Undergraduate students labor for four or five years and pay tens of thousands of dollars all to be handed a degree, but what these coveted certificates actually give students varies greatly.
Bachelor’s degrees often reward graduates with two basic sets of opportunities: a job or admission to graduate school.
But Tiffany Duong, an international development studies and Italian student from the Class of 2006, said she believes the value of a UCLA degree depends more on what students do while on the road to earning it.
“(It depends on) how badly you want it, how badly you had to work to get it,” she said. “In the world, I don’t think it matters that much past your first job what you majored in and where you get it from.”
Duong said she is taking a year off to travel, then going to law school, and has already been accepted to a top law school.
She attributed her success more to her involvement during her undergraduate years than to the prestige of her degree.
“I did a bunch of internships, and I volunteered all four years for UCLA UniCamp, which was a huge impact on me as well as a huge thing I could talk about and write about,” Duong said, adding that those activities came in handy for law-school applications.
Extra involvement also contributed to the success of Jason Wang, a mathematics and economics student from the Class of 2003, who completed an independent research project in mathematics.
“It was the weekly updates I had with my professor (for the project) that opened my own interests,” he said.
Stimulating such interests is key for students to give their time at UCLA and their degrees value, said Judith Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education.
“I think the best thing for students to do is to find something they’re passionate about, get into independent study, do something creative, make it your own,” Smith said.
For those who measure worth in wealth, the value of a UCLA degree can be difficult to tag.
Graduates who choose to take their bachelor’s degrees straight to the work force encounter a broad range of salaries.
Kathy Sims, director of the UCLA Career Center, said that averaging these salaries to determine the value of a UCLA undergraduate degree would be misleading, because students pursue careers in such diverse fields.
“The range of average salary is from about $30,000 to about $62,000,” Sims said of UCLA graduates immediately entering the workforce.
Smith said she believes students determine the value of their own individual degree.
“I think it’s the person’s engagement in their own education and that’s what most people care most about. I think your diploma is only worth as much as you’ve invested in your education. I think if students have been pedestrians, if they’ve just sort of walked through, the value is minimal.”
Wang said his UCLA degree was greatly valuable in setting him up for a career. He obtained his first job out of school at a UCLA job fair a couple months before graduation.
He interviewed at one of the booths and got the job within a couple weeks, he said.
“They came looking for UCLA students and because of that, (my degree from UCLA) has been a really big benefit,” Wang said.
Wang said the value of a UCLA degree gives holders an advantage over graduates from the average U.S. college.
“I think with the name recognition … everyone knows you’re talking about a good college. The standards are so high at UCLA now that whatever job, the interviewers are pretty impressed by it,” he said.
Sims also said the big-name status of UCLA remains stable through time and generally boosts graduates.
“I think that in certain economic times that it’s even more important to have a UCLA degree than it might be in others, because even when the job market is poor, for example, students who graduate from UCLA are still highly regarded,” Sims said.
Location is also a factor in the value of a degree from UCLA, Sims said, as well as the type of job a student is looking for.
“For example, you know, a small school in the heartland in the Midwest could be as highly regarded in Chicago as a UCLA degree or an NYU degree. It really depends on who you are and what you as an individual do with your degree, and how you earned that degree that will be the most important thing,” Sims said.
Sims urged students to get involved in order to maximize their degree’s value everywhere, suggesting extra-curricular activities, volunteer work, jobs and internships as ways to gain experience for a career.
Sims also suggested students work to augment the value of their educations as soon as possible.
“Start early. First year is not too soon to start thinking about how to enhance your academic degree,” she said.
Smith also stressed the importance of extra efforts.
“UCLA may give you more options to maximize, but if you don’t take advantage, the degree will be less valuable than it could be,” Smith said.
Smith emphasized that instead of doing a double major, or taking as many classes as possible, the best way for students to increase degree value is to stay engaged in their work.
“Don’t walk through your education, but make it your own,” Smith said.