The class of '83 faces the worst job prospects since World War II
For graduating seniors at Northwestern University, the small room tucked away in one of the administration buildings has been a popular spot on campus. There, twice a week, a group of students known as the job club gathers to swap leads, vent frustrations and talk of how to get someone to hire them in this year's tight job market. They even practice the art of shaking the hand of a recruiter in a convincing way. "I'm confused," says Margaret Berger, an English major who cannot find a job in her chosen field of communications. "I always thought an education would mean something."
So did most of this year's 965,000 college seniors, the largest class ever, who are having a difficult time finding work in an economy that is slowly recovering from the recession. Says Thomas C. Devlin, director of Cornell University's career center: "The American dream of getting the diploma in one hand and the job in the other has been deteriorating." Wayne Wallace, placement director at Indiana University in Bloomington, predicts, "This year is probably going to be the most difficult for college grads since World War II."
In the booming economy of 20 years ago, only about 500,000 students graduated from college annually. With national unemployment at just 5% or so, jobs for college grads were plentiful. This year, according to Victor Lindquist, co-author of Northwestern University's Endicott Study on College Placement, about one-third of the graduates will leave campus without jobs. Indeed, there has been an estimated 50% drop in offers made by employers since last year. At Indiana, for example, the administration estimates that fully half of its 7,000 graduates getting their bachelor's degrees will not have positions at commencement. Says Jack Shingleton, placement director at Michigan State University: "The universities are turning out more graduates than our society is able to absorb."
The number of on-campus recruiting interviews this year is down between 20% and 30% from 1982, according to Lindquist. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, had 800 recruiters in 1981; in 1982 there were 620, and this year only 565. If the economic recovery persists, prospects should improve in 1984, but long-range predictions for employment of college grads remain gloomy. The Federal Government's Scientific Manpower Commission predicts that in 1992 there will be 3.3 million more graduates than jobs requiring a college education.
The seniors most in demand by corporations this year are those who majored in electrical engineering, computer science and accounting. But even a diploma in those fields does not guarantee a paycheck, as in the recent past. This year the market for engineers, once booming, is down 18% from 1982. Cutbacks by oil companies have dried up opportunities for chemical engineers. In 1970 the geology department at the University of Texas at Arlington had three graduate students and all were hired. Then students flocked to geology as the search for oil quickened. This year, with an oil glut, only two out of Arlington's 15 graduate students and none of its 300 undergraduates have jobs.