Data Insight #3 Graduate Student Career Engagement and Utilization Survey
In Spring of 2025, the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills surveyed graduate students to better understand their awareness, needs, preferences, and expectations related to career development. The survey also explored student engagement with the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills as well as career preparation in their academic departments. Respondents represented 50 departments across 11 colleges/schools with race/ethnicity and gender generally aligning with UConn’s Demographic Fact Sheet (2024).
The previous blog in this series featured a data insight that captured areas of career preparation in which respondents thought their academic department could help. This month’s data insight focuses on graduate students’ preferred models or approaches for integrating career development into their academic plan.
Top Ranked Responses included:
Individual career/professional development plan with check-ins on progress – 75%
Career development milestones toward pursuing jobs in different sectors (industry, academia, government, non-profit) – 63%
In-person career development courses offered through my department 50%
Presentations on career topics integrated into your courses – 45%
Asynchronous self-paced career development modules – 44%
Respondents identified multiple preferred models for integrating career development into their academic plan. They expressed a preference for structured frameworks such as Individual Development Plans (IDPs) with progress reviews and defined milestones aligned with career pathways across sectors (e.g., industry, academia, government, non-profit) and they also valued curricular integration.
This insight suggests that graduate students prefer career development to be structured and embedded within their academic experience rather than solely positioned as optional or on the periphery of their student experience.
Department-Level Opportunities
Based on this data insight, departments and individual faculty may consider:
- Intentionally including career milestones in graduate program requirements or degree progress recommendations.
- Adopting Individual Developmental Plans (IDPS) to guide academic and career milestones across stages of degree completion.
- Incorporating career development through multiple modalities, including courses, presentations, and asynchronous modules to engage students with varied learning styles.
How the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills Can Support Departments
- Consultative partnership in identifying and mapping career development milestones aligned with multiple career outcomes.
- Provide recommendations regarding the selection, customization, and implementation of existing Individual Development Plans (IDPs) that support disciplinary expectations, outcomes, and the pursuit of diverse career pathways.
This data insight highlights that graduate students view career development as essential to their academic experience, and when it is embedded it is inescapable, suggesting that students seek to experience career preparation in a systematic context. This insight also supports the need for a coordinated, shared responsibility model in which faculty, departments, and staff from the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills collaborate to support diverse career outcomes.
Please contact Kay Gruder, Associate Director for Graduate Student and Postdoc Career Programs & Services at Kay.gruder@uconn.edu if you would like to discuss ways that the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills can partner to support and guide the career preparation of your graduate students.
