(FORTUNE Magazine) – Finally, some good news for college grads looking for jobs. After four years of disastrous declines, campus recruiting is on the rise. The Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University expects hiring of newly minted BAs and BSs to edge up by 1.1% this year. While that's nothing to E-mail home about, this upswing, fueled by a healthy economy, looks stronger than a mere aberration. Northwestern University's placement director, Victor R. Lindquist, says a few companies that had planned to interview only in the fall are already back for a second round this spring. Some newly invigorated FORTUNE 500 behemoths, notably General Motors, have returned to campuses this year. But most of the big companies will be flat to down in their hiring. The growth, says recruiting specialist Maury Hanigan of the Hanigan Consulting Group, is coming from small to midsize companies, many of them high tech. At Howard University, where Thinking Machines, a cutting-edge computer maker, came calling in March, there was a waiting list for interviews. While kids seem drawn to small, innovative outfits, Howard's head career counselor, Samuel Hall, believes parents would prefer their offspring to work for a blue- chip employer like IBM. He quips: ''If you go to some XYZ company your father's never heard of, how can he brag about you?'' -- M.D.F.