Graduates

Recent college graduates looking for entry-level work will have an easier time job-hunting than earlier alumni, recent reports are finding. But the students who will make the most money when they emerge from school will be the ones with math- and science-related majors. Engineering, business and science graduates often end up commanding some of the highest salaries, according to a new study conducted by three Yale University professors for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Software engineers were deemed by CareerCast last week to have the best jobs.

Bellybutton down the hatches. The 990 new graduates of the "Navel Academy" have a serious spelling error on their diplomas. A printer mistakenly spelled the word "naval" as "navel" on the diplomas passed out at Wednesday's commissioning ceremony. Lt. Cmdr. Mark Van Dyke said officials detected the mistake on the parchments before graduation but decided it was too late to correct the misspelling before the commissioning exercises.

I was profoundly saddened at the news that Our Lady of Corvallis High School will be closed this June. I will never understand how schools such as this don't receive some kind of assistance from the county or state in times of financial trouble. Why isn't some of the state's lottery money used to help long-established, accredited private schools? I know I speak for hundreds of other Corvallis graduates when I say that the years I spent there were some of the happiest in my life.

Students at Loyola Law School in downtown Los Angeles have managed to boost their grade-point averages slightly -- and they didn't even have to study any harder. The 1,300-student school has adjusted its grading formula for current students and recent graduates to match the scales of other California schools, officials said Friday. But the move, which raised the average mark by a third of a grade, also prompted allegations of grade inflation. The change was intended to ensure that graduates compete for jobs on an equal footing with other law schools' graduates and are not hurt by what had been a slightly tougher grading system, said Loyola Law School Dean Victor J. Gold.

Chinese women university graduates are being fired from their officially assigned jobs because of increasing sex discrimination, an official newspaper said on Friday. Most of a group of 50 fresh graduates sent back to Peking's People's University by dissatisfied employers this summer were women, the Guangming Daily said. Companies gave reasons such as a lack of women's accommodation for the dismissals of highly qualified female economists and lawyers, the newspaper said.

For most recent college graduates, these are gloomy times. Only about half are working full-time, with the majority starting with less pay than expected while also dealing with huge student debts. Nearly six in 10 think they'll end up less financially successful than their elders. It's a pessimistic outlook from the subjects of a study from Rutgers University , which this spring surveyed hundreds of people who graduated between 2006 and 2011. About 12% are under- or unemployed (many of the rest are volunteers, in the military or still in school)

Two Cal Poly Pomona School of Environmental Design architecture program graduates won third prizes and cash awards of $1,500 each for one month of study abroad in the 1986 William Van Alen Architect Memorial Fellowship 15th Annual International Competition. Winners are Steven Dewan of Fountain Valley and Leandro Sensibile of Diamond Bar.