workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska

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Related blogs:
college workforce supply/demand - methodology
Job outlook for college graduates - the supply and demand in Nebraska (Data Release)
Updated on June 8, 2015: An improved methodology applied to 2013 IPEDS college graduates using Nebraska's 2012-2022 long term occupation projection.

For governing, the leader should look past the status quo and project the better future for the community. For education, the survival is a necessary and minimum. Seeking to reaching the learning limits of a human being is the goal.

More than 25 years ago, Ronald Reagan's 'A Nation at Risk' called for education reform. Since then, various projects aimed to improve American's education debuted.

Most recently, Barack Obama called for the increase of postsecondary education population. Due part to the economic downturn, the enrollment in postsecondary education do increase. The questions, however, is what kind of education these students are pursuing? In what field? Will the degrees they are getting fit the needs of the community? And, therefore, be able to find a job opening.

Through the years, researchers and workforce developers have been working hard in trying to answer this question. Education levels needed for jobs have been studied and tabulated. Fields of knowledge needed for particular jobs are also studied. Crosswalks between the academic program and the standard occupation code (SOC) have been built. However, even with all these advances the analysis of the data still post challenges.

As we can all imaging, the crosswalks between academic programs (classified by CIP code) and occupations is not a direct one to one mapping. A single academic programs may provides knowledge for several occupations. On the other hand, a single occupation classification may accepts graduates from various academic programs. And it is exactly this madness that limited the mass analysis of the workforce supply and demand data since manually sorting through each academic program or occupation is most likely needed. For example, a Texas supply and demand study only focused on the big categories. Also, the 'The Occupational Supply Demand System' website only provides tools for navigating between academic programs and occupations.

The data and methodology used to present the finding here represents a first attempt to answer this analysis need. The methodology used can be refined at a much higher processing cost but will be attempted later by the author. For now, our first order approach do provide some useful information for researchers and policy makers. This implies that now the governor, the education authorities and the policy maker can really put their thoughts in DESIGNing the future of Nebraska. Contrasting to the past, the decision of approving new academic program can now based on both the market's supply and demand and the students' interest.

Before presenting the findings, the author like to provide a word of caution. Fulfill the job market is not the ultimate goal for governing or education. For governing, the leader should look past the status quo and project the better future for the community. For education, the survival is a necessary and minimum. Seek to reaching the learning limits of a human being is the goal. The author would also like readers to keep perspectives on earnings and personal interest. None of the data presented is intended to emphasis the higher earning of a job.

The top 10 of our oversupplied academic programs are:

1. 520201 Business Administration and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 539 graduates would not find a degree appropriate job.
2. 520101 Business/Commerce, General (Bachelor training) - at least 526 graduates ...
3. 130301 Curriculum and Instruction (Master training) - at least 486 graduates ...
4. 260101 Biology/Biological Sciences, General (Bachelor training) - at least 470 ...
5. 511613 Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurse(LPN, LVN, Cert, Dipl, AAS) (less than 2 year certificates) - at least 228 ...
6. 131202 Elementary Education and Teaching (Bachelor training) - at least 217 ...
7. 220101 Law (LL.B., J.D.) (First Professional) - at least 195 ...
8. 521401 Marketing/Marketing Management, General (Bachelor training) - at least 177 ...
9. 511201 Medicine (MD) (First Professional) - at least 150 ...
10. 512001 Pharmacy (PharmD, BS/BPharm [Canada]) (First Professional) - at least 148 ...

The top 10 of our under-supplied academic programs are:

1. 490205 Truck/Bus/Commercial Vehicle Operation (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 578 academic-training-appropriate job openings remain to be filled.
2. 511601 Nursing - Registered Nurse Training (RN, ASN, BSN, MSN) (Associate training) - at least 330 ...
3. 139999 Education, Other (Bachelor training) - at least 172 ...
4. 460302 Electrician (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 133 ...
5. 521001 Human Resources Management/Personnel Administration, General (Bachelor training) - at least 109 ...
6. 110301 Data Processing and Data Processing Technology/Technician (Associate training) - at least 105 ...
7. 310501 Health and Physical Education, General (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 96 ...
8. 011102 Agronomy and Crop Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
9. 011106 Range Science and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
10. 011105 Plant Protection and Integrated Pest Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
11. 011103 Horticultural Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...

A very interesting observation of these two top 10 list is that the Registered Nurse is in shortage supply while the Practical/Vocational Nurse is oversupplied - I think you can imaging how this can happen with the mis-guided marketing campaign. I would like to see how much money have been wasted in producing these over supplied graduates.

*Detailed data table will be published in the up-coming articles. For interacting with the author, please go to here.