More MSU grads being lured out of state by fatter paychecks

Justin Perry feels lucky to have an engineering job in Bozeman right after graduating from Montana State University — even though friends who left the state are making a lot more money.

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

One roommate is off in Louisiana, working "ridiculous" hours for a petroleum industry company that pays at least $50,000 a year, plus bonuses that could boost his pay to $100,000.

Another engineering friend is making a bigger paycheck in Seattle.

"It’s a good feeling when you talk to your friends who did chase the dollar and hear, ‘Man, I wish I was back there,’" said Perry, 26.

Raised in central Montana, Perry said he loves living here and having the chance to enjoy Bozeman’s easier pace and great outdoors.

"This is the time of life I want to enjoy stuff, like skiing," Perry said.

He’s one of several 2002 MSU civil engineering grads working at the Bozeman office of the Morrison-Maierle Inc., where entry-level engineers earn between $30,000 and $40,000.

Of all the MSU students who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 2002, those who moved out of state earned an average of $9,295 a year more than those who stayed in Montana.

The average pay reported by those who left the state was $35,746, compared to $26,451 for those working in Montana.

The lure of greener pastures elsewhere seems to have gotten stronger in the last decade. Of MSU’s 2002 graduates, 51 percent chose to stay in the state.

Ten years ago, 58 percent of MSU graduates stayed in Montana, and in 1994 it was 63 percent.

One reason more recent grads are leaving Montana find work may be that 2002 was a tough time to finish college. Thanks to an anemic national economy, last year’s graduates saw their earnings actually drop by an average of nearly $2,500 from the previous year.

Those are some of the highlights in the 2002 Success of Graduates survey, released recently by MSU’s career services office.

The survey was sent to last year’s 2,184 graduates and nearly 700 responded.

Landing a job isn’t the only purpose of a college education, but with the average Montana undergraduate leaving school with $20,192 in student loan debt, it’s important to most students and their families.

The good news is that, despite the economy’s rough times, most grads were able to find jobs (77 percent) or get into graduate school (16 percent). Only 7 percent reported they were neither working nor in school — some because they chose to start families instead.

"Our students demonstrated they’re hirable," said Carina Beck, MSU’s career services director.

She said the downturn in salaries is to be expected with the national economy undergoing "corrections" in the dot-com sector and stock market.

While average salaries dropped in 2002 for graduates earning bachelor’s degrees in nearly every college, there was one major exception.

That was nursing, where the average salary for bachelor’s graduates increased by more than $5,000 to $38,629. For students graduating with master’s degrees, average pay increased for students from the colleges of Agriculture, Arts & Architecture, and Letters & Science

Nursing graduates were also more likely to stay in Montana than students from any other college at MSU (68 percent were working in the state).

Teachers came next (67 percent), followed by agriculture graduates (56 percent).

Most likely to have left Montana were engineering graduates (61 percent were working outside the state), business graduates (58 percent), and Letters & Science and Arts & Architecture college graduates (52 percent each).

"I feel fortunate," Perry said. "I was able to stick around Bozeman. I have friends who couldn’t, or did and couldn’t find a real job."

MSU’s survey lists more than a dozen companies that hired three or more of its graduates. Among the Montana firms are Big R Ranch and Home Supply, school districts and hospitals in Billings and Bozeman, MSU and the Montana Department of Transportation.

Major employers elsewhere included ChevronTexaco Corp., the Ernst & Young accounting firm, Micron Technologies, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Krista Larsen, 27, is working at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital in purchasing, after graduating last year in industrial and management engineering. She’s making use of the inventory control and forecasting skills she learned at MSU.

As a Bozeman High grad, being able to find work here is "lovely," she said. Family and friends are here, and Bozeman has a small-town feel, plus a lot of what big cities offer. It wasn’t a hard choice, she said: "Concrete jungle or grass under my feet."

The management jobs that her major prepared her for were exactly the kinds of positions that companies were eliminating through layoffs.

"I graduated at kind of a tough time," Larsen said. "The majority of my graduating class did leave the state."

Larsen said she’d rather wake up every morning and know she’s doing something she enjoys than make a big paycheck.

Today more students are saying that their first choice is staying in Montana, said Mike Cummings, human resources director in Helena for Morrison-Maierle.

Three years ago, more graduates were attracted to Denver and Seattle. But as the economy slowed and engineers were being laid off in Washington and California, new graduates became less interested in chasing high-paying jobs, Cummings said.

Many Montana grads who left the state to work a few years ago are now looking to come back, he said. Several have been hired at Morrison-Maierle, where 70 percent of the professional staff attended MSU and blue and gold sometimes show up in the company’s interior office colors, Cummings said.

"We’ve been in Montana 54 years," he said. "Our firm has been growing at a very controlled rate. We’re stable."

That appeals to Cammy Keller, 23, and Rich Fillbach, 27, who graduated last year in civil engineering and now work in Morrison-Maierle’s Bozeman office.

"I researched other parts of the nation," Fillbach said. "It was going to take a lot to drag me out of my hometown. And if I didn’t accept this job, there were probably five other people willing to take it."

"I feel very lucky — it’s a secure job," Keller said.

All three young engineers agreed there are big advantages to leaving college for the working world. Like having most of your evenings and weekends free. And not feeling poor anymore.

"It’s nice making money," Perry said, "instead of spending money."

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/11/09/news/surveybzbigs.txt