Good news! If you have a son or daughter graduating from college this year, there’s a very good chance that he or she will get a job. In other words, you may actually get that media room you’ve long envisioned in your offspring’s bedroom. Oops. We spoke too soon. According to MonsterTrak, fully 48% of college grads expect to move back home. At least that’s down from 60% heading back to the nest last year.

More good news – all that tuition you’ve doled out could actually produce a positive rate of return, especially if your heir wishes to be an accountant. That’s right – Messrs. Sarbanes and Oxley have personally created an out-and-out hiring boom in the accounting world. Starting salaries for accountants are expected to rise 5.4% this year – the biggest year-over-year increase of any discipline.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers publishes frequent updates on the state of the college hiring market, and the news this year has been excellent. A survey conducted during the spring indicated that employers intended to hike college recruiting by 13.8%; for the services sector the figure was 16.4%. Even manufacturers intend to increase hiring – by 11.1%. Overall, more than 60% of the respondents said they would hire more graduates this year than last.

A similar pulse-taking by Monster-Trak confirms that hiring is strong. MonsterTrak’s vice president and general manager, Julie Goldthwait, says students are optimistic about job prospects, citing particular demand from the government, marketing firms, Internet providers and the financial services sector. Since her company deals with more than 600,000 employers and more than 3,100 colleges, she is pretty up on current trends.

Nicole Snyder, of Princeton’s Office of Career Services, confirms that students are “definitely looking at a strong market. It hasn’t grown by leaps and bounds” according to Ms. Snyder, but employers are certainly expecting a more competitive market for desirable students. This is especially the case in financial services, and the hunt for good prospects tends to trickle down into other business sectors, according to Ms. Snyder.

This is a much brighter picture than that of three or four years ago, when employers were gloomy about the economy and many Wall Street firms actually rescinded offers that had been extended. The market this year is strong enough that employers are raising starting salaries, expecting that competition will be intense in certain disciplines.

So what should college students do to get on the gravy train? The first step might be to choose a school with an especially good reputation in those fields that are booming. The assistant vice president of career services at Rochester Institute of Technology, Emanuel Contomanolis, can’t help sounding slightly smug when asked how that school’s graduates are faring. Though hiring for techies isn’t back to the 1998-1999 glory days, according to Mr. Contomanolis, they have seen a steady increase in offers over the past several years.

He also says that the impact of outsourcing is being overstated. Demand for software engineers and computer programmers is strong, especially as some companies have scaled back their outsourcing of such work. About 60% to 70% of RIT students graduate with jobs; the number is considerably lower at many schools.

Students should also be advised to follow demand, and ignore the college adviser who tells them to follow their passion, even if that means majoring in modern poetry.The highest paying discipline for undergraduates is,of course, engineering.The most recent survey indicates that engineers can start out with an average salary of more than $50,000. Computer sciences students are in the same boat, with starting salaries also more than $50,000. Accounting majors are near the top, with a starting salary of nearly $46,000. Liberal arts graduates, in contrast, are expected to earn slightly less than $31,000.

Sadly, a persuaded poetry lover switching into engineering might struggle to overcome the next hurdle – namely, grade point average. Naturally, it’s not enough to major in the popular fields; 70% of recruiters screen by GPA, some interviewing only those with GPAs above 3.0.

The next piece of recruiter wisdom may collide with the first. That is, students should learn to communicate – the no. 1 skill employers require. Communications skills rank right up there with honesty as a desirable characteristic. Here the poetry major is in way better shape; they just happen to communicate the wrong things. The ability of most young people to compose a proper sentence, either verbally or in writing, is on the slide. Signing up for an intense English composition course could work wonders for many. That a skill sought by those falling all over themselves to hire engineers and finance majors may not be so surprising.

This is not a new shortcoming. The executive director of NACE, Marilyn Mackes, states in the press release that the communications shortfall has been listed by employers for 10 years.

Also, the student might want to get a haircut. Ninety-four percent of employers indicated in another NACE survey that grooming has a considerable influence on their hiring decision. That includes interview attire. Oddly, body piercing and tattoos seem less off-putting; also, employers could care less about men wearing earrings. (It’s also possible that few people with tattoos and oddly located holes in their bodies apply for jobs in the traditional fields covered by the survey.)

Now that the hiring picture for undergraduates seems so bright, will we see a drop-off in graduate school applications? Ms. Snyder from Princeton reminds us that when the job market is especially sour, numerous graduates head for extra degrees, assuming that their prospects will brighten.

That is certainly not the case with the GMATs, the exams required for application to business school. Though earlier in the year registration was slow, it has now picked up and is running ahead of last year.The infatuation with the MBA also reflects the view that investment in an advanced degree pays off. The good news, for those who have borrowed to earn those extra letters after their name, is that there is indeed a reward for all those hours in the library.

Research done by the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that people with higher degrees earn more money. Specifically, the latest available data shows that holders of bachelor’s degrees in 2003 had median income of $40,287 compared to $21,948 for a high school graduate. Those who had earned a master’s degree had median earnings of $50,021 and a doctorate scored higher, with $64,372. Holders of professional degrees were top of the pile, earning $75,722. We can break this down even further, comparing women with bachelor’s degrees ($38,447) with males ($63,084.) But, that’s a topic for another day. For sure.

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