Some parents are writing their college-age kids' resumes. Others are acting as their children's "representatives," hounding college career counselors, showing up at job fairs and sometimes going as far as calling employers to ask why their son or daughter didn't get a job.

It's the next phase in helicopter parenting, a term coined for those who have hovered over their children's lives from kindergarten to college. Now they are inserting themselves into their kids' job search -- and school officials and employers say it's a problem that may be hampering some young people's careers.

"It has now reached epidemic proportions," says Michael Ellis, director of career and life education at Delaware Valley College, a small, private school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

At the school's annual job fair last year, he says, one father accompanied his daughter, handed out her resume and answered most of the questions the recruiters were asking the young woman. Even more often, he receives calls from parents, only to find out later that their soon-to-be college grad was sitting next to the parent, quietly listening.

Jobs counselors at universities across the country say experiences like those are now commonplace.

The United States is risking a "brain drain", in which its scientists will flock across the Atlantic, after the EU reached a "historic" deal yesterday on human embryonic stem cells.

A week after George Bush limited federal funds for the highly sensitive area, the EU warned Washington that "disillusioned" US scientists will want to make the most of Europe's more liberal rules.

Lord Sainsbury, Britain's science minister, said: "There are a group of American scientists who are very disillusioned. In this field we have seen US scientists coming to the UK. If the US continues to take this very negative position I think within this field of regenerative medicine we will see scientists come from America and from other parts of the world, who would have gone to America, to the UK instead."

While the majority of employers do not require a minimum GPA to apply, grades matter for students coming out of college looking for a job, said William Hill, assistant dean of placement at Monmouth.

Companies in some industries put more weight on grades than others, though, headhunters and university career counselors say. And so-so grades don't necessarily spell doom.

"Generally the larger and more competitive and high-profile the organization, the more they will like to see a higher GPA," said Richard L. White, director of career services at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

Certain fields such as science, mathematics or computer sciences may also emphasize GPA more than industries like communication, Ceravolo said.

"If you want to enter the actuary field, the company may more likely look at your GPA as an indicator than say if you're an English major applying for a writing or editing job," she said. "But if you're an English major with a 4.0 and nothing on your resume, then that won't help either."

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

Although Notre Dame's Cedar Grove Cemetery has been reserved for faculty and staff since the university was founded in 1843, the "Coming Home Project," initiated this past spring in response to alumni requests, will expand the cemetery to allow for alumni burials and funeral services.

"So many [alumni] said to me, 'Notre Dame is home for us now, Notre Dame is where we gather, so this would be like coming home, if we could be buried there,'" said Rev. William Seetch, the university's alumni chaplain. The name of the project represents the sentiment behind it, he said.

Seetch emphasized the university's role in creating solidarity among family members who are geographically dispersed.

"Our society is so mobile," he said. "People no longer have the family center back where they and their grandparents and parents may have lived. As careers and jobs move away, those centers break up, and what many families have in common is the place where they were educated."