New cutting-edge careers are often exciting, and they create a stronger job market.  However, the cutting edge always doesn’t cut it and there are some careers, while pretty new, that are already practical for graduating college students and promise further growth.  According to usnews.com and cnn.com these practical jobs come from four different trends; healthcare, digital media, globalization, and environmentalism. 

Although the healthcare system is overtaxed, it is being forced to take on more patients because of the many aging baby boomers, the arrival of immigrants, and the millions of Americans who are without insurance who would possibly be covered under a national healthcare system plan that would be passed by the upcoming president.  

Jobs should become more and more available in nearly all of the medical specialties, from nursing to coding, imaging to hospice care.  These healthcare careers are likely to be rewarding.  For example, health informatics specialists will develop expert systems to help doctors and nurses make evidence-based diagnoses and treatments.  On the protective side, people will move past hiring personal trainers and hire wellness coaches instead, as they realize that doing 100 pushups won’t help if they are smoking, drinking, and enduring more stress than they can handle.   

According to cnn.com, nursing major’s salaries are increasing significantly from last year.  Right from the start they can be making $52,129 a year and the can find job opportunities in hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, and other medical facilities.   In this day and age, more Americans are doing their shopping on the Net.  This coming year there are going to be more careers that involve the increasingly digitized world.  The American population gets more of its entertainment digitally.  Computer games are not just for teenage boys; people of all ages and both sexes spend time playing their favorite games.  Gradually more people get their information from online publications.  A low-key career that is key to the digital world is a “data minor.”  These people use statistics to predict or explain their customer’s behavior.   

Another hot career is the digitized world is a simulation developer.  Simulations are exciting and people are drawn to these often-dangerous experiences.  For example, virtual patients allow medical students to diagnose and treat them without risking a real patient’s life.  A new computer game, Spore, allows you to simulate creating a new planet, starting with the first microorganism.   Graduates with technical degrees, such as computer science majors, have seen their average offers rise 7.9 percent to $56,921 according to cnn.com.   

A great demand for business development specialists, helping U.S. companies create joint projects with Chinese firms, is also going to become a hot career in the coming years.  Also off-shoring managers are going to be needed to oversee those partnerships as well as the growing number of overseas jobs.  Equally, large numbers of people from impoverished countries are immigrating to the United States.  Jobs such as immigration specialists of all types, from marketing to education to criminal justice, will be needed.  Political science and government majors have the option of working in the state, local or federal governments and making $43,594 in salaries according to cnn.com.  

The growing alarm about global warming is making careers in this area hot, just like the rising temperature of the earth.  Among the more interesting green careers, thousands of engineers are working on projects like hydrogen-powered cars, more efficient solar cells, and coal pollution sequestration systems.  Those jobs however, require high-level training and skills and are often offshore jobs.   However, green-collar consulting is offshore resistant and often requires less demanding training.  It’s a great option for people who love novelty and don’t want to be stuck in the same office everyday.  Many environmental consultants are wandering people, solving new and different problems at constantly changing worksites---often mixing office work with time in the great outdoors. 

With all these hot new careers blooming around the country, Gavilan College is offering students classes and programs to prepare them for their future careers.  Gavilan offers degrees and courses for Allied Health, Computer Graphics and Design, Digital Media, Business, Health Science, and Biological Science and those degrees aren’t all that’s available.  Gavilan’s faculty and staff are also there to help students achieve their career goals by teaching them in the best way possible.