Profiling Young Alumni
An every-issue guide to staying in touch with Dartmouth
The Alumni Council has spent some time studying Young Alumni—out ten or 15 years—as well as older alums, the group which administrators euphemistically choose to call Non-Young Alumni. The latest formal survey, conducted by the Young Alumni Committee of the Alumni Council, reported that those in classes from 1976 through 1991 are 46 percent female and 25 percent non-white. As a whole, all the alumni in these 16 classes represent about 40 percent of the total current alumni body.
The Non-Young Alumni group is 98 percent white and 99 percent male.
It's no surprise that the percentage of marrieds vs. singles is weighted: toward the elder group, 66 percent vs. 35 percent. Most of the younger alumni tend to marry between their fifth and tenth reunion, and have children somewhat later
than in the past. As you more of the Young Alumni are in two-career marriages than is the case among older grads still under retirement age. But you might be a bit surprised to learn that the Alumni Records Office typically receives more than 2,400 address changes a month, approximately five percent of the total alumni body. Statistics don't separate those nomads by age group. Some are headed for the Sunbelt, some for company reassignment.
An interesting, if depressing, figure that probably has some impact on alumni giving shows that recent Dartmouth graduates have an education debt burden double what it was ten years ago, a decade during which salaries did not double. Parallel data from Tuck show the educational debt burden of their alums grew eight-fold during the past 20 years, with an average outstanding debt that now represents about 75 percent of the. usual starting salaries Tuck grads "enjoy," Recent grads earn less too, and have greater family-starting obligations. All of which means that young alumni of any sort are likely to have fewer discretionary dollars to send to the Alumni Fund.
Consequently the Young Alumni surveyed, while constituting 40 percent of all alums, contribute only 12 percent of the total dollars raised by the Alumni Fund. We can note, however, that among the classes from 1976 to 1991 women give at a higher percentage than men, 51 percent to 40 percent, but their average gift is lower, $91 vs. $123. Finally, the total giving of both sexes throughout the Young Alumni sector is a not-too-shabby $1 million and change.
Attention Web-sters
The World Wide Web is expanding exponentially, as fast as computer jocks can spin new (and old) skeins of info. For example, you can find some new old facts by addressing . What you'll get is the home page of 01' Dan'I Webster himself.
Surfing right along, U.S. News also maintains a College Fair Page, which provides lists of institutions, career and financial aid information, and collected U.S. News articles about higher education. Dial it up at .
If you simply want to share som e knowledge with D-MAIL, boot up and address . And watch this space for the address of a soon-to-be-online Alumni Magazine Web page—including a push-button "virtual homecoming."
The youngsters are loyal but tend to be in debt.
