REMEMBER the college graduate of 1968? Standing there on commencement day with diploma in one hand and a bundle of job offers in the other? Seniors that June scarcely had to look for work. Their main problem seemed to be deciding which corporation offered the best opportunities, or which fellowship led to the most promising future.
Not any more. The recession may be just about over in the marketplace, but its effects linger on the nation's campuses. The largest graduating class in history—an educated army of 816,000—is entering America's certified credential society and learning to its sorrow that a degree is no guarantee of a suitable job. Like the dollar, the diploma seems to have been devalued. At Boston's Northeastern University, a sign in the placement office reads "Grave New World."
The high-ranking seniors of '71—at least from the best colleges—will have no serious trouble finding employment. But they may have to work harder at selling themselves to an employer, the job may not be the one they had hoped for, and the salary may be lower than they like. They will certainly not, as in the past, have jobs conferred upon them. "Normally a placement director is wined and dined by firms wanting to ingratiate themselves with the institution," says Cornell Placement Chief John Munschauer. "This year no one even bought me lunch." Corporate recruiters still visit campuses, but not so frequently or enthusiastically as before. At Princeton, there were 85 recruiters this spring compared to 169 in 1968. The engineering school at the University of Kansas greeted 55 recruiters this semester, down from 255 three years ago. In many cases there was less recruiting because the recruiters themselves had been fired.
The actual job offers told an even grimmer story. A survey of 140 U.S. colleges and universities indicated that between March 1970 and March 1971, job bids for male B.A.s dropped 61%, and a staggering 78% for Ph.D.s. Actual hiring will be down less, probably by 25% at the B.A. level. A possibly incomplete but telling poll of the 944 men who graduated from the letters and sciences division of the University of Wisconsin last year showed that only 174 were working full time; and of that number, only about half had the kind of job they wanted.
Intellectual Proletariat
On campus, the reaction to the dearth of jobs ranges from nonchalance to panic to anger—an anger often directed at the colleges that trained the students to no seeming purpose. Some speak darkly about the creation of a new "intellectual proletariat" in the U.S.
"Just like Ceylon," says Columbia Senior Roy Rosenzweig, a history major, "where 10,000 people went to college and couldn't get jobs." He might have added India, Latin America and Africa. TIME Correspondent Frank Merrick, who recently visited several big Midwestern universities, "was amazed that so many students seemed to be drifting, bewildered by what was happening to them and resentful that no employer seemed to want to hire them."
On the other hand, there are thousands of seniors this year who seemingly could not care less that few corporations sought their talents. The much-heralded New Consciousness of America's youth—including an indifferent attitude toward the Protestant work ethic—has