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One oddly embarrassing surprise to some of the professional people who approach the Government for a job is discovering how well they will be paid. Federal workers have had ten raises since 1962. Attorneys, chemists and engineers in Civil Service Grade 15 now make from $24,251 to $31,523—figures that were arrived at by averaging the salaries of comparable professionals in the business world. They have job security and pensions as well. State and local government pay scales are lower, but the problems and the jobs can be challenging. For example, business school graduates hired by Los Angeles County have learned to their surprise that a department head in the county government has about the same budget, personnel and purchasing problems as a department head at General Motors.
"ALTERNATIVE" JOBS. Many members of the class of '71 either do not want a "real" job right away, or do not want one that will lead to a conventional career. This is especially true of men facing the draft—about one of every four graduates this year. Those with low lottery numbers have spent most of their extracurricular time and energy trying to figure out whether to go quietly, join the National Guard, become C.O.s, develop ulcers, cut off a finger, go to prison, go to Canada or just freak out. Careers are not their immediate concern.
But thousands of others who are relatively safe from the draft also seem reluctant to commit themselves to a vocation. Of the 1,139 students in Harvard's class of '67, 90 declared themselves "undecided" about their career plans; of this year's 1,100 or so, there are at least 250 in that limbo. Last year the placement director at Beloit wrote to every junior, suggesting that they chat with him about how to prepare a resume to get a job. "I didn't get one response," he says. "Vocational planning to them is anathema, an Establishment sort of thing to do. These kids just don't want to start immediately on a nine-to-five job."
Many students will therefore treat themselves to Wanderjahre, living frugaily on handouts from home or picking up odd jobs. Or they may join communes, which are a practical way for unsettled idealists to live on next to nothing. Others, while still in college, will try to line up what are usually called "alternative" jobs, meaning jobs that suit the new alternative lifestyle. In some college placement offices there are folders containing information about how the kids can get into dome building, blacksmithing, pipefitting or free-school teaching. At Oberlin, there is even an "alternatives" office, staffed by ten volunteer students, and several other colleges and universities have appointed "alternative vocations placement counselors." A graduate divinity student named Robert J. Ginn Jr. has the job at Harvard; he estimates that perhaps a fourth of this year's senior class are seriously considering going into some alternate vocation.
One of them is Henry Adams, the great-grandnephew of the author of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. Instead of writing about stained glass, the most recent Adams to graduate from Harvard intends to go into the craft itself, making skylights and glass sections for geodesic domes.* Ross Coppelman, a Harvard '70 English major, is making a variable but decent enough living as