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Fran Riley, public relations chief of the National Secretaries Association, estimates that about half of its 28,000 members view their jobs as steppingstones to higher work in business, and quite a few "have middle management as their goal." In this new atmosphere, secretarial schools are adding courses in accounting, budgeting, personnel training and other semiadministrative functions. "Automation has cut the amount of time that a secretary needs for typing, filing and the like," says Edith Foster, director of instruction for the Katharine Gibbs schools. "More and more bosses are looking to their secretaries as administrative assistants who work with them, not for them."
Though that may be the trend, it is true so far only in relatively few cases. The secretary's role is clearly changing, but not fast enough for many young women. So many of them refuse to take that important and indispensable job that, despite the nation's high unemployment rate, there is an acute shortage of secretaries.