
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994                   TAG: 9405020040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: NEWARK, DEL.                                LENGTH: Medium

COLLEGE SENIORS FIND JOBS, BUT AT LOWER PAY

With the economy strong again, graduating college seniors are finding jobs easier to get after a four-year drought. But except for students with both solid work experience and widely sought skills, many students in the class of '94 are settling for jobs with modest salaries and no future while hoping for better or saving for graduate school.

"It's real clear that, in the '90s, people may find work but not work they're happy with," said Edgar J. Townsend, director of career services at the University of Delaware.

The university's student body reflects that of other major universities and the fortunes of its graduates in finding jobs parallel national trends.

Sixty-five percent of the university's 21,000 students, including 3,000 seniors, are from other states.

These days, they are discovering that good grades and grounding in Homer and history matter less than proficiency with computers, balance sheets and nursing.

Skills like these give graduates who held jobs while in college a considerable edge.

The salaries that even these students receive have barely budged in two years, however, despite the rising profits of business.

The College Placement Council in Bethlehem, Pa., says the starting salaries of business majors are a good example. Their average of $23,820 this year is 3 percent less than last year, the council said.

In his own annual poll of the University of Delaware's graduates, taken six months after they leave, Townsend found that the average starting salary fell last year for the first time in 15 years, to $24,385 from $24,761 in 1992.

For the first time, too, the best paid graduates were nurses, who started at an average of $32,858. They displaced engineers, who started at $32,298.

Delaware's seniors, like their peers nationwide, also have made a sobering discovery: "Fortune 500 companies are not available anymore," Townsend said, because so many are interested in cutting jobs.

The biggest company around, Du Pont in nearby Wilmington, once assured Delaware's top chemistry and engineering graduates lifetime employment. This year, for the first time in decades, Du Pontdid not send recruiters.

by CNB