Texas A&M Sea Aggies Cruise To Good Jobs

Employers seeking graduates at Texas A&M University at Galveston have a set routine: they come, they interview, they hire.

Times have rarely been better for job seekers at the school, as the maritime industry is one of the hottest job markets around. Often, the dilemma facing graduates is not getting a job offer; it’s deciding which job offer to accept.

“We have several fields where the graduates can take their pick of the companies out to hire them,” says Ken Bailey, director of career planning and placement at TAMUG.

“Especially in maritime systems engineering, the job offers are numerous. Those jobs often involve anything to do with coastal structures or oil platforms, and very often the starting salary is $60,000 and up. Those students with a maritime engineering degree almost always have multiple job offers.”

Bailey said it is not uncommon for the number of interested employers to outnumber the job seekers.

“We recently graduated 11 students in maritime engineering and we had from 15 to 18 companies here wanting to hire every one of them,” he says.

Other hot areas include maritime administration, marine science and marine transportation.

“The big shipping companies that use cargo ships are always looking to hire,” Bailey adds.

“Maritime administration is pretty much a business administration degree that is geared toward the maritime industry, and those companies continue to hire every year.”

A recent report shows that the cruise line industry is having one of its best years ever, and cruise companies remain active in their hiring of qualified graduates.

Bailey believes the job prospects for graduates will remain high.

“All indicators I have seen show that job prospects for anything maritime-related will be very good for several years to come,” he notes.

“Oil, of course, drives a lot of job openings. Oil prices remain high and are expected to remain pretty much at current levels for the next 3 to 5 years, and that means the jobs will most likely be there, too.”

Bailey says that even the job market for fields such as marine biology or marine science – areas that don’t normally have as many employers as some others – remain good.

“More and more companies and government agencies are geared toward environmental issues, and they are looking to hire our marine science graduates,” he notes.

“In years past, some of those students would usually go ahead and enroll in graduate school because there weren’t that many jobs out there. That’s not really the case any more.”