With a few exceptions, Columbia Business School’s class of 2008 has dodged a bullet — most secured jobs just before the economic outlook took a turn for the worse in late 2007 — and the graduates celebrated Saturday by downing Bellinis at the annual spring ball at the Cipriani banquet hall on 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue.

Next year’s class might not find its cocktails so easy to swallow. In the wake of large numbers of layoffs by major investment banks, career services officials and students at business schools are bracing for what could be a very difficult recruiting season. A bad summer on Wall Street could translate into fewer job opportunities later, and with increased competition — applications at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, for example, were up by 28% this year — getting that plum investment banking job next year will be harder than ever.

Relief is in the air for the moment, however, as this year’s graduates emerged largely unscathed. Recruiting for this year’s class took place last fall, before the blitz of bad economic news. The exceptions are the unlucky students who interned last summer at Bear Stearns and were expecting to return there after graduation. Last week, JPMorgan Chase & Co., which acquired the bank in a fire sale last month, announced it was rescinding some of their offers. Rescinding an offer is considered a serious blow that often damages the reputation of the financial firm as much as the students. So far this year, Bear Stearns is the only investment bank to have done so. “Obviously, we’re watching the market very closely,” the assistant dean and director of the career management center at Columbia Business School, Regina Resnick, said. “Summer internships, in terms of percentages, are on par with last year. However, the big question will be what happens when students come back from summer internships. What percentage will have job offers from those firms?”

During an economic slowdown, business students will likely see fewer job offers as well as delayed start dates. The MBA recruiter at the executive search firm GloCap, Pamela Harrington, said she could envision a shift in the recruiting cycle next season, in which firms postpone hiring until the spring to give them more time to gauge the direction of the economy.

At MIT’s Sloan School, administrators were getting a jump start on the coming recruiting season by making a pitch to alumni for help. “They are our most important constituency,” the director of the career development office, Jacqueline Wilbur, said. The dean of the school sent out an e-mail message to alumni in January and recently followed up with another.

The current climate has made even some business school alumni uneasy. The director of career development at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, Everette Fortner, said phone calls from alumni have increased over the past three months, primarily from those working in the financial services sector. “People are just being prudent and planning ahead,” he said. “They are thinking that ‘something might happen and I want to have my resume and strategy ready.'”

This might not be a bad idea, according to a business school professor at Stanford University, Paul Oyer. His research has shown that fewer MBA graduates enter investment banking during times when the stock market is down, and because bankers earn much more over their lifetime than those in other industries, MBA students graduating at the wrong time have less lucrative careers.

“Other than bankruptcy lawyers, I don’t see a clear winner,” he said.

Despite the bleak news, MBA students at Columbia last week were keeping their chins up. Most realize that the degree is a long-term investment. Moreover, especially among those headed for Wall Street, market volatility is simply a fact of the business they have chosen. Those in their late 20s have already experienced tough times, having witnessed the fallout of the tech bubble burst in 2001 and 2002, shortly after graduating college. “It’s cyclical,” Jennifer Lee, 28, who plans to work at a major investment bank after graduation, said. “It always comes back. Anyway, it’s better to start in a down market. There are more opportunities to prove oneself if you’re on top of your game.”

Her friend, Nicole Irwin, 30, who also plans to work on Wall Street after graduation, agreed. “If we can keep our jobs, there’s a lot of upside,” she said.

A first-year student, Ben Siscovick, 26, conceded that news about the economy is “a little unnerving,” but he quickly added: “People aren’t freaking out about it.” Mr. Siscovick, who writes for a Web log, bschoolers.com, said he saw a down cycle as potentially producing “tremendous opportunities,” and that when all is said and done, those who survive the shake-ups would be the better for it.

“When things fall apart, you see the cracks in the system. You really start to appreciate the issues and the interactions,” he said. “It’s an incredible time to learn.” A professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School, Donna Hitscherich, argued a similar point to students in her mergers and acquisitions class. An economic downturn, she said, can be a great time to enter the job market. “Once you get the job, there’s not anything bad about it. It’s a cycle just like anything else is cycle,” she said. Ms. Hitscherich received her MBA just before the crash of 1987. During that time, she said that instead of pursuing investment banking, “some people got onto the ground floor of the next thing.” In this case, the next thing turned out to be private equity. “And they did just great,” she said.