UF may be a top party school, but it was ranked sixth in the earning potential of graduates, according to a new survey.
PayScale, a company that collects employee salary data, decided to find out if Princeton Review's 2009 top 20 party universities prepare students for the competitive job market, according to its Web site.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), No. 16 party university, was placed first on the list. Loyola University New Orleans, No. 20, was ranked last.
According to the survey, the starting median salary for a UF graduate with a four-year degree is $47,300 and the mid-career median salary is $88,400. This is lower than UIUC graduates who have a starting median salary of $53,900 and a mid-career median salary of $99,700.
According to Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale, only paid, full-time employees with bachelor's degrees were taken into consideration for the survey.
The data set was made up of more than 1.2 million users registered on the PayScale Web site.
The purpose was to offer a sense of earning potential by school during the worst economic climate in the past 80 years, he said.
According to Lee, cost of living was not considered because university graduates do not always stay in the state where they studied.
If the results were adjusted for living expense in each state, UF would rank significantly higher, said Mark Rush, a UF professor of economics.
UF graduates tend to work in Florida, where living is cheaper than in places like Santa Barbara, Calif., he said.
Jose Lobo, an industrial and systems engineer who just finished his master's degree at UF, said it was senseless to relate the party-school label to median salaries earned.
Salaries are determined in terms of type of job, experience, degrees earned and skills required and not whether the school is a public, private or party school, he said.
Jeff Young, a third-year fitness and wellness major, said he thinks party school graduates are more likely to have outgoing personalities that benefit them in job interviews.
"It's an apples and oranges comparison and assumes that you put stock in the party-school ranking," UF spokesman Steve Orlando said.
UF students are exceptionally smart and the SAT and ACT scores of the incoming freshman support that, he said.
"If they like to have fun then they like to have fun," he said. "You can have the best of both worlds."
The university wants its graduates to make a good living, and a high salary is not the only measure of success, Orlando said.
"We don't educate people to be money-making machines," he said. "We educate them so they can contribute to society."
