<p>While more ambitious kids are off chasing big dreams, stylish kids are trying to break into the latest faddish major, status-obsessed kids are feverishly thinking about how horrible it would be to hold one of the world's <em>grunt</em> jobs (mindlessly not realizing that that's 99% of jobs and odds are they're going to end up on one)...
...you are learning to do something practical, whose value is unquestionable. Nursing doesn't sound attractive to most people. As a major, it has that magical combination of glamorless and hard that drives most people away. Not you! Your reward will be not just jobs but by 2030, more bargaining leverage than you can shake a stick at (if you unionize, you'll get whatever you want because there's literally no one left for the healthcare enterprise owners to scab you with).</p>
<p>Yes, it will be hard to send nursing jobs to China or Vietnam.</p>
<p>When Temple University Hospital had a nurses strike, they did bus in scab nurses. Many were immigrants.</p>
<p>They won’t be able to in large enough numbers for long, is what I’m saying. As other countries gentrify, they will need to keep their own nurses at home.</p>
<p>I’m sure all of the future teachers, doctors, lawyers, policemen, firemen, mailmen, trash collectors, and public transit employees appreciate your keen insight.</p>
<p>Lawyers certainly do: their glamorous job is oversupplied by nearly 2 to 1. Medicine is hard, but not quite glamorless, but it’s so hard that they have little to worry about (IF they make it all the way through school and residency). Mailmen are being phased out entirely. Trash collectors were once the quintessential replaceable unskilled laborer, but as the number of people even willing to consider it drops and drops through the generations, they’re finding power in their unions.</p>
<p>Many people become pre-med, and don’t make the cut for med school. Many of those students also then find they can’t make it into physician’s assistant grad programs. Many of those people would have been better off if they had studied nursing or another health care field where they can be employable after 4 years, with minimal debt.</p>