Graduates with “The Right Degrees” are Being Heavily Courted
What, pray tell, is “the right degree”?
You would be amazed at who is getting the attention as they are coming out of the college/university circuit and into the work world.
It may just surprise you to know that one of the hot areas is in engineering. People with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, for example, are getting the notice of such places as NASA – and companies in Wisconsin such as Illumination Optics to name a couple.
All over the nation, the real area of hot jobs can be summed up as those jobs that require some type of a degree or skilled training program in the areas of math or science. Headhunting companies have lists of “hard-to-fill” jobs, which show that the positions which require some type of skilled math or science training to be the highest in demand.
According to Manpower, Inc. the hardest list of jobs for them to fill this past year was engineering positions. Why? Because the engineers were in a higher demand than in years past and there simply weren’t enough of them with the right degree!
Second hardest to fill was machinists and machine operators. Even the skilled trades, technicians, and IT positions were hard for Manpower to get filled – despite what everybody keeps saying about a failing economy!
As our society evolves and grows, the area that generates strong interest from the work world becomes more and more the students with math and science degrees. Then there are those in the computer sciences, which ranked #9 on the hard-to-fill jobs list this year. There was a time after the dot.com bubble burst when they were nowhere on this list.
Part of the reason why these types of degrees are in such high demand is because there are fewer people who actually go to college for these types of degrees as compared to those who go into the Business or Language Arts programs.
In fact some majors, like the engineering major, may actually begin to draw the attention of recruiters from the day he or she sets foot on campus and will certainly receive multiple job offers when he or she graduates.
Keep in mind as well that as demand goes up, so does the pay. Students who embark upon degrees in the areas of science or math will normally draw a significantly higher opening offer than students in the fields that are not in high demand.
Much of what some researchers say has caused such a shortage of qualified people in the sciences, math, engineering and skilled trades arenas is simply an inadequate level of teachers at the high school level to provide sufficient math and science training prior to entering college. The college programs for these degrees have more astringent guidelines that many high school students cannot/could not meet to qualify for training programs in these fields.
This situation has been tracked back to inadequate salaries for math and science teachers at the high school level, which tends to keep the teachers out of the high schools and in the colleges.
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