Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 28, 1993                   TAG: 9312280153
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HAMPTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FAA LEAVES GRADS' JOBS UP IN THE AIR

The Daily Press of Newport News reported Monday that a Federal Aviation Administration hiring freeze has left the Hampton University program's 36 graduates without jobs or hopes of jobs in the immediate future.

FAA and school officials deny making promises to hire graduates of the $2.9 million program.

"The students were never assured a job, and that's what was explained to them from the beginning," said Herb Armstrong, a former Hampton professor who started the program at the school in 1991. But, he said, "If I hadn't had pretty good assurances of them getting a job, I wouldn't have started the program."

FAA spokeswoman Liz Neblett said the Clinton administration's plan to cut federal jobs coupled with fewer than expected retirements at the FAA led to a June 29 hiring freeze.

Neblett said when hiring eventually is resumed, it will be limited.

Five schools - Hampton; Community College of Beaver County, Pa.; University of North Dakota; University of Alaska; and the Air Traffic Control Training Center in Minnesota - were part of the FAA's College Training Initiative. Only Hampton and the Minnesota training center were funded by the FAA.

The idea of the training initiative was to create a job pipeline that delivered college-trained controllers directly to air-traffic towers across the country, saving the FAA millions of dollars screening applicants at the agency's own academy in Oklahoma.

"The FAA has a certain obligation here," said Michael Pannone, chairman of the air-traffic program at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. "While they didn't make a certain promise, nonetheless, the inference has been `We're going to put you people to work.' "

Only about half the graduates from the five schools - 169 out of 333 - have been hired by the FAA.

All of the graduates said they received constant reassurances from FAA and school officials that the federal government would not be spending $2.9 million on their education if they weren't going to get jobs.

But nothing was put in writing. "We were all led to believe, not guaranteed . . . that you were going to have a job when you got out," another graduate said.