Harris Forecasts Grad Job Dearth

Jobs for college men are scarce and will be scarcer, according to Seymour Harris, Professor of Economics.

Harris warns in his book, "This Market for College Graduates," that the siream of college graduates," wanting jobs is increasing while the number of jobs shrink. The book will be published today by the Harvard University Press.

"The time may come," he forecasts "when on an average the college graduate will earn less than the non-college worker."

Emphasizing many advantages, economic and non-economic, of higher education, Harris points out that "in the light of our college graduates" vocational expectations the numbers are and will be increasingly excessive."

On the one hand the country faces a large and increasing flow of college graduates; on the other, the professions, cherished goal of a large portion of college graduates, offer a declining number of employment opportunities.

"That some professions, through restrictive practices, further aggravate the disequilibrium between supply and demand, does not improve the situation."

Founding his estimates, in part, on the report of the President's Commission on Higher Education, Harris foresees a downward shift of college graduates' occupational expectancies as the only cure.

"Unless a revolution in attitudes of college-trained men and women is forthcoming," Harris warns, "the occupational downgrading of college trained personnel will have serious social and political effects. A frustrated intelligentsia, as European experience suggests, is a large political liability."