In Demand: the Class of '88

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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."