A 30 Year Survey of Rochester Institute of Technology Engineering Technology Graduates

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) surveyed the alumni of its seven engineering technology (ET) programs in 1997 and again in 2002. RIT, along with three other universities with ET programs, published a paper on the results of the 1997 survey in the 1998 ASEE Conference Proceedings. This paper presents and analyzes the RIT 2002 ET alumni survey data and compares it to the RIT 1997 survey and ET alumni surveys of three other universities between 1990 and 1996. RIT surveyed over 3,000 ET alumni in 1997 and 5,632 alumni in 2002. The RIT alumni salary data obtained in the 1997 and 2002 surveys corresponds to salary data for engineers with job experience published by the Engineering Workforce Commission and has been a strong recruiting tool for freshman and transfer ET students. The two RIT alumni surveys document the achievements of the RIT ET graduates for the past thirty years and will be a strong assessment tool for the next RIT ABET Technology Commission 2000 (TC2K) accreditation visit. The ET salary surveys show that ET graduates are clearly rewarded as professionals on the engineering team.