Plans for a career in healthcare and in learning a trade were the top two most popular choices announced by graduating seniors this week. The Washington County News annually asks seniors from Washington County, Clifton-Clyde, Linn and Hanover about their post-secondary plans for the graduation pages, which are included in this week’s edition.
Of the 50 seniors who responded to the question, 16 planned to pursue a career in the healthcare field. This accounts for 32% of the graduating students.
Close behind healthcare were plans to pursue a trade at a vocational-technical school. Eleven seniors announced some sort of trade for their post-secondary plans, which accounted for 22% of the seniors.
As a percentage, both categories were up since a decade ago, but even in 2012, healthcare and trade school topped the rest of the categories. In 2012, 15 students (20.27%) announced plans to pursue a healthcare career, while 14 (18.91%) said they planned to learn a trade. There were 74 seniors who responded to the question in 2012.
The next two highest categories this year were education and agriculture, with five students each (10%) announcing plans for post-secondary study in those fields. Both categories were almost cut in half in real numbers since 2012, but had a slight decrease as a percent of total. In 2012, 10 students (13.51%) planned to go into education and nine (12.16%) planned to go into agriculture.
Despite living in a very technical age, the biggest overall drop in any category was seen in the field of science and engineering. In 2012, seven seniors (9.45%) said they planned to study science or engineering. In 2022, just two seniors (4%) planned to go into science or engineering. That is a drop by half in both real and percentage numbers.
The field of education went from double-digits to single digits among seniors in 2012 vs. 2022. In 2012, 10 students (13.51%) planned to go into education, while in 2022, just five (10%) announced plans to teach.
The only other noticeable change was three students announcing plans to go into social work in 2012, while no students planned to enter this field of study in 2022.