Sun, Apr 27, 2003 page12

• Grads optimistic amid gloom

  Although the average starting salary for an entry-level employee has increased since last year, only a lucky few university graduates will be able to enjoy the extra cash

  • By Diane Lewis / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Some members of the class of 2003 seem to be majoring in unfounded optimism.

  Seniors with business degrees can expect higher starting salaries this year, but most new graduates will face skittish employers, flat or declining salaries and a stagnant labor market. Yet at a time when three unemployed workers are vying for each job vacancy, some college seniors aren't worried about future prospects.

  

  "Personally, I haven't worried," said Kendra Levasseur, a 23-year-old senior at Northeastern University who is majoring in communication studies, with a minor in business. Levasseur doesn't have a job, but she's had one interview. She's hoping that thanks to internships she'll land a position in public relations, sales, or advertising.

  Casey Schreiner, a 21-year-old film and television major who graduates from Boston University next month, is just as confident. Schreiner spent a semester in Los Angeles interning at "Malcom in the Middle," a Fox television show about a dysfunctional American family. He plans to return to LA following graduation to look for work as a sitcom writer.

  "In one of my classes, I wrote two scripts for existing shows and I'm working on a pilot," he said. "Hopefully, I'll take those to LA and get a job. Thankfully, the entertainment industry is pretty [healthy]. People always watch TV."

  Then there's 22-year-old Joe Herrington, a physics major and senior at Northeastern University who wants to teach but doesn't have a job yet.

  "I sent out a resumes here and there," he said. Is he worried? "No, not really."

  Too bad economists aren't so sanguine. They are predicting that even if the economy shows stronger production gains, job growth will remain slow and the unemployment rate will probably hover between 5.8 and 6 percent for the remainder of the year. Although the war in Iraq has ended, many employers are just as cautious about hiring today as they were before the conflict.

  "This is a pretty inhospitable job market for anybody coming in," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "Right now, nationally, there are 9 million unemployed people and only 3 million job vacancies. Having a sheepskin isn't changing that equation that much. In fact, one of the unfortunate characteristics of this jobless recovery is that it's hurting everybody, including college graduates."

  So why are this year's grads so optimistic?

  "They're young," said Bernstein. "They're just completing a significant accomplishment and they should be confident, but they haven't yet experienced the job market. They will be far less confident after they do. Once they start looking for work, they'll be considerably less bullish."

  Camille Luckenbaugh, employment information manager at the National Association of Colleges and Employers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania., reports that 42.4 percent of 353 US employers surveyed by the association this year plan to hire fewer college graduates than they did in 2002. By contrast, 36.3 percent will hire more. The remainder expect hiring levels to stay the same. The association is projecting a 3.6 percent overall decline in job opportunities for the class of 2003, which follows an estimated 19.7 percent decline the year before.

  Carol Lyons, dean of the Department of Career Services at Northeastern University, was expecting 80 employers to attend the school's big career fair Thursday, down from the 120 to 150 that attended in the past. Among those who will be hiring: EMC Corp, 7-Eleven, the Boy Scouts of America's Boston Municipal Council, and Allegro Microsystems. The university will award diplomas to 2,700 seniors in June.

  At Raytheon Co in Lexington, about 500 college seniors will land full-time jobs or internships this year, down from 600 in 2001-2002, reports spokeswoman Amy Hosmer. She said the bulk of the jobs will go to full-time hires who will work in fields including engineering, finance, supply chain management, and electrical or mechanical engineering.

  Members of this year's graduating class who hold degrees in accounting, nursing, the health sciences, or education, as well as liberal arts majors willing to work for nonprofit entities or the federal government, may have less difficulty finding entry-level work than computer science, engineering and finance majors, Luckenbaugh said.

  The association also reports that new grads with degrees in business will see higher starting salaries this year, though jobs may not be as plentiful as they were in the past. Business administration graduates will earn, on average, US$36,515 per year, a 3.7 percent increase over the US$35,209 they earned in 2002. Most will work in sales or management trainee positions.

  Accounting majors will receive US$41,360 to start, up 2.6 percent. Their average compensation should be higher, ranging from US$45,680 for consulting to US$45,761 for financial analyst jobs.

  The forecast is hardly positive for information science and systems graduates and other technical fields. The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that average starting salary offers for information science and systems grads will drop 3.9 percent to US$39,800. Computer science majors are also looking at bad news: Their starting salary will average US$46,536, down 7.6 percent.

  Aware that job prospects are not as plentiful as they were two years ago, some seniors are applying to graduate school. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst reports that graduate school application numbers for 2003 rose 6 percent over last year to 11,122. The current total is almost a third higher than in 2000, when the university received 8,537 graduate school applications.

  Karen Rafalik, 21, of Schenectady, New York, a senior at Simmons College, plans to go on to graduate study. Rafalik, who majored in sociology and studied psychology, will enroll in a master's-level leadership program that she hopes will eventually guarantee employment as a director of a nongovernmental agency or community organization. Her ultimate goal? To one day earn a doctoral degree and work as a forensic psychologist.

  "With a sociology degree, you can't counsel anyone," Rafalik said. "All you can do is hold assistant or research type roles. I'd like to do more than that. But it's hard to get jobs without a higher degree unless you have major connections."
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