''official says job prospects for liberal arts grads brighter By MARK GINDIN Daily staff writer Surveys indicating a bright job outlook for. engineers and a dismal view for liberal arts graduates do not present a complete picture of job-, hunting results, according to a University placement officer. The figures showing a lack of demand for the liberal arts are "deceiving" because they are based primarily upon surveys of on-campus recruiting, ac- cording to Deborah May, assistant director of the Career Planning and Placement Office on campus. MOST CAMPUS recruiting is done by major cor- porations that can afford such an expensive procedure, May said. "Large companies are not the place liberal arts graduates usually choose to go," she said. The surveys represent the resulting lack of liberal arts graduates placed in large corporations as a sample of the total job market. The 1979-80 Annual Report from the CPP office showed high percentages of graduates who are either employed or who return to school, "belying the popular assumption that liberal arts students cannot get jobs." Ninety-one percent of the graduates who inter- viewed on campus in 1979-80, and 75 percent of those who did not, are now either employed or in school. THE FIRST YEAR out of school is "tough" for liberal arts graduates because the jobs do not search for the student, the student must hunt for a job, May said. The student "must make his own luck" by preparing for job hunting while in school, she said. "There are hundreds and hundreds of jobs out there," said May, "and the liberal arts degree is very flexible. The skill learned in school is not the major, it is the way of looking at the world." ROUGHLY ONE-HALF of the male graduates and two-thirds of the female graduates eventually choose their own careers, and many of those careers are not related to the degree, May said. "The common mistake has been for people to equate education with work," she said. "The major is not the label." Businesses do not usually hire liberal arts See OUTLOOK, Page 9 The Michigan Daily Vol. XCI, No. 62-S Ann Arbor, Michigan-Friday, August 14, 1981 Ten Cents Sixteen Pages Reagan hails 'turn around' Signs largest tax, spending cuts in U.S. history From AP and UPI SANTA BARBARA, Calif.- President Reagan, declaring he was ending a half-century of "excessive" government growth, signed into law yesterday the largest package of tax and spending cuts in U.S. history. "THEY ARE signed and now all we have to do is implement them," the president said during the fog-shrouded ceremony at his ranch atop the Santa Ynez mountains. The bills slash more than $35 billion in spending next year and hand nearly $750 billion in taxes back to business and the people over five years. The new laws-including a 33-month, 25 percent cut in personal income tax rates-embody the economic recovery program the president championed on the way to the White House as the an- swer to the nation's economic and social ills. "THE CREDIT goes to the American people," Reagan said. "They wanted a change and spoke with a more authoritative voice than the special in- terests." Since the legislation doesn't take ef- fect until October, Reagan predicted the current "soft and soggy economy" would continue for the next few months. The president, who pledged to cut the budget and taxes during his campaign and has pursued that goal since his inauguration, said the bills represented "a turnaround of almost a half a cen- AP Photo AT A DESK outside his ranch in California, President Reagan signs into law the largest tax cut in U.S. history. The president hailed the signing of his landmark tax and spending cut laws as a "new beginning" for the United States and assa final reversal of the trend toward "excessive government." tury of a course this country's been on' and mark an end to excessive growth of government bureaucracy and gover- nment spending and government taxing." ABOUT 30 PEOPLE protesting his decision to produce and stockpile the neutron weapon were outside the gate to his ranch when reporters arrived. However, the main gate is about five miles from the ranch itself and the demonstrators went unnoticed by the president. The bills he signed slashed planned spending on domestic programs by an estimated $130.5 billion in the next three years and reduced individual and business income tases by $749 billion through fiscal year 1986. Although the spending bill was cut by a huge amount over what Carter had proposed, it nevertheless is larger than spending for the previous year or any other year. So Reagan, in effect, also signed the largest spending bill in history. By reducing federal spending on domestic programs the bill effectively revrses the course of government begun by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It cuts spending for Social Security by $2.2 billion, mostly by eliminating the $122- a-month minimum benefit. Spending for food stamps is cut by $1.7 billion, and for employment training, $4.6 billion. It also reduces by $11.6 billion the government's authority to enter in- to contracts to build low-income sub- sidezed housing. Many other programs also are affected. Critics, mainly Democrats, have ac- cused Reagan of taking a meat ax to programs that help the poor while lavishing billions in tax breaks on the rich. There is also suspicion among critics that the economic assumptions of the program are wrong and could lead to the "economic Dunkirk" the president's top aides seek to avoid. Virtually nothing escaped the budget knife and program revisions-except national defense, which has been promised substantial, real increases af- ter inflation.