Sixty-fifth year
ROTWNDA Tuesday, December 3, 1985
Number Ten
Class Of 86 s Job Outlook lirightens "Slightly" BETHIJ3HEM, PA (CPS) Students who graduate in 1986 will enjoy "slightly" better prospects for landing a job than 1985 grads, the College Placement Council (CPC) predicts. All told, American businesses expect to hire about two percent more grads next year, the CPC found in its annual mid-year assessment of the student job market. The CPC's report, the first of three national job outlook surveys published by major agencies in November and December of each year, forecasts better times ahead for most kinds of majors. But last year, the CPC's rosy predictions of a bumper job market for college grads did not come true, in part because of the computer industry slump. "The recovery slowed down to some degree," explains CPC
spokesman Rhea Nagle. "The big fall-off in the Silicon Valley was the category we were off in." This year "there will be plenty of opportunities (for computer majors) outside the computer industry," says John Shingletjon, placement director at Michigan State and the sponsor of another of the annual job outlooks. Shingleton expects his report to appear in a few weeks, and that it also will indicate a "slightly" better job market for the Class of 1986. He also predicts starting salaries will rise more slowly than the Cost of Living Index compiles by the federal government. In the CPC survey, firms said they expected to hire seven percent more business grads than last year. They also forecast having four percent more openings for masters of business administration, although last
year was a bad one for MBAs. Students with degrees in science, math and technical disciplines — excluding engineering — should also experience a slightly improved job market, CPC predicts. Employers expect to hire three percent more bachelor's grads in these areas and 13 percent more who have a master's, CPC data show. Employers' predictions of engineering grads' prospects "are contradictory," Nagle says. "Employers are saying one thing, but when they project figures, those figures show a decline." The data indicate corporations will hire five percent fewer grads this year, but in interviews engineering executives thought there would be a rising demand for engineers, explains Nagle. "It's particularly surprising at the bachelor's level because they
Virginia Governor-Elect Gerald Baliles was a surprise visitor to Longwood College last Wednesday. Baliles, who turned up at a banquet for Longwood's "Superintendent's Network", looked tired from his long campaign and declined to make a
statement in order to not influence Governor Robb's last days in office. Longwoods "Network" is an outreach program to help retrain teachers and generally improve K-12 school systems in the South-Central Virginia area.
have been the most sought after for a number of years," she adds. Companies expect to have seven percent more job openings for engineering students with advanced degrees, however. Liberal arts majors face a similarly confusing job market,
Nagle contends. While the data show companies anticipate hiring three percent fewer liberal arts majors in the coming year, many employers say they are increasingly interested in hiring humanities (Continued on Page6)
Halley's Comet By BARRETT BAKER Picture, if you will, a blazing 6-billion-ton fireball, screaming towards the earth at over 20,000 miles per hour! Could this be the new plot line to another bestselling fiction by Stephen King? Possibly, but this story is not expected to involve the destruction of our planet as we know it. In reality, this is a description of Halley's Comet, which is to appear for the first time since 1910 sometime later this year. From a scientific viewpoint, this appearance will give astronomers and scientists a first-hand opportunity to unlock some still unanswered mysteries involving the origin of our universe. Although this fireball will not actually be burning, it will definitely be blazing. In an article published in the Washington Post, on January 27, 1985, Michael Kernan, the author of the story, stated that Halley's comet
is going to be about 100 times brighter than originally predicted. This is due, in part, to the core of the comet vaporizing much sooner than previously expected. According to Mr. James Curley, who teaches astronomy here at Longwood, the prediction was also based on a sort of 'safety factor.' In 1972, a comet by the name of Kohoutek was predicted to be almost as spectacular as Halley's. Unfortunately, it turned out to be somewhat of a dud. "About a year ago, Halley's was predicted to be very poor — very poor vision," Curiey said. "I think that Kohoutek had a lot to do with that. But even so, it will be less than what it was in 1910, simply because of our point of view — where we are located in our orbit relative to where the comet is. You see, in 1910, we were so close to the comet that the tail of it actually went through the earth — or we went through it. Now we are going to be farther away from
it, thus it'll be a little dimmer, so (they) were predicting poorer results. Now they are saying, 'Hey! its vaporizing a little better than we had anticiapted' so that's going to make it brighter. And I hope so, too," he finished, "because this is a once-in-alifetime thing, and if we miss it.. •i
So — what is a comet? What is so special about Halley's comet in particular? What is the significance to this year's appearance? And what are we doing to avoid 'missing* it? First of all, a comet is a mass of frozen gasses with dust, sand, and a little gravel mixed in with it — what astronomers refer to as a 'dirty snowball.' As this snowball gets closer and closer to the sun, the sun's radiation vaporizes some of those frozen gasses, casuing the head of the comet to expand — up to much larger than the size of the earth, creating a tail that can extend out as far from the comet as the distance
between the sun and the earth. So, the closer it gets to the sun, the larger it becomes. Halley's comet is a special case because of its extremely regular appearances — showing itself every 76 years or so. It has been said, by a Chinese scientist, that his ancestors may have spotted the comet as far back as 1057 B.C. But a Halley's historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, doubts this date because subsequent close passes in 374, 607, and 837 A.D. would have changed its time schedule. This would put a more conventional date at around 240 B.C. — making next year's event the 29th recorded appearance. The comet gets its names from Edmond Halley, who was the first to discover that these comet sightings throughout history were all the same comet. Halley first got excited about comets in 1682, when a spectacular one appeared over his home in Britain. He had previously been
working on a theory that would conclude that a comet was the cause of the great flood depicted in the bible through the story of Noah's Ark. Previously, during Middle Ages, comets were believed to be a phenomenon of the atmosphere; that they were part of the earth itself. Shortly after this period, someone finally figured out that it was not part of our atmosphere and started working on the theory of orbits. Halley was the first person to work out the comet's correct path on a 76-year orbit and astonished the world when he predicted its return in 1759. Unfortunately, he never got the satisfaction of seeing his prediction come true. This year's appearance of Halley's comet is causing quite a stir with the scientific world because it will be the first opportunity to find out where comets actually come from. "One idea," said Mr. Curley, "and probably the most (Continued on Page 5)