A Global Investigation of Recent Geoscience Graduates, Beginning with Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America

Abstract:

The American Geosciences Institute’s Workforce Program has successfully established AGI’s Geoscience Student Exit Survey in the United States with yearly reports revealing the motivations of students for majoring in the geosciences, their experiences while working towards the degree, their future plans immediately after finishing their terminal degree, and their development in the workforce as they establish themselves in a career. The reports from 2013, 2014, and 2015 can be found at http://www.americangeosciences.org/workforce/reports. This information has provided important benchmark data to begin investigating the early-career geoscience workforce.

With the increasing success of this project, discussions shifted towards a more global understanding of geoscience graduates. Collaborations were established last year with the Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments and the Geological Society of London. AGI’s Geoscience Student Exit Survey was translated to be relevant to graduates in each of these countries resulting in slightly different but very comparable results between the four countries. The surveys were distributed to the U.K. and Canada in the spring and summer of 2015. This presentation will discuss some of the issues and surprises encountered during the survey translation process and the initial comparisons seen between the recent graduates from the four different countries.