Understanding Job Placement of Recent Emergency Management Graduates: An Initial Test of a Theoretical Framework

The job placement of emergency management degree program graduates has been an enduring point of conversation for over a decade https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/readinglist.aspx, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=478470, https://doi.org/10.2202/1547-7355.1910, https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/readinglist.aspx, https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/readinglist.aspx, https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/latest/2018.aspx. Whether graduates are employable, whether they are getting jobs, and why some get jobs and others do not have been of concern. Yet, until recently, no empirical study had examined the extent to which emergency management degree holders who want emergency management jobs actually get them. Jensen and Kirkpatrick (2020), found that the majority of graduates who intended such jobs got them, while almost a third did not. Jensen and Kirkpatrick (2019), proposed a theoretical framework that might guide research on job outcomes of emergency management degree program graduates, including job placement. This manuscript reports the authors' efforts to utilize the theoretical framework to explore the difference between those graduates who wanted and secured an emergency management position post-graduation and those who wanted one but did not. Specifically, this manuscript reports initial findings and challenges related to this question in the context of a theoretical framework of job placement and the current state of emergency management higher education nationally.