took advantage of a unique aspect of our end-of-course
evaluations; we asked students to rate the emphasis each course
placed on different skills and concepts. The data reveal that
alumni were more likely to value courses that focused on general
skills, such as communication and the process of science. In
contrast, we found no significant correlation between courses that
focused on data collection and analysis, quantitative analysis, or
use of scientific literature and alumni ratings of how useful these
courses were in their careers. The perceived value of courses
focused on these more specific skills likely depends on the partic-
ulars of an individual’s career. Not all careers, for example,
require extensive use the scientific literature.
A college education is more than just courses. When asked
which academic experiences, not just courses, were most effective
in developing the skills they use in their careers, the vast majority
of alumni indicated that faculty mentorship (87%), the classroom
experience (94%), independent research (79%), field-based
learning (85%), and peer learning (79%) were all very or
extremely valuable to their careers. But a finer parsing of these
data (i.e., differentiating ratings of “very” versus “extremely” valu-
likely to rate field-based training (69%), faculty mentorship
(63%), and independent research (59%) as “extremely valuable”
than they were to similarly rate the classroom experience (51%) or
peer learning (40%). And the perceived value of field-based
training and independent research has increased over time; recent
graduates (classes of 1996 or later) placed greater value on these
experiences than did earlier generations. In contrast, the perceived