Which University of Hawaiʻi four-year degree programs have the highest rates of graduates remaining in Hawaiʻi five and ten years after graduation?
Workforce Understory Episode: Episode Two — Understanding Underemployment
Geography: Statewide
Topic: Graduate retention, degree outcomes, living-wage attainment, and workforce stability
The takeaway
Education has the highest graduate retention rate among the four-year programs shown, with 85% of graduates remaining in Hawaiʻi five years after graduation and 84% remaining after ten years.
Engineering also retains a relatively large share of graduates at year five, at 78%, but falls to 69% by year ten.
Area, Ethnic, Cultural, Gender, and Group Studies—which includes Hawaiian Studies—appears among the seven highest-retention programs at year ten, with 67% of graduates remaining in Hawaiʻi, despite not appearing on the year-five list.
The programs most successful at retaining graduates are not necessarily the programs producing the strongest wages.
What this visualization shows
This visualization identifies the University of Hawaiʻi four-year degree programs with the highest shares of graduates remaining in Hawaiʻi five and ten years after graduation.
Education stands out for both the level and stability of its retention. More than eight in ten graduates remain in Hawaiʻi at each point, making it the strongest program shown for keeping locally educated workers in the state over time.
Engineering presents a different pattern. Its year-five retention rate is also relatively high, but it declines by nine percentage points by year ten. This suggests that many Engineering graduates begin their careers in Hawaiʻi but become more likely to leave as they gain experience.
The appearance of Area, Ethnic, Cultural, Gender, and Group Studies at year ten adds another dimension. Programs closely connected to Hawaiʻi’s history, culture, communities, and sense of place may support long-term retention even when they are not among the strongest wage-producing pathways.
The visualization therefore suggests that decisions to remain in Hawaiʻi are shaped by more than earnings alone.
Why this matters
Hawaiʻi’s workforce strategy depends not only on educating people, but also on creating conditions that allow them to remain and build lasting careers here.
Education appears to be especially effective at retaining graduates. That is important because Hawaiʻi depends on teachers and other education professionals to serve communities across the state.
But retention alone does not establish that a pathway is sustainable.
Earlier evidence from this episode shows that Education graduates may take years to reach living-wage earnings, and some teaching pathways only narrowly cross the threshold. High retention may therefore reflect more than strong economic opportunity. Graduates may stay because of professional commitment, family ties, cultural connection, public-service values, or the place-specific nature of their work.
Engineering raises the opposite concern. Graduates may initially remain in Hawaiʻi, gain valuable experience, and then leave for larger labor markets offering more specialized roles, stronger advancement opportunities, or higher compensation.
Together, these patterns reveal a difficult workforce challenge. Some of the programs most likely to retain graduates may not provide the strongest economic outcomes, while some high-value technical pathways may lose workers as their careers progress.
This evidence invites Hawaiʻi to ask:
How can the state retain graduates because they can build rewarding and economically sustainable careers here—not because they are willing to accept financial tradeoffs in order to stay?
Evidence:
Questions this visualization helps answer
Which program has the strongest retention at both five and ten years?
How stable is Education’s graduate-retention rate over time?
Which programs experience meaningful declines in retention between years five and ten?
Which fields appear among the highest-retention programs only later in graduates’ careers?
Do the programs retaining the most graduates also produce strong wage outcomes?
Which degree pathways appear most closely connected to long-term workforce stability in Hawaiʻi?
Curiosity:
Questions this visualization raises
Why does Engineering retention decline from 78% at year five to 69% at year ten?
Are experienced engineers being recruited into better-paying or more specialized positions outside Hawaiʻi?
Do local employers offer enough opportunities for advancement, leadership, and technical specialization?
What explains Education’s consistently high retention despite relatively modest wage outcomes?
Are Education graduates staying because of strong local demand, professional commitment, family ties, or limited portability?
How do burnout, workload, housing costs, and public-sector compensation affect the long-term retention of educators?
Why does Area, Ethnic, Cultural, Gender, and Group Studies emerge among the highest-retention programs at year ten?
Does cultural or place-based connection influence graduates’ decisions to remain?
What occupations do graduates from that field enter?
Which programs combine high retention with living-wage earnings?
Which programs retain graduates at high rates while leaving them economically vulnerable?
How do retention patterns differ by campus, county, island of origin, or employer?
Are graduates remaining in Hawaiʻi but working outside the fields in which they studied?
How do race, gender, family income, first-generation status, and local family connections affect retention?
Which graduates leave and later return?
What employer practices or public policies could improve both retention and economic security?
How should Hawaiʻi balance the need to retain graduates with the need to improve the quality of the jobs available to them?
Youth Perspective
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