LJ's 2019 Placements & Salaries survey looked at grads entering the LIS field and at the salaries they command. This provides a snapshot of graduates' job-seeking experiences at 41 ALA-accredited institutions and identifies comparative trends from previous years. Two schools are new this year, 35 schools used our survey, and six schools created independent assessments.

SURVEY METHODS

The LJ placement and salaries survey provides a valuable professional snapshot of the job-seeking experiences of graduates and their institutions. LJ invited each of the 52 American Library Association (ALA)–accredited library and information science schools in the United States to participate in the survey. Forty-one schools chose to participate by providing information about their 2018 graduates. Emporia State and Kent State are new this year. Thirty-five schools participated by sending a link for the LJ survey to 2018 graduates. The other six participating schools conducted their own independent assessment, and then shared these results with LJ: Catholic University of America, Kent State University, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, San José State University, and University of Wisconsin–Madison. The independent assessments did not necessarily include all of the LJ survey questions.

The data analyzed for this article are the aggregation of responses from 29 percent of the 4,763 graduates reported by 41 schools. This year’s respondent base is slightly larger than last year’s, because the total number of graduates reported was 8.5 percent higher for 2018.

Response rates for individual schools varied widely. Among the schools that forwarded the LJ survey to their graduates, response rates varied from a high of 73 percent to a low of 9.6 percent. Graduates’ response rates to the independent school assessments ranged from a perfect 100 percent to 12 percent.

This year, eleven schools did not participate in the survey, did not respond to calls for participation, or had no graduates who participated: University of Denver, Dominican University, Drexel University, University of California–Los Angeles, East Carolina University, North Carolina Central University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rhode Island, University of South Florida, University of Southern California, and University of Texas–Austin. Four of these institutions are different from last year.

Chicago State University, which now has Initial Accreditation status, was not included because it was not on the ALA accredited schools list at the time the survey was deployed.

Canadian LIS programs conduct their own assessments and do not participate in the LJ annual survey. This includes programs at Alberta, British Columbia, Dalhousie, McGill, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Western Ontario. The University of Puerto Rico also does not participate.

LIMITATIONS

This report offers LIS professions a snapshot of graduates’ experiences as they enter the job market and identifies comparative trends from previous years. It is not a comprehensive examination of employment outcomes. Graduates’ participation in the study is self-selected, so this is not a representative sample, and questions on the independent surveys administered by schools may differ slightly. Data from some LIS schools may be incomplete, and missing from schools that chose not to participate. Not all LJ-administered surveys were complete; graduates were not required to answer all questions or finish the survey.