Independent Perspective News

By DAVID LEONHARDT

In years past, most seniors at the University of North Carolina ignored the recruiters from Newell Rubbermaid, the maker of dishwashing gloves and Calphalon cookware, dismissing the company as another unfashionable manufacturer. This year, the handful of students Newell hired as management trainees became minor campus celebrities, simply because they had secured jobs months before graduation.

When North Carolina seniors receive their diplomas here on Sunday, only about 15 percent of them will have jobs awaiting them, half the percentage that did a few springs ago, according to a university estimate. Another 25 percent will enroll in graduate school, leaving about 6 in 10 seniors without a long-term plan come Monday morning.

The nation's class of 2003 was the last one to enter college while the stock market was still rising, but it is graduating into the worst hiring slump in 20 years, one that is now into its second year on campuses and has afflicted young and well-educated workers to an unusual degree.

Corporations, after cutting their hiring of new graduates by 36 percent between 2001 and 2002, are hiring about the same number of graduates as they did last year, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

"We definitely picked the wrong time to be graduating from college," said Morgan Bushey, 21, who will make about $200 a week teaching English in France, after having been rejected by seven law schools. "We just have to hold on with our fingertips for a few years until we can do what we really want to do."

The lack of jobs is the main reason that applications to medical school increased this year for the first time in seven years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Applications to law schools jumped 10 percent, after having risen almost 18 percent last year. The number of people taking the Graduate Record Exam, the standardized test required for most doctoral and master's programs, rose to its highest level ever, after declining through much of the late 1990's.

Meanwhile, applications to Teach for America, which recruits college graduates to teach for two years in public schools in poor neighborhoods, have more than tripled in the last two years; Wendy Kopp, the program's founder, said the economy appeared to be one reason. Americorps, the national service program that pays $9,300 a year, and the Peace Corps have also become more popular and more selective.

College seniors have reacted to their poor timing with a mixture of anxiety and level-headedness. Many recall the signing bonuses and stock options offered to graduates a few years ahead of them and wonder how their own careers will get started.

"There is a haunting sense of insecurity," said Michael Barlow, a senior here who hopes eventually to work in the Foreign Service and is still looking for a job. "It is terrifying to be out of school with no job lined up and ready to go."

But few of them express the frustration that is common among older unemployed workers who know that their long-term prospects have dimmed and who have dropped out of the labor force in large numbers during the last two years.

Asha Rangaraj, a North Carolina senior from Monroe, La., recalls that her brother, two years older than she is, was hired out of college to work for Bill Gates's money manager "really without any experience." She, on the other hand, endured a few unpromising interviews before deciding to enroll in North Carolina's master's program in accounting — in large part because 99 percent of its graduates get jobs, she said.

Still, Ms. Rangaraj said: "I think it's definitely temporary. Everybody has that feeling — two or three years, and everything will be back to normal."

The change has been particularly unpleasant in Chapel Hill, home to one of the country's most selective public universities, whose lush campus sits just a few miles from Research Triangle Park, the once-booming technology cluster.

But seniors on every campus — big and small, Ivy League and community college — are struggling to find entry-level jobs that they want, college officials say.

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