College Majors and Educational Training Programs: Oceans

Be deliberate with where you work, make the Beach or Ocean your office!

While our intentions are good when a child expresses a fondness for the ocean, it creates career blindness and the focus becomes studying marine biology to become a marine biologist.

The only schools on the radar to apply to become those with Marine Biology and this major often has a low acceptance rate because it becomes an impacted program. Worse this major has a high attrition rate when students discover their affinity for dolphins, sea, and surf doesn’t always equate to a love of learning about abiotic factors, thermohaline circulation, and upwellings. While Marine Biology can be an amazing major, the point of this post is to help introduce majors students may not have considered and could enjoy better or in addition to Marine Biology and to help them stay focused on their original interest, the ocean vs a singular career path. It even highlights majors that focus more on physics or chemistry if a student bends more towards one or the other opposed to biology.

For thalassophiles—those who feel a deep connection to the sea—there are plenty of academic and career paths beyond the traditional “marine biology” that can still place them close to the ocean. Here are other educational opportunities ranging from classes, certificates, and apprenticeships to AA, BA and Masters Programs.

You can never become what you don’t know exists and focusing on a love for the Ocean helps create a deliberate plan to keep it at the forefront of your educational and career pursuits.

Are you a teacher, counselor, or workforce professional? Want a free slide show to download and use to increase career exposure with your students? You can download to your digital photo frame and display around campus, add to computer screensavers, show in the classroom, add slides to your career presentations, etc.? You can also print slides to hang at career fairs, in the library, in the career center, or for classroom assignments and decor.

Here is a free link to Ocean via Canva.