HEADLINE JOBFIND; Job hunters need business skills; It takes broad knowledge to get hired in this market

He wants a future, he says, that's more "all-encompassing." As a start, he's devoting three years of evenings to getting aBabson MBA.He says he likes the idea of diversifying his skills

- Article 1 -

The Boston Herald

October 6, 2003 Monday ALL EDITIONS

HEADLINE: JOBFIND; Job hunters need business skills; It takes broad knowledge to get hired in this market

BYLINE: By Denis M Hurley

It used to be simple

You figured out what you wanted to be when you grew up and you either made it or you didn't

Then came the bubble of the '90s and a whole lot of people became things they'd never imagined, with seeming ease

And it seemed as if that was, in fact, the brave new world, one that would never end

Until it rained in Camelot

And then, in the words of Sharon Hill, of the Bentley College Graduate Admissions Office, "It all blew up and they didn't have anywhere to go."

Hill has seen it from both sides

She spent the early part of her career working in marketing for Apollo, Motorola and Proteon, among others

Eventually, she found she was "getting tired of getting laid off," and moved first into recruiting for such businesses and then to her current position

Now she sees people, mostly in the 25-35 age range, who have learned they need more tools in a highly competitive market

"The ones who get it," she says, "are thinking, 'I need to broaden my skill set, to get more business

oriented.' "

Others, she observes, "are just hanging out there waiting for something to change."

Many of the second group are hard-core techies, who several admissions directors say, just want to be what they are and aren't ready to change career paths

But Kate Klepper, of Babson College's MBA admissions office, says over a quarter of the new MBA class there includes students who have educational backgrounds in engineering, science, computer science and math

And that's a good thing, she says, because employers are glad to have people with a combination of technical and business skills

"Even in a difficult economy," she says, "people with that combination are faring better."

The kinds of things that make a techie a techie, Klepper says - including good analytical skills and the ability to do complicated thinking - are things employers consider valuable

Combining those qualities with a good understanding of the business world and how it works, both Hill andKlepper say, can make a difference

Todd Connors, a systems manager at BJ's Wholesale Clubs, has figured that out for himself He wants a future, he says, that's more "all-encompassing." As a start, he's devoting three years of evenings to getting aBabson MBA.

He says he likes the idea of diversifying his skills and thinks that the business degree will give him

opportunities to avoid becoming "compartmentalized."

Robert Taggart, the Associate Dean For Graduate Programs at Boston College's Carroll School of

Management, says he tends to see students like Connors in evening programs, where people who already have careers - and families and mortgages - are more likely to pursue their studies than in full-time

programs that require a one- or two-year commitment

In those programs, Taggart says, there are "somewhat more people who are engineers and software

developers" seeking to broaden their skills He says the evening classes also attract "some marketers and managers" for the same reasons

Taggart tells of one recent student who had been an energy trader for Enron and recalls that a few former Arthur Andersen employees have also enrolled

The committed techies, most of the admissions directors say, aren't generally among those who seek a broader education

Vyctoria Thwreatt who was a general manager for LifeFX, a company that specialized in "digital people," from 1999-2002, confirms that with personal experience of her techie colleagues

"Developers and programmers move from company to company together," she says "They travel in packs."Her own experience after the company's funding ran out was different from those who chose graduate school She decided to go the entrepreneurial route with a company she calls Vyctoria's Answer that has been successful at providing a private concierge service The firm's Web site claims it specializes in

"simplifying and organizing your life," and offers services that range from grocery shopping to meeting planning to "minor miracles."

But even that kind of entrepreneurship took some education Thwreatt took courses at the Commonwealth Corp., a quasi-public organization that provides training and assistance in business

In all, though, the admissions people express a sense that - while there weren't that many to begin with - therefugees from dot-com era are becoming less likely graduate school candidates as time passes

And while further education may have been a wise route to take even a year ago for those who had been thrust onto the job market as their companies folded, Klepper of Babson says current conditions make candidates think more seriously about whether two more years without a job while going to school is the right thing to do

"As a negative economy sustains itself," she says, "that becomes less attractive."

- Article 2 -

The New York Times

September 14, 2003, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

HEADLINE: Personal Business; The Unemployed Lose More Than a Paycheck

BYLINE: By KAREN ALEXANDER

JEFF HALPERN had changed jobs a half-dozen times since receiving his M.B.A from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991, but the latest change was different

His position at a start-up energy trading company disappeared in the wake of Enron's collapse, and it took almost seven months for him to land a new position as marketing manager of TheraSense, a company in Alameda, Calif., that develops products for people with diabetes

While he was out of work, Mr Halpern, 39, became increasingly aware of what he was missing: not just a regular salary, but also the networking opportunities and the experience and knowledge that people accrue

The longer people are out of work, it seems, the harder it can be to find employment In August, 1.9 millionAmericans had been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics That figure accounts for about 22 percent of the unemployed and does not include 503,000 eligible workerswhom government economists classify as "discouraged." These are people who have lost their jobs but are not currently looking for work specifically because they believe that no jobs are available for them And many recent college graduates have decided to ride out the tight job market by enrolling in graduate or law schools instead of looking for permanent employment, while others have chosen volunteer work

Mr Halpern, who has been diabetic for 10 years, decided that he wanted his next job to be in the area of diabetes care He worked to keep his business skills fresh and to stay on top of medical research and trends

He did volunteer work for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and helped a fund-raising event generate about four times as much money as it had in the past He also attended a career-coaching seminar And, by each Monday, he made sure that he had something on his calendar for every day of the week ahead

"It was better than feeling sorry for myself, and during interviews it gave me something to talk about," he said "I was actually doing something with my time."

Rebecca Zucker, a principal and co-founder of the career advisory firm Next Step Partners in San

Francisco, ran the group sessions that Mr Halpern attended Using professional skills in volunteer work or community involvement keeps those skills fresh, she said, and bolsters confidence

"The insider knowledge that's gained from being in the flow of things is linked to a person's confidence andsense of competence in that field," Ms Zucker said "Like compound interest, those experiences build on each other."

Experts say recent graduates of business and law schools have particular reason to put their skills to work, because another batch of graduates will be flooding the job market within a year

"If a certain amount of time goes by, and you don't have things to put on your resume, and the year behind you catches up, you are caught in a squeeze play," said Carl Baier, a legal recruiter and managing director

of the Palo Alto, Calif., office of Major, Hagen & Africa, a search firm "I think that's happening now, and I think there's going to be additional scrutiny when things pick up Employers will ask: 'What types of deals has this person been working on? What have they really been doing?"'

One woman in that situation received her M.B.A from a school in the Northeast in May 2001 and was offered a consulting job at Accenture in New York But the market soured, and for more than a year the firm repeatedly pushed back her starting date She finally began work in October 2002

The consultant, who spoke about her situation on the condition that she not be identified, said she sought opportunities to use her skills during the wait, in part because she feared that her promised job could be snatched away by one of the new business school graduates following at her heels

Though she had a formal job offer from Accenture, the long wait created "a feeling that I had to continue toimpress them," she said

In addition to traveling and spending time with family members, she did volunteer work and took on a freelance consulting project for a large company

"It helped me feel more comfortable that I wasn't withering on the vine," she said, "and I think it helped Accenture feel better, too, that they hadn't picked up a dud."

Now that she's busy on the job, she says she considers the time off "a gift" but rues the lag in her

experience She estimates that it will take 18 months to two years on the job before she feels truly caught up

"It's not as if I'd gotten to use these skills and made them a part of me," she said "I went straight from school to being out of work for a year Now I have my finance and accounting textbooks within arm's reach

of my desk because I know I'm going to have to use them I felt like I was behind."

Her professional and social networking at work have suffered, she said, because she feels out of step with colleagues her own age

Robert Baker, 31, received master's degrees in business administration and finance from Boston College in the spring of 2001 He needed five months to find a job, which he has since left Now he is an assistant vicepresident for wealth management services at the State Street Corporation in Quincy, Mass

"As each month goes by, your confidence level decreases, and you start to realize you're not going to get your ideal job," Mr Baker said of his initial job search after graduation

Although his business school held weekly support meetings over the summer, he soon began to feel that he had exhausted whatever contacts the school's alumni network could offer

"In graduate school you're kind of going nonstop, and you start to thrive on that," he said When the day

"consists of just a job search, it's not very dynamic," he said, "and it does take a while to get that

momentum back upon returning to work."

After leaving the first job, Mr Baker went directly to State Street in June That quick transition went much more smoothly, he said

How much a person's career ultimately suffers from an extended period of unemployment varies by industry, the market environment and the individual, Ms Zucker said

"It can be nothing more than a blip, or it could be something that keeps them off course for a period of time," she said

THE best way for an unemployed worker to combat the experience gap, she and other experts said, is to remain as active as possible in his or her field of expertise "Keeping the momentum is very important,"

Ms Zucker said John Challenger, the chief executive of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago, agreed

"The most important thing a person can do is get really heavily engaged in organizations and volunteer activities in your industry, or in your field," he said

"As people are out of work they tend to become marginalized," he added "As they move out of the mainstream, they become less involved in not only the flow of meeting and developing relationships in business, but even outside of business in the civic and community sphere They shouldn't do that, but a lot

of people go and hide Making good transitions is really important, but many people get really stuck

"I don't want to make it seem so heavy an obstacle that it can't be worked around," Mr Challenger added

"People do it all the time."

- Article 3 -

St Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)

August 10, 2003 Sunday Five Star Lift Edition

HEADLINE: BOYS LOSE GROUND TO GIRLS IN RACE TO FINISH COLLEGE

BYLINE: Susan C Thomson Of The Post-Dispatch

* The question is why Higher-paying trade jobs lead some boys to skip college, experts suggest, and the changing job picture has erased some traditionally male work

The slide of male students to the rear of the college class went largely unnoticed over the past two decades, amid concern about the educational needs of women Only recently have researchers, authors and teachers begun to sound the alarm about what some see as a social time bomb in the making

Many say boys' second-class graduation rate 42 percent now is the end result of educational neglect Questions such as why boys are falling behind in school and what can be done to bring them up to girls' speed are taking on urgency

As education researcher Thomas G Mortensen reads the college graduation statistics, men are in crisis "A growing share of men just aren't making it," he said

"Women have won the war in education," says Mortensen, who has been drawing attention to this "gender gap" in higher education since the mid-1990s "It's over with."

He blames the nation's gradual shift from a brawn to a brains economy "I think it's because (men) have losttheir jobs in farming, they've lost t heir jobs in manufacturing, and they don't know what else to do."And that, in his view, is just as problematical for women, who "are not going to find similarly educated men to marry and share their lives with, because they're just not there."

A study presented in May to the Washington-based Business Roundtable by researchers at Northeastern University portrayed men as an emerging educational underclass As such, the study says, they could prove drags on the nation's productivity, economic growth and Social Security system and threaten the future of marriage, the stability of families and the welfare of children

That's not to say that men aren't making educational progress Along with the nation's population in general,they graduate from both high school and college at generally greater rates than they used to It's just that in

a stunning come-from-behind move, unimaginable a generation ago, women have progressed even faster, surpassing them

If not college, where?

Which raises the question: If young men of prime college age aren't in college, where are they? Behind bars, for one place According to the latest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 419,700 males between 18 and 24 are in state and federal prisons and local jails That's 16 times the number of their female contemporaries

Among men in that age group who are neither incarcerated nor in school, nearly a quarter are unemployed

or "not in the labor force," the Bureau of Labor Statistics term for those who neither have a job nor are looking for one

The rest are working - and not necessarily at dead-end jobs, according to labor analyst Russell Signorino, who sees job prospects for young noncollege men as better than those for young noncollege women Manufacturing jobs haven't entirely dried up, he says As for other areas where men with just a high school education still earn living wages, Signorino cites the construction trades, machining, tool and die making, maintenance, trucking, warehousing and sales

"These jobs are open to women, but they're still male-dominated," said Signorino, who works for the United Way of Greater St Louis.

To John Gaal, coordinator of the apprenticeship training program of the Carpenters District Council of St Louis, the issue isn't so much men not going to college as women not taking advantage of the alternatives

"Not enough women are aware of the opportunities that are available to them in these nontraditional occupations," he said "Therefore their default is college."

Nick Hegel, a 21-year-old who is three years out of Gillespie High School in Gillespie, Ill., never wanted to

be anything but a carpenter "I like to work outside ," he said "I didn't think I could stand sitting in a classroom all that time."

As he finishes his second year of a carpentry apprenticeship program in Belleville, he's earning $17 an hourwhile learning When he becomes a journeyman in two more years, he'll qualify for the union wage of $28

an hour "How many people make $28 an hour when they graduate from college?" he asks

Similarly, Ryan Dougherty, a 20-year-old graduate of Oakville High School, is earning $15 an hour as an apprentice electrician in St Louis, with the prospect of $30 an hour when he finishes his four-year program

in 2 1/2 years

He says he might have been able to earn even more if he'd gone to college, but he loves what he's doing

"What's money if you're miserable the rest of your life?" Dougherty could have gone to St Louis

University tuition-free because his mother works there, but he never so much as filled out an application.The gender gap has hit home for both of these apprentices Dougherty has a sister who graduated from college and a brother who is a tradesman Hegel has two sisters, one with a degree and the other working toward one

"Girls are just more dedicated to school," Hegel said

Dedicated to money

Preston R Thomas, a Normandy High School counselor, sees boys as more dedicated to money "Guys perceive themselves as having to be macho breadwinners," he said "What tends to happen is at an early agethey feel a pressure to go out and earn money."

For the young men interviewed for this story, money was typically the main reason for not being or staying

in college The cost of college, fear of loans, the iffy job market for college graduates and their own preferences for ready cash in their pockets figured variously into their decisions

Ron Dunn, 23, just became "more focused" on work than on school While still at McCluer High School, hegot a job as a deli worker, slicing roast beef "It was cool," he said "I dug it." So much that he left school for it, a move he describes now as "a choice I shouldn't have made."

At the St Louis Job Corps center, he has picked up his GED as well as skills in home building and cooking

As for college, he says he's "all for it" and would like to go "to see what it's like."

Greg Topolski, 19, saw enough in two weeks of community college "It wasn't for me," he said "It was too much like high school."

He quit to work at Schnucks in Eureka, where he started before graduating from Eureka High School He bakes and packages bread, stocks shelves, bags and checks groceries, shags carts from the parking lot - whatever is needed, he says He says he's been told he has management potential

He sees himself as on a much more serious track than his old high scho ol buddies "My friends, they went away to college and all they do is party ," he said "They come back and they're failing all of their classes because they're doing all that drinking."

Kevin Pollihan, 24, also a Eureka High graduate, went to community college for three semesters and has been waiting tables for the past three years at the Pasta House in Chesterfield He hopes to join and make a career in the St Louis Fire Department In his mind, he's just as well off as contemporaries who stuck it out

in college and graduated

"I see people my age who have college degrees who are working at jobs you don't have to have a college degree for, like selling cell phones, and they have loans and stuff," he said

Sexes test equally well

Young men aren't holding back from college for lack of smarts A yet-to-be-published study by ACT shows that, all things being equal, high school boys and girls test equally well, says Jim Sconing, the educational testing service's director of statistical research

At the upper end of the ACT score spectrum, boys and girls are equally likely to choose college, he says The gender gap opens "among students of moderate ability" where "females are more interested in going to college than males."

Tyree Miller, a social worker at Normandy High School, attributes some of this difference to high school boys' greater vulnerability to the seductions of videos, rap music and the entertainment industry in general

"They just over-identify with it," he said

Charlotte Ijei, director of guidance for the Parkway School District, says boys can begin in middle school tosuccumb to the message that "it's not very cool to be smart." So they enter high school with academic deficits "They've lost not only their competitive edge in education, they've developed gaps in their

educations and high school becomes more difficult," she said

And yet it was little more than a decade ago when girls were widely considered the losers in schools where teachers favored boys, activities stressed competition and textbooks ignored women This was the gist of

"How Schools Shortchange Girls," a study published to great popular press by the American Association of University Women in 1992

If the system was stacked against them, girls were beating it even then For more than a century, according

to the U.S Department of Education, they had been graduating from high school at somewhat greater rates than boys And that year, after starting to pull ahead in 1980, women earned 54 percent of the nation's bachelor's degrees to men's 46 percent

Now, seizing on the same supposed gender differences as the AAUW study, new and growing legions of advocates for boys are blaming schools for cheating boys

Boys, they say, are up against it from the minute they set foot in kindergarten because they don't initially develop as fast as girls - emotionally, physically or intellectually - and aren't as self-disciplined They complain that elementary schools, with their overwhelmingly female teaching staffs, are decidedly boy-unfriendly, punishing them for being active and competitive and rewarding girls for being compliant and cooperative

Research shows that elementary school teachers like girls better than boys, says Arden Miller, professor of psychology at Southwest Missouri State University "The kinds of things that schools emphasize make them a more reinforcing environment for girls," he said "In school, students are expected to sit down and talk - the things that females do better and that can be problems for boys Boys just aren't as well-suited

to an activity that is primarily verbal."

That's the main reason, advocates say, that boys are three times more likely than girls to be routed to special education and three or four times more likely to be labeled with attention-deficit disorder

High school slackers

In high school, when they might be building their resumes for college, boys as a group are seriously slacking off This is true nationwide, even worldwide, worried experts say For example: Of the 850,000 high achievers from public and private schools around the country recognized in the latest edition of

"Who's Who Among American High School Students," two-thirds are girls

That rings true to Dan Polacek, a counselor at Parkway West High School, where girls get higher grades and dominate the National Honor Society and most student organizations, he says Yet, he adds, boys score just as well on the ACT test, a sign that they are just as capable

Young men interviewed for this story seemed to take for granted that girls work harder in school, get better grades and set higher educational goals But that didn't faze the young men Several said they had

girlfriends; all of the girlfriends were going to college at least part time And that was fine, even a source of pride, with the boyfriends

As Dunn said about his girlfriend, a student at St Louis Community College's Florissant Valley campus,

"Maybe I can learn something from her."

Additional Information

1 Source: U.S Department of Education

Girls are taking the lead in finishing high school and earning college degrees A look at the breakdown of high school and college graduates: After a dropout rate of 12.2% for boys and 9.3% for girls, the high school graduating class shrinks to 89.75% Those who graduated: BOYS 49% GIRLS 51%

Of the high school graduates, 62% enroll in a two- or four-year college Of the 62%, those who enrolled: BOYS 48% GIRLS 52%

Of those enrolled, 59% received their bachelor's degrees within six years Of the 59%, those who received degrees: BOYS 42% GIRLS 58%

-2 Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics A look at how many U.S 18-24-year-olds are enrolled in school or in the work force*: WOMEN** MEN** Total population 13.6 million 13.6 million Enrolled in school 40% 37%

Employed 40% 49%

Unemployed 5% 7%

Not in labor force 15% 7%

* Does not include those in jail, prison or the active military ** Includes an undetermined number who have already received college degrees Note: "Not in labor force" refers to those who are neither working nor seeking work

-3 Graphic/chart - Race and the gender gap

Source: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University

The gender gap in college graduation cuts across all racial categories It is smallest for Asians, largest for blacks For every 100 bachelor's degrees earned in 1999-2000 by Asian men, Asian women earned 117 Similarly, for every 100 bachelor's degrees earned in 1999-2000:

* By white men, white women earned 131

* By Hispanic men, Hispanic women earned 148.

* By black men, black women earned 192

- Article 4 -

The New York Times

August 3, 2003, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

HEADLINE: CAREERS; The Undecided

BYLINE: By Leslie Berger; Leslie Berger is a freelance writer in New York

FEW students today can afford indecision The way Adam Kleshinski sees it, he could have spared himself

a year's worth of work, $10,000 in tuition and lots of aggravation if only he had picked the right major sooner A 23-year-old junior at the University of Cincinnati, he switched from industrial design to

environmental studies last year after realizing that planned obsolescence conflicted with his values

This spring, when not trying to patent an energy-saving invention, Mr Kleshinski helped a freshman namedDavid Meckstroth through the same agonizing process as a volunteer mentor at the university's new Center for Exploratory Studies, which also offers staff counseling, testing to assess interests and visits to classes and job sites

"If I'd been better informed about what industrial design was before I started," Mr Kleshinski recalls, "I could have completed my major in three years and been doing my master's right now."

In a newfangled form of career counseling, the University of Cincinnati is just the latest campus adding services to help young students find the right major Pace, a private university with New York City and suburban campuses, started the office of academic resources in 1997 after realizing that about half its 13,000 undergraduates were switching fields of study Similarly, Purdue University in Indiana, which admits freshmen into one of 12 specialized schools, added a broader curriculum called undergraduate studies in 1996 to give freshmen a taste of the possibilities

In fact, undecided students have become more commonplace on American campuses A record 8.5 percent

of entering freshmen were unsure of their career path in 2001, up from 1.7 percent in 1966, according to a survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles

Government figures show that almost 40 percent of students change their major at least once

THE apparent epidemic of indecision and the trend in exploratory programs the new jargon for

everything from counseling to curriculum (counselors avoid the more negative "undecided") reflects deeper changes in higher education itself

Most job applicants in today's service-based economy are expected to be college graduates But the more diverse and disadvantaged students arriving on today's campuses, including minorities, older women and the sons and daughters of recent immigrants, are less prepared to make academic choices and under more pressure to make the right one, since education is their best shot at upward mobility as well as expensive

"Higher education has been transformed from an institution serving white, property-owning Protestant males from New England to one serving those who are the majority now," says John N Gardner, a senior fellow at the University of South Carolina who developed the Freshman Year, a program to help freshmen adjust to college "It's not enough to admit people who were once excluded," he continues "If you're going

to take their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations and their money their own money and the government'smoney you have to do something more for them."

At the same time, higher education has become increasingly specialized The shift began in the 1970's when a sharp decline in college-age youths prompted campuses to offer more courses with a direct

application to work, says Anthony P Carnevale, a labor economist and vice president at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J "The American higher education system has become the work force training system," he says "It doesn't like to see itself that way It perceives itself as Harvard that is, that itprovides a liberal education It doesn't."

By the end of sophomore year, most students today must declare, in effect, their vocation Interested in engineering? Is that mechanical, electrical, aeronautical, nuclear or structural? Interested in health? Is that nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy or speech pathology?

The ever-growing menu of courses and majors can be overwhelming At Cincinnati, a robust state

university with more than 25,000 undergraduates, 120 possible bachelor's degrees are available from 10 separate colleges

"You can understand why students need a place to help them make a decision," says Tara Stopfel, director

of the Center for Exploratory Studies, which opened in February "But I would tell you that a freshman by his very nature is undecided They'll come in sure they want to study engineering But they've decided that because they were good at math and science in high school, and maybe dad's an engineer, or someone said, 'Hey, U.C., they have a great engineering school.' But then they realize this isn't what they want to do."Joe Cuseo, a psychology professor at Marymount College in Palos Verdes, Calif., who has written

extensively on majors and their relationship to student retention, says that the chance to mull over one's major has traditionally been a luxury of the privileged Those institutions most tolerant of exploration, he says, have been the small, liberal arts colleges, which are also the most expensive and admit the most legacies

"Ironically," he says, "those schools who are really forcing students to make the earliest decision are public community colleges, which tend to enroll the least prepared, the most economically underprivileged, first-generation college students."

Exploratory programs are becoming more popular, though, as a way to hang on to students and their tuition dollars As in the 1970's, maintaining enrollment is once again a key concern, although for different reasons Student mobility is high, for one thing "One out of five students who started at a four-year collegeand earned a B.A got it from a college other than the one they started at," says Clifford Adelman, a senior research analyst with the United States Department of Education Also, studies show that students who don't feel they have a goal, who cannot see the connection between their courses and what they plan to do, are at the greatest risk of dropping out

"The retention rate is of great concern to the University of Cincinnati," says Greg Hand, a spokesman for the university, where 31 percent of freshmen leave after a year "It is the reason for instituting programs likethe Center for Exploratory Studies, directed at helping students progress successfully toward graduation."The cost of indecision is also very much on the minds of students at Cincinnati, as elsewhere Budget cuts are forcing tuition up 10 percent this fall, with students covering a bigger share of their education than the state of Ohio for the first time in the campus's history

"Tuition just keeps going up and you don't want to feel like you're wasting time," says Jessica Minor, a nursing student at Cincinnati and volunteer mentor "You don't want to waste your own money, your parents' or loans It just adds up so quickly."

Ms Minor met with Umaru Bah, a freshman, this spring to help her choose among majors in nursing, med and business Ms Bah says she has already ruled out pharmaceutical studies because of all the chemistry Reviewing course requirements for different fields with counselors was probably the most helpful in narrowing her interests, she says

pre-"I just went for something not too hard but at the same time challenging," says Ms Bah, who is leaning toward a major in nursing with a minor in business

Mr Meckstroth was torn between his artistic and practical sides as he compared industrial design and mechanical engineering Speaking to Mr Kleshinski confirmed his concerns that industrial design was too esthetic for his ultimate goal of putting down roots and moving up into management at a large company

"I also found out that if you're going into industrial design, it's not a life where you can stay in one area andwith one company," he says "You have to change firms a lot So that wasn't something I found appealing."

As he and Ms Bah discovered, learning to make an informed choice was just as important as the choice itself since declaring a major is just the first of many decisions

"Education is never over," says Dr Adelman, a former college dean "The major is only the beginning of a line of interests that will develop and deepen over the course of people's lives and will be dictated by circumstance, employment, personal predilection Not all that knowledge is delivered by degree programs."PRIME-TIME MAJORS

WHAT'S hot and what's not in college majors often depends on prime time

Forensic pathology is in vogue, thanks to the CBS police drama "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation."Other entertainment-spurred fields of study include emergency medicine ("E.R."), law ("L.A Law"), criminal profiling ("The Silence of the Lambs") and investigative journalism ("All the President's Men") Current events affect choices, too After reactor accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, interest in nuclear engineering dropped off precipitously, according to Eric White, who directs Penn State's division ofundergraduate studies Now, he says, with instability in the Mideast and concerns about oil prices, it's starting to come back

Fads aside, business has been the most popular major for three decades and remains so today, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (The peak was during the pro-business Reagan era, when, not coincidentally, education majors reached a low.) Other sizable majors are social science (history, political science, economics, urban affairs), health (nursing, rehabilitation services), education and psychology.Among losers are engineering and math The number of degrees conferred in math declined by 22 percent from 1989 to 2000, while engineering and related technologies dropped 12 percent Some cite an image problem "We've not done a good job at putting the word out that it's exciting," says David Waugh, past president of the National Society of Professional Engineers, which is working to improve its image with plans for, among other things, a TV show LESLIE BERGER

WHEN MAJORS MATTER MOST

MAJORS are crucial if you're heading directly into the workplace after college, says Anthony P Carnevale,

a labor economist and vice president at the Educational Testing Service

But most liberal arts students go on to graduate school or professional programs, so their undergraduate majors become less significant over the long haul That said, some fields of study suit certain pursuits Plenty of political science and history majors go to law school Philosophy may seem completely

impractical, but a philosophy major can exploit skills in logic and math for business school "If you know math, that opens a lot of doors," Dr Carnevale says And a clever sociology major might parlay knowledge

of statistics and behavior into a marketing career

"Liberal arts majors are the distance runners," Dr Carnevale says "They're the investors."

But for the vast majority who start working right away 70 percent of college graduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics "it becomes crucial what you choose," he says For these students, repeated studies have found a clear link between college major and future earnings

"The findings of this study confirm what has been reported consistently in other studies about earnings," begins a 2001 report for the Department of Education "College graduates who major in the applied fields

of engineering, business, computer science, nursing and other health fields earn higher-than-average

full-time salaries In contrast, education and humanities and arts majors experienced the least favorable

outcomes."

According to the study, graduates with degrees in health earned as much as 58 percent more than those whose degree was in the humanities and the arts

The same study said that graduates majoring in applied fields like nursing, education and engineering were

"very likely to be employed in jobs related to their majors." Communications and journalism majors were the big exception: These students were more likely (33 percent) than graduates in any other field to be working in service jobs like retail or hospitality

For academic fields, roughly 25 percent of students majoring in biological science, math or physical sciences worked as teachers, and 25 percent in research or technical work Social science majors were likely to work in business occupations (32 percent), followed by service occupations (18 percent) and protective services (16 percent)

Clifford Adelman, a United States Department of Education senior researcher, cautions that employers look

at a student's breadth of knowledge and skills, so courses outside a major count, too "Courses taken are just

as important as the major in determining what happens in the labor market," he says "'What's in my valise?'

is the phrase I like to use 'What am I carrying into the labor market?"' LESLIE BERGER

Article 5

-The Boston Globe

June 22, 2003, Sunday ,THIRD EDITION

HEADLINE: HELP WANTED AREA TEENS FACE LONG JOB ODDS

BYLINE: By Kathy McCabe, Globe Staff

On his first free day after graduation from Pentucket Regional High School, Josh Roche of Groveland launched his summer job hunt Armed with applications for jobs at a pizza parlor, movie theater, welding shop, and tech consulting firm, the teenager is anxious to get to work

"I just want to get some income," Roche, 18, said as he sat filling out applications at a recent job fair at Newburyport High School "I'll take pretty much anything I can get."

He may have no other choice A troubled economy, weak job growth, and increased competition from underemployed adults are mostly to blame for the hard times facing teenagers this summer, economic specialists said

A study released last month by Northeastern University predicts the national employment rate for teens ages 16 to 19 will hit a 38-year low this summer From January to April of this year, the teenage

employment rate fell to 37 percent, the lowest since economists started tracking the sector in 1965, the report said

With little chance the rate will improve this summer, teenagers will have a harder time wading into the labor pool, said Paul Harrington, associate director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern

"Who is it that gets beat up in an economic recession? The answer is kids," Harrington said in an interview last week "The first thing firms do is quit hiring people Kids are the first ones to get shut out."

In recent years, teenagers have steadily been shut out of the job market Teenage employment peaked in

1989, when 48.4 percent of all US teenagers had a job, according to the Northeastern study prepared for theNational League of Cities Institute on Youth, Education and Families in Washington, D.C In 2000, the employment rate was 45 percent, and it has continued to fall

Harrington links the sharp decline to the weak national economy Massachusetts lost 170,000 jobs in the past two years, the bulk of them in manufacturing and information technology Each sector shrunk by 17 percent, he said

"Massachusetts led the nation in job loss," Harrington said "And here it was much more of a white-collar recession."

So what does a loss of high-paying manufacturing and technology jobs have to do with a kid looking for a summer job? Plenty Without a job, people cut back on spending That means fewer sales everywhere, fromfast food restaurants to mall retailers In turn, those employers cut back on hiring, Harrington said

"When people are out of work, spending and everything slows down," Harrington said "And when job vacancies dry up, young adults take jobs that don't fully utilize their skills But they do it because they'drather be underemployed than unemployed."

The state Department of Employment and Training does not track youth employment rates Generally, the agency estimates that one out of every two teenagers in Massachusetts works in retail, particularly

restaurants and supermarkets But this summer, competition from laid off older workers and new college graduates will make those jobs harder to get, an agency spokeswoman said

"Jobs that have been a dime a dozen in the past are getting harder to find for teens," said Linnea Walsh, a spokeswoman for the state employment department.

Locally, employment specialists agreed teenagers have fewer options and more competition for summer jobs "It's the worst I've seen in 30 years," said Jerry Congdon, an employer liaison at the Merrimack ValleyWorks Career Center, which sponsored last week's job fair at Newburyport High "There are so few jobs now, kids will take whatever job they can find."

Mary Sarris, executive director of the Workforce Investment Board in Salem, which has career centers in Lynn, Gloucester, and Salem, said, "Kids have it tough Not only are there less jobs, they face [adults] who are unemployed bumping down to take the jobs that might have ordinarily been available to them."

Teenagers looking for jobs agreed the competition is keen "It's hard," said Katie Switzer, 18, a recent graduate of Newburyport High, who is one of 10 applicants for a job at a summer camp sponsored by the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport "It's hard for kids to get a job downtown [in

Newburyport] I think a lot of older people get to the jobs first."

Switzer, who worked last summer at an ice cream shop, hopes to work with kids this summer "I prefer not

to work with food again It can get kind of stressful," said Switzer, who plans to enroll in the fall as an education major at Fitchburg State College "I'd like something a little more rewarding I like kids."Roche, who plans to study business next year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, hopes to jumpstart a career in business this summer Asked why an employer should hire him, Roche smiled and said confidently, "I am a bright, young kid with a lot of potential I have no problem working hard."

Kevin Maresco, 17, of Lynnfield, said he caught a lucky break A neighbor told him about a job opening at Route 1 Miniature Golf & Batting Cages in Saugus He's been working weekends since April He hopes to average 25 hours per week this summer "It's a fun job," said Maresco, who will be a senior next fall at Lynnfield High School " I like working at the batting cages The ball sometimes get stuck in the cages, so Ijust knock them down."

Maresco noted that his friends looking for jobs this summer haven't had much luck Two friends recently got jobs at a cemetery and a video store, but many more are still looking "The gist is that no one is really hiring," he said

Area employers said they're fielding more calls from anxious teens looking for work "Just in the last week,I've had three phone calls," said Diana Fay owner of Route 1 Miniature Golf & Batting Cages "The kids are asking, 'Are you hiring? Are you hiring?' And we're not."

"I've been bombarded with applications," said John Daly, a dining service manager at Brooksby Village in Peabody, where 115 high school and college kids work "Particularly, in the last month, it seems a lot of kids are looking."

In Lynn, teens flooded the North Shore Spirit with job applications for the minor league baseball team's first season Of the 1,100 applications received for 250 job openings, about 80 percent were from kids under age 18, said general manager Ben Witkowski In the end, the team hired 75 teenagers to work as ticket sellers, ushers, and parking lot attendants, among other jobs

"We actually took in more than we needed," he said "Could we have operated with 50 kids working every game? Yes, but we wanted to give as many kids as we could the opportunity to work here."

Some employers are in the market for summer hires Foodmaster Supermarkets in Chelsea, parent of Johnnie's Foodmaster, has job openings for cashiers and baggers at several stores, including those in Lynn, Melrose, Revere, and Swampscott "We've had a lot of interest, more than in the past," said Larry Mulrey, director of human resources at Foodmaster "Part of it comes from so many people being out of work