Nursing Majors at UCONN

 

What makes nursing majors at UConn so “lucky” after graduation compared to students earning degrees in other majors?

Gab­by Pakech, a junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut from Durham, Con­necti­cut, isn’t as con­cerned about land­ing a job after grad­u­a­tion as oth­er stu­dents may be. As a nurs­ing major, she’s con­fi­dent she will be work­ing as a reg­is­tered nurse straight out of college.

Sim­i­lar to Gab­by, 64 per­cent of col­lege bound stu­dents in Con­necti­cut choose to attend school in-state, how­ev­er, the ques­tion is what cities are attract­ing them after four addi­tion­al years in their home state? Sand­wiched in between two big cities, many Con­necti­cut grads find them­selves relo­cat­ing to New York City and Boston, opposed to cities here in Con­necti­cut. Pakech explained that stu­dents do not asso­ciate Con­necti­cut cities with hav­ing the same oppor­tu­ni­ties that cities such as New York City and Boston have to offer.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished by The Hart­ford Courant in June of this past year, of the “8,000 stu­dents who grad­u­ate from UConn year­ly, about 57 per­cent stay in state, includ­ing 18 per­cent of the stu­dents who came here from oth­er states to attend UConn, accord­ing to a 2014 report by UConn.” Lucky for Gab­by and her fel­low Nurs­ing stu­dents, the aver­age Reg­is­tered Nurs­ing salaries for job post­ings in Con­necti­cut are 15 per­cent high­er than aver­age Reg­is­tered Nurs­ing salaries for job post­ings nation­wide, and the aver­age salary ranks 4th among states in the coun­try. Accord­ing to Pakech, hos­pi­tals in Con­necti­cut offer stu­dents the oppor­tu­ni­ty to shad­ow doc­tors and nurs­es, expos­ing them to the health­care field in our state to entice the stu­dents to poten­tial­ly work for those hos­pi­tals right here in Con­necti­cut after the com­ple­tion of school.

Accord­ing to The Hart­ford Courant Arti­cle, in 2014, more than 17,000, or 7 per­cent, of young adults in the 20-to-24 age group moved out of Con­necti­cut, which ranks Con­necti­cut 12th-worst among the con­tigu­ous 48 states. But for every stu­dent, they will have their pros and cons about stay­ing in state.

Regard­less whether UConn stu­dents stay in Con­necti­cut after grad­u­a­tion or not, they are “Stu­dents today, Huskies forever.”