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The National Board on Graduate Education estimated in December that through the end of the 1970s as few as 7,000 Ph.D.s a year, or a fifth of the 35,000 or so produced, will find work closely related to their training. Getting nonrelated jobs is tough too: corporations often regard Ph.D.s as otherworldly. "We need creative thinking," says Mary McMahon, an Equitable Life assistant vice president, "not their specialized knowledge."
Where are the jobs? "Most employers," says Joe Guthridge, assistant placement director at Georgia Tech, "are forced to get personnel who can turn a profit for them right away, so those students who have a specific talent and can bring it to bear instantly are the ones who get hired." Businessmen are above all looking for problem solvers. Pre-eminent among these are the top-drawer business administration graduates. Pennsylvania's Wharton School and U.C.L.A.'s business school placed nearly all their job-seeking students last year and expect to repeat in 1976.
New doctors, as usual, have no worry about finding employment. Demand is also high for engineers, particularly in the petroleum industry, which is offering baccalaureates about $1,400 a month to start. Computer scientists and technicians (but not pure mathematicians) are prized. Other fields with openings: accounting, hotel and restaurant management, agronomy and horticulture, nursing, and pharmaceutical technology and sales, especially in the insurance business.
Industry is eager to employ women and blacks. Companies canvassed by Frank S. Endicott, retired placement director of Northwestern University, intend to hire 45% more graduates from both groups than they did last year. Even in such godforsaken academic fields as history, women—particularly black women—stand a reasonable chance of finding good jobs.
Graduates for whom there is a lesser demand are finding ways to make themselves more employable. Many return to school, to pursue advanced training in their fields or to enter new, more practical ones. For example, Bob Roos, a B.S. in fisheries science from California's Humboldt State University, works as a clerk and is pursuing a B.A. in accounting. To accommodate such students, many colleges have modified their policies to allow baccalaureates to earn second, low-level degrees.
Students are also flocking to community and junior colleges—public and private two-year institutions respectively—which are the nation's fastest-growing schools. Between 1960 and 1974, enrollment at two-year colleges zoomed from 660,000 to 3,257,000. Some community-college students are "retreads" from more exalted degree programs. Others, including older full-time workers and recent high school graduates, find the two-year programs the surest routes to good jobs. Community colleges frequently combine courses with on-the-job experience away from school. At Miami-Dade Community College, the nation's largest two-year college (50,000 students), mortuary-sciences majors put in substantial time at local funeral parlors.