Krannert students find benefit of internship, co-op on starting salaries for Purdue graduates

Mary 21, 2015  


A three-student project team in Mohammad Rahman's MGMT 48800 course this spring took data provided by the Purdue Center for Career Opportunities, analyzed it and discovered that Purdue graduates earn around $5,000 more in starting salaries if they've had one or more internships or co-op experiences. For Purdue engineering students, just going to the CCO for help at least once while a student will bump a starting salary by $2,599.

"As a student, it is not hard to find out how much your major's starting salary potential is, but we wanted to search beyond that and understand how student characteristics and the decisions they make can impact this salary range," says Evan Langbehn, a senior majoring in finance and management.

Rahman, associate professor of management, requires a team project in this course, Electronic Commerce and Information Strategies. In their chosen project, Langbehn and his teammates found that students with internships and co-op experience increase their starting salaries by:

* $4,676 for one or more internships.

* $5,661 for one or more co-op experiences.

Students with the most co-op and internship experiences at Purdue are from the colleges of Engineering and Technology and the Krannert School of Management.

Students used linear regression modeling to analyze the data and presented their results in a video.

"Throughout MGMT 48800 we covered linear regression pretty extensively. Professor Rahman really focused on the key statistical concepts needed to analyze data and answer tough questions like this," says Li Lu, a senior majoring in accounting, management and finance. "With that said, our team definitely faced some challenges; it was difficult to know exactly what variables to include in the equation, and we also felt some limitations due to our sample size and variable set."

Rahman intended for the project to be challenging. "In designing this course, my objective was to inspire students to take ownership of their learning, develop and demonstrate critical thinking as well as analytical problem solving skills, and accomplish these experiential learning goals through exposure to real-world business problems," he says.

The group studied 4,345 entries of desensitized undergraduate student information regarding plans upon graduation. The data, provided by the CCO, was from May 2014 graduates. All personal identifiable information (including PUID) was completely removed before conducting the study to protect student privacy. The group also received data on CCO operations to view the significance of students' use of CCO's professional development services.

Although the CCO project was just one of the class projects, "all of the projects are really outstanding and a good example of the power and fun of data-driven decision making," says Dan Fleming, a senior majoring in industrial management and in supply chain, information and analytics. "Everyone worked extremely hard on these projects to reach the high expectations of Professor Rahman, and it shows in the results. The entire class is definitely more prepared to enter our internships or jobs and effectively support decisions with data." 

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