In Demand: the Class of '88

By Gordon Bock

The nearly 1 million U.S. college seniors who will don cap and gown in the next few weeks could not have picked a more propitious time to be venturing out of ivy-covered campuses and into the workaday world. With the U.S. unemployment rate at its lowest level in 14 years, companies large and small & are hungering for fresh talent from the college ranks. According to the Lindquist-Endicott survey of placement prospects, corporate America plans to hire 10% more seniors than it took on a year ago. A piece of sheepskin is fetching a better price: accounting majors, for example, will earn average starting salaries of $23,700, about 9% better than graduates in that field earned in 1987.

Not long ago, the class of '88 was braced for a far gloomier situation. When the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 508 points on Oct. 19, it raised the specter of an economic recession and widespread joblessness. Fearful seniors -- joined by a smattering of overwrought underclassmen -- rushed to college placement offices in search of advice, sometimes creating such a backlog that students had to wait a month or more for an appointment with a counselor. Corporations grew just as edgy: some recruiters put campus visits on hold until they could sort out the aftereffects of the market meltdown.

The way things turned out, the Crash of '87 did little to scuttle the best- laid plans of the class of '88. As expected, fewer Wall Street firms turned up on campuses for job interviews, and those that did hired fewer people. But many college placement officers actively solicited the personnel directors of old-line manufacturing companies, which had generated relatively little interest from students in the days when red-suspendered Wall Streeters reigned as the big men on campus. General Motors is hiring 1,064 college graduates this year, twice the number it recruited in 1987. The University of Texas at Austin received visits from national recruiters for IBM and General Dynamics, instead of the regional representatives who used to handle the chore.

Largely because of the fear that Black Monday engendered, most students began their searches earlier in the academic year and pursued jobs more aggressively. Applicants from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill mailed out resumes to as many as 50 employers each, instead of the 20 or so that most members of last year's class targeted. An all-day career seminar at the University of Virginia (total enrollment: 11,096) drew a standing-room- only crowd of more than 550 students, even though it was held on a Saturday. Says Larry Simpson, U.Va.'s placement director: "I've been here 20 years, and I have never seen students as career conscious as they are today."

The market crash forced many business majors to reassess their goals and % tactics. Careers in sales, marketing and product development with large U.S. corporations suddenly seemed more satisfying than the stress and insecurity now promised by a career in investment banking. Typical of this year's class is John Christ, 21, an economics major at Harvard. Having decided against a career on Wall Street, Christ is planning to be a management consultant. He wants, he says, "to get broader exposure to what is going on in the business world, meet a lot more people, and work with a team in an environment that is supposedly not as cutthroat as banking." Susan O'Brien, 22, a Barnard senior, had been planning a career on Wall Street, but now may look elsewhere. "I think about my friends who work down there. Their lives and careers are on edge," she says.

Some members of the class of '88 have shifted their sights from Wall Street to a wide variety of nonbusiness fields, from law to social work. Most noticeable is the rise in the number of students seeking teaching careers. Many of the nation's graduate education schools report they are receiving at least 40% more applications this year than last. At Brown University, 250 students showed up for a one-man show on the life of a teacher, and career forums on counseling drew twice as many future graduates as last year.

The students who are turning away from business may feel that the salad days of corporate deal making are gone, but college advisers also detect a heightened sense of altruism among today's seniors. Says Victoria Ball, director of Brown's career-planning service: "Maybe it's the negative image of yuppies, but students are realizing that money isn't everything in life." Still, most of them will be making more of it than their predecessors.

With reporting by Joelle Attinger/Boston and Wayne Svoboda/New York