Men's Women's Goals Moving Closer

Men and women of the recently graduated Class of '80 have more uniform career goals than any other class in recent years, a report issued this week by the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning (OCS-OCL) states.

Sixty-seven per cent of women plan to defer graduate study as opposed to 58 per cent of men.

"Women don't have as many role models as men," Martha P. Leape, associate director of OCS-OCL and author of the report, said yesterday, explaining that women are "taking more time to be sure to make the right career choice."

These findings are based on a survey answered last May by 493 women and 930 men, making up 95 per cent of the graduating class.

The trend towards similar career goals seems to be continuing in the Class of '81, Robert J. Ginn, director of OCS-OCL, said yesterday. This spring, 21 per cent of the men and 20 per cent of women is the senior class signed up for interviews with business recruiters visiting campus.

The report stated that 88 per cent of the class planned either full-time graduate study or full-time employment in the year after graduation. No class in the last decade has had so high a percentage of graduates committed to full-time employment or study.

"The high rate of inflation with the resulting high cost of education, high cost of living and high cost of travel seems to have been a constraining influence on the immediate postgraduate plans of this class," the report stated.

Independence

"The students have a strong desire to be independent and self-supporting," Leape said. They are "very concerned" about doing something full-time immediately she added.

The percentage of students naming only one vocation, a figure which had decreased steadily from 75.8 per cent in 1973 to 56.3 per cent in 1979, rose to 62.8 per cent for the Class of '80. The report stated that many students who had listed themselves as "undecided" about their eventual vocation were actually "focused on two or three career fields which they hoped to combine, integrate, or pursue sequentially."

The students' desire for secure careers is evidenced by the 49 per cent that plan careers in business, law, or medicine, the report said.

There has, however, been a "very clear turnaround" in the trend of students away from graduate study in the arts and sciences, Leape said. "Students are going to give it a try," she said, adding that they may end up using their Ph.D's for "personal enrichment."

The report stated that there was a slight increase in the number of students interested in college teaching. "With society getting in college teaching. "With society getting tougher and tougher, people are beginning to see that the academic life is a good life," Paul N. Yivisaker, dean of the School' of Education, said yesterday, adding that the university is a "place where you can still live a life of values."

"I hope they are looking at it realistically," Yivisaker said, adding that it is "fairly easy to get careers in ad- ministration" but not as easy to find jobs teaching.

"Each vocation is selected by graduates from a broad distribution of concentrations," the report said. Of all the career fields, medicine had the most clustered distribution, with 74.9 per cent of those interested in medicine concentrating in science and math. This percentage, however, represents a 5 per cent decrease from last year.

"We've long encouraged students to get a broad education," Oglesby Paul '38, director of admissions of the Medical School, said yesterday, adding, "We don't care what they major in. If we find a student has had very little humanities, we get disturbed."

The report stated that students who had accepted advanced standing were "more intent on immediate career entry" and had a higher acceptance rate to professional graduate schools