Author predicts abundance of jobs for grads

Despite prospects of a short-term economic downturn, there will be plenty of jobs in the next decade for new college graduates, especially those with science and math skills, the author of a new book on employment trends predicted yesterday. "The news is going to be quite good for most college graduates of the 1990s . . . mainly because there will be less of you," McNamara said. McNamara, who is president of Nuventures Consultants, Inc., said that the number of new college graduates will drop from 1.1 million this year to 950,000 in 1993, while 52 percent of all new jobs created during that time period will demand education beyond high school. Future graduates will be called upon to use more technology in their jobs, McNamara said, adding that employers will also look for students who have good math skills. The author said that while he was conducting interviews for the book, business executives repeatedly expressed skepticism about the value of a liberal arts education devoid of any math or science training. "Ninety percent of those communications, history and government majors [who] will be sending in their resume to me and my colleagues . . . are ill prepared to do a job," one of the executives interviewed for the book said. "They have only succeeded in finding a curriculum where they could avoid math, and there should not have been one [such curriculum] available." "What we need is more resumes with a math, science, accounting or even general business," the executive continued. "Those are the people who get the good jobs. The others are fillers." McNamara predicted that future graduates will take on more responsibility in their jobs as the number of management positions is cut. With fewer management positions available, future graduates will have less opportunity for promotions, the author said.

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