Dec 14, 2016 07:41 AM EST By Julio Cachila, UniversityHerald Reporter

Colleges usually have career services offices that offer help to graduates so that they will take the best steps to a great career. A new report, however, has found that of all students who avail of these services, only a small percentage say they are actually helpful.

According to a report created by the Gallup Poll in partnership with Purdue University, only about 52% of college graduates say they visited their college career services office at least once during their stay in the school. Only 16%, however, said that the services offered by the office are "very helpful."

The Gallup-Purdue Index report, released just this Tuesday, also noted varying graduates' views on the career services offered to them in their respective schools. Only 27% say it was "helpful," 36% say it was "somewhat helpful," 16% say it was "not at all helpful," and 6% say they either "don't know" if the services were helpful or "can't recall" if they ever availed of the services.

Graduates who visited their college's career services office and evaluated the services as "very helpful" were 5.8 times more likely to say that their school prepared them well for post-college life, almost 3 times more likely to say their college education was "worth it," and 3.4 times more likely to recommend their alma mater to other students.

"The quality of the interactions students have with their career services office has a significantly greater relationship with the likelihood that students report having felt prepared for life after graduation than whether they simply visit at all," Gallup said in a press release.

The report also found that recent graduates were more likely to avail of career services in their colleges, with 61% of graduates between 2010 and 2016 visiting the career services office at least once during college. Only 30% of graduates up to 1959 say they visited the office once in their college life, only 35-40% from 1960-1979, 52-53% from 1980-1999, and 55% from 2000-2009.

The results were gathered from web interviews of a random sample of more than 11,400 respondents with a bachelor's degree or higher, aged 18 and older, and with internet access. The interviews were conducted Aug. 22-Oct. 11, 2016.

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