Washington State University’s Placement Bureau has its roots in one department’s 1920s efforts to place teachers in jobs. The Business Administration and the Agriculture programs then asked for help in placing their graduates, and so the Placement Bureau was formed in about 1927 under the leadership of N.J. Aiken (jokingly referred to during the Great Depression as “No Job” Aiken). The Placement Bureau became Career Services in about 1973.
A multi-page 1946 report in the Summary Data, 1926-1946 folder near the end of this collection gives some information on the history of the program and how it functioned in that era.
The collection consists primarily of yearly summary data on the types of jobs student found through the placement center, as well as information on the students’ fields, locations of the jobs, and the success rate of the center. In the earliest years, the placement service focused more on filling teaching positions than anything else. Compiled information runs from 1923 to 1986, with two gaps, and is initially strictly data but grows more detailed and complex over time, moving from a half-page report for 1923-1924 to a 100 page report for 1985/1986. A few folders in the back of the collection compile portions of this data over 10 to 20 year periods in chart or table format.
The reports are arranged chronologically, with a few folders of organizational data and compiled summary data located at the end of the collection. As data is usually, though not always, compiled for a school year (September to June), the folders are labeled with school year dates (e.g. “1943/1944”).
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item Description] Career Services Reports, 1923-1993 (Archives 365)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The material was retrieved by Debbie Edwards of the Washington State University Academic Success and Career Center after it was discarded circa 2010. She donated it to the WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) on July 28, 2016, and it was retained as accession UA2016-08.
The collection was processed in July, 2016 by University Archivist Mark O’English. Some loose reports were interfiled into appropriate date ranges, but otherwise the collection was retained as donated.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.