In the face of an economic crisis, this generation of college students chooses majors more carefully and the choice differs from the past. Ten years ago, the most popular majors at UA included Childhood Education, Psychology, and Accounting. Now, the focus is on health science degrees.
According to the American Heart Association, baby boomers are living longer than past generations as a result of measles and polio vaccines and radical heart surgeries. Despite the lengthened age, the boomers have more chronic diseases, such as arthritis and diabetes, so they are more likely to make use of health care services.
In 2007, 13 percent of the U.S. population was age 65 and older, but that number will increase to 20 percent when the last of the baby boomers reach retirement. The Department of Labor predicts a steep increase in the number of health care jobs accessible in the next four years. As many as 4,700,000 jobs will be available, which is a 30 percent increase.
Geoffery Jensen, a graduate student and World Civilizations Instructor agreed that health sciences are a good direction for students during this time. Jensen explained that a long series of events has lead to a dire need for more doctors and people in the health care systems. “Retirements, frivolous lawsuits, insanely high insurance premiums, and the overall poor condition of the health care system have reduced the amount of practicing doctors in our country,” he said. Jensen also encouraged students to keep an eye on the way congress and the president deal with health care in our country.
Students at UA have already gravitated toward the health science majors. The most chosen majors at UA in 2008 were Kinesiology with 599 students, Nursing with 560 students and Biology with 542 students.
Patsy Watkins, the UA Journalism Department Chair, offers advice for students searching for practical majors that will be most likely to provide jobs in the future. “Students should research their field, talk to professors, and take the skills you have and decide where to put them,” Watkins said. Each year, Watkins turns her students to the occupational outlook handbook. She said this information would be helpful to students to get a good idea of occupations that have the potential for growth in the next five to ten years. Watkins explained that students often end up in jobs that were not an obvious choice for their major, but were accessible because of the skills they picked up while earning their degree.
A recurring theme in the search for a good major is that no major is entirely recession-proof. There seems to be no guarantee that your particular major will provide a job for you constantly. Although Jensen said he believes there are a couple of areas that have the potential to weather the recession better than others, he also emphasized the importance of sticking to what you want to do with your life.
“It will be a very competitive, tough market for the next year or two because of the recession,” Watkins said. “If students can think in terms of the economy being on an upswing within the next two to three years and simply be prepared, they will do just fine.”
Students have chosen majors from a wide range of reasoning. High school experiences, family member’s jobs, information provided by the universities, and even procrastinating have all attributed to UA students final decisions.
For many students, choosing a major can come from simply running out of time. When undeclared major Charla Beasley came to the beginning of her junior year, she said she was “put on the spot” by her advisor. “My advisor said ‘You know you have to choose a major now, right?’ I laughed, and then I just told her it had to be art,” Beasley said. Beasley designs tattoos for friends, owns a photography business, and practices all forms of art. She said she did not feel prepared to declare a major, but that the choice to major in art was only natural.
Some students prefer to make use of all available material before carefully deciding on a major. One such student is Brittany Bogle. She began exploring her main interests, science and math, by reading university brochures, narrowing her choice down to two engineering majors, then sitting through a couple classes of each. Now in her senior year, Bogle said she feels confident that her choice was a good one, even for the recession period. She expressed concerns that there are fewer companies that provide internships, but overall has seen engineering grow. “Our job is to reduce the spending of companies, which is exactly what they need right now,” Bogle said.
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