Summary: - Many Ride Out the Recession in a Graduate School Harbor By YILU ZHAO PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 17
-- The sagging economy has created a bonanza of applicants for the nation's schools of business, law, journalism, education and many other graduate programs as laid-off workers and college seniors are deciding to wait out the recession by honing their skills.
- College job placement offices may be in the doldrums, but admissions officers at many of the nation's professional schools and graduate programs say they are being inundated with applications.
- Admission officers at Emory University business school say applications were up 80 percent at the end of the first round in the admissions cycle in December in comparison to the same period last season; those at U.C.L.A.
- report a 90 percent increase and those at the University of Chicago report a 100 percent jump.
- Yale University Law School says applications are up 57 percent at this point in the season compared to the same point last year while Vanderbilt says its applications are up 47 percent.
- Students at the University of Pennsylvania here give a simple explanation for the sudden enthusiasm for graduate education: the difficulty of finding jobs.
- They are usually immune to economic cycles because the completion of a medical degree and the required residency can take eight or more years, a tremendous time investment in comparison to studying for other professions.
- No students popped in to inquire about jobs; no employers called to recruit.
- But one block away, at the admissions office of the university's Wharton Business School, virtually every employee of the admissions office --- including the director --- was busy opening application envelopes pouring in from all corners of the country.
- Janice L. Austin, the assistant dean of admissions at the law school, where applications are up 33 percent, has hired four more people simply to open mails and bought a high-speed printer for letters to applicants.
- During the 2001-2002 school year, employers are expected to hire 6 percent to 13 percent fewer college graduates than the last school year, according to a report released by Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University.