In an attempt to protect its graduates from a slumping economy that shows few signs of picking up, Harvard Business School (HBS) plans to award 10 of its 2003 graduates unable to find jobs with a nice consolation prize: a one-year internship at HBS to the tune of about $90,000.

HBS, which regularly hires consultants, researchers and admissions officers fresh out of business schools across the country, will simply earmark 10 spots for its own graduates, said spokesperson David R. Lampe.

Eighty-eight percent of 2002 HBS graduates had a job within three months of graduation—a high number compared to other schools, Lampe said, but lower than the 95 percent of previous years.

Lampe said there is no way to predict how many of HBS’ 900 graduates will apply but expects the internship to be popular among the jobless.

And for good reason—the interns are set to take home a higher salary in their extra year at HBS than average Harvard junior faculty members.

Current students were first informed about the new program last month in an e-mail from HBS Dean Kim B. Clark.

“We had been asking our traditional employers to step up to the plate,” Lampe said, “and decided we must lead by example and hire our own graduates.”

Other graduate schools have similar programs.

For instance, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University has pursued an initiative for the past three years to underwrite numerous positions to support graduates lacking employment offers elsewhere.

Tuck’s salaries vary according to the number of participants involved. As in the proposed HBS program, Tuck graduates who are selected are placed in a variety of different posts—working in the school’s entrepreneurial internship program, as research fellows or with individual faculty members.

“We benefit from having them working on behalf of the school,” Steven Lubrano, an assistant dean at Tuck, wrote in an e-mail.

Lampe said HBS is also pleased to hire its own graduates.

“HBS graduates have been extremely successful, and we expect the very best from them,” Lampe said.

He said the details of the intern selection process and what functions the interns will perform have not yet been decided.

Before committing to the nearly $1 million program, HBS officials stepped up their efforts to get more students in jobs through usual channels, soliciting heads of companies and asking alums to hire new graduates, Lampe said.

—Staff writer Maria S. Pedroza can be reached at mpedroza@fas.harvard.edu.