Job Recruiters Shun Ivys For Penn State

The Wall Street Journal says Penn State is the top university in the country for job recruiters looking to hire students.

The survey should come as welcome news for the university, which got a lot of attention in the past two years when it was named the first and second-place finisher for top party school in the country.

The Journal said the study used various criteria to find graduates who are best prepared and most able to succeed.

See Top 25 List From Recruiters

The newspaper may get some pushback from critics for surveying recruiters’who seek out new hires’instead of using student test scores, college admission rates or graduates' starting salaries as a barometer.

As a group, the survey participants hired more than 43,000 new graduates in the past year, the Journal said.

"The recruiters' perceptions matter all the more given that employers today are visiting fewer schools, partly due to the weak economy," the Journal said.

"Instead of casting a wide net, the Journal found, big employers are focusing more intently on nearby or strategically located research institutions with whom they can forge deeper partnerships with faculty."

Penn State edged out Texas A&M in the top 25 rankings, which in many ways looked like a college football poll.

Rutgers finished a very respectable 21st in the rankings.

Missing from the top 25 was the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and the University of Delaware.

In fact, the Ivy League has only one school in the top 25, with Cornell ranked as 14th.

The Journal said recruiters were shying away from the Ivy League schools because many companies say they need people with practical skills to serve as operations managers, product developers, business analysts and engineers.

Recuiters say employers prefers candidates from state institutions for those jobs.