Originally posted by Stealth Moose
@dadudeman, I'm not disagreeing with your statements really, but about the idea of teachers and nurses being in demand, that's rather misleading. With regards to the former, Science and Math teachers are in demand, but some other teachers are not except in areas with high turnover or far-flung outposts. It's a lot of work for median pay really. And even still, some of the larger urban areas are suffering. There was an article in the paper just this past month about Philadelphia area schools who have 30+ students to a teacher because of layoffs that occurred during the economic crapfest of '08, and they still haven't recovered from the impact.Regarding the latter, nursing is ridiculously competitive, to the point where most institutions have as little as ~60 seats per semester four or five times that many eligible applicants. Competition aside, many major hospitals are having hiring freezes due to financial issues with expansion, hiring new medical billing staff for the health care changes, and general bureaucratic sluggishness. While the industry is growing, it's not growing everywhere at the same rate, and there are still a lot of obstacles to overcome such as 1 year minimum experience requirements (which is fun when every place in the city requires the same thing). Areas near me like Charleston, SC, are flooded with nursing students looking for jobs, and CNAs are likewise much in demand, but not easily hired.
Nurses are still in demand mad crazy: still massive shortages many places in the US. So much so that they are being heavily recruited even before they finish nursing school (check the link I posted).
"...graduates with advanced nursing degrees are almost guaranteed jobs, experts say.
'We are graduating 240 undergraduates, baccalaureate-prepared nurses and around 50 to 75 with advanced practice degrees this year, and they all have jobs,' says Jeannette Andrews, dean of the College of Nursing at the University of South Carolina."
It may be competitive to get into nursing school but once you're in, you'll most likely make it (assuming you're a decent student).
As far as teachers, some places are doing worse and some are doing better. If it were a case of extremely asymmetric representation, meaning, most places, the student-teacher ratio kept increasing (you want that to decrease) but a small handful of schools were changing the ratio so drastically as to influence the average, significantly, then we would have a problem with the average. That's just not the case. Check out this link:
https://www.google.com/search?q=teachers+are+in+demand+in+the+us&rlz=1C1CHMO_enUS471US471&oq=teachers+are+in+demand+in+the+us&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.4667j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
Remember, the point I was refuting is that teachers can't find jobs to teach and that's just not the case: they are in high demand almost all over the US.
I do not disagree that there are still "teacher staffing" issues. < --- the word I used is plural because there are a shit ton of teacher staffing issues that range from competency to pay.
Edit - Also, if you have two fridges, I deem you very privileged (assuming you didn't go into debt for the fridges). Having two would be nice. My grandparents have two fridges and two freezers: they are privileged.