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COLUMBIA — South Carolina colleges aren’t graduating nearly enough teachers or nurses to keep up with demand in those fields, and about half of engineering students are leaving the state after graduation, according to a Daily Gazette analysis of data from the state Commission on Higher Education.
That gap between available jobs in the state and graduates seeking to fill them is what landed those careers and more on a long list of what the state deems “priority occupations” for its workforce development efforts.
For example, public and private colleges graduated 1,500 teachers in 2023, 22% fewer than a decade earlier, higher education data show.
Meanwhile, shortages across the state’s more than 50,000 teaching jobs continue to rise.
Public K-12 schools in the state started last school year with 1,600 classroom vacancies, another record high, according to the state Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, & Advancement.
When it comes to registered nurses, the number of graduates has remained mostly stagnant around 2,700 new nurses annually over the past decade. But the state’s growing and aging population means more nurses are needed, and there’s already not enough.
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis shows 44,000 registered nurses working in South Carolina this year, enough to meet 77% of demand. By 2033, the center anticipates the number of working nurses will increase but the state will still only be meeting roughly the same percentage of calculated demand.
That puts South Carolina in line for the seventh-worst nursing shortage in the country.
And while engineering saw a 57% increase in graduates in 2023 compared to a decade earlier, only 40-50% of them typically stay in South Carolina. Plus, they keep leaving for years later. By five years out of school, just 30-40% are still working in the state, according to a 2023 study of wage data by the state Department of Employment and Workforce.
“That’s why talent retention is playing such a central role with policy makers, particularly in (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields,” said Joey Von Nessen, an economist with the University of South Carolina.
In addition, the future need for engineers is expected to grow with the expanding electric vehicle industry in the state, according to Bryan Grady, the state employment agency’s assistant director of labor market information, and Charles Appleby, senior advisor to the Coordinating Council of Workforce Development.
More than 1,600 engineers graduated from South Carolina schools in 2023. Yet the state averaged 950 engineering job openings posted online each month for the past year, mostly looking for industrial and electrical engineers, according to data from the state Department of Employment and Workforce.
Legislators have tapped the agency to spearhead South Carolina’s workforce strategy, ensuring graduates coming out of the state’s schools can step into careers.
“All jobs have value. But some jobs are more in demand now than ever before,” William Floyd, the head of South Carolina’s employment agency, told reporters at a state workforce convention last month.
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As an example of what the state hopes to encourage more regularly, Floyd told the story of a Laurens high school graduate who had dual-enrolled in technical college courses and an apprenticeship program to land a mechatronics job at transmission-maker ZF Industries.
“He walked from the high school into one of the highest paying jobs in manufacturing,” Floyd said.
On average, a mechatronics job pays a $64,000 salary in South Carolina.
The engineering field requires knowledge of mechanical, electrical and computer systems but does not require a bachelor’s degree. It is among jobs available for engineering technicians with a certificate or associate’s degree.
Nearly 650 engineering technicians came out of the state’s technical college system in 2023, the most recent data available. The state still averaged 250 open job postings a month for these types of technicians over the past year.
Business degrees
To make the list of priority occupations, Grady and Appleby said an interagency workforce group took into account both current and future projected demand in those fields.
For those jobs requiring a college degree or certificate, they flagged careers where the number of graduates trailed demand by 100 students or more, serving as a signal to colleges that they may want to consider expanding or adding those programs to their list of offerings.
Within the field of business, that included careers such as management analysts, businesses operations specialists, HR professionals, accountants and financial analysts and advisors.
Business degrees topped the most popular area of study at 75% of the state’s four-year colleges and was in the top three at the rest of South Carolina’s 53 public and private institutions that offer programs.
Within the business field, degrees classified as business administration and management were the most common, with 2,400 bachelor’s degrees awarded. Universities also gave out just shy of 1,000 bachelor’s degrees each to students seeking careers as financiers or marketing professionals. And schools graduated about 470 accountants.
A survey of Clemson business school graduates showed that 16% of them were pursuing a master’s degree within six months of earning a bachelor’s. The remainder said they went directly into the workforce, said Clemson University’s executive director of the Center for Career and Professional Development.
Burton highlighted one way Clemson is seeking to help its graduates in all career fields get to work sooner.
Money included in the last two state budgets have helped fund what Clemson calls “experiential learning.”
Every other semester, participating students go to work full time for a company to get hands-on experience in between their classwork. The school has been able to enroll 1,200 to 1,400 students in the program each year for the past two school years, Burton said.
The money helps cover expenses like housing, professional clothing, transportation and utilities, supplementing pay as students wait to receive their first pay checks. Burton said the program is particularly important for first-generation and low-income students that might not otherwise have the financial wherewithal to participate in an internship.
“It is such a cool thing that has the chance to make the difference for a lot of students,” Burton said.
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Technical schools
Tim Hardee, president of the SC Technical College System, said most of its graduates go straight to work in a high-demand job.
“We’re producing the workforce that’s needed in South Carolina,” Hardee said of the state’s 16 technical colleges.
About one-third of their graduates and certificate recipients are in health care, he said.
Graduates of the system accounted for 40% of the registered nurses coming out of college in 2023. In addition, the system awarded more than 200 certificates to emergency medical technicians and more than 300 certificates to licensed practical nurses.
South Carolina’s licensed practical nurse shortage is less severe than its shortage of registered nurses, with an estimated need for about 1,400 more currently needed to meet demand, according to the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.
The system also gave out more than 1,000 certificates in precision production, which includes careers such as welders, machinists and metal workers.
Technical school graduates also tend to stay in South Carolina, Hardee noted.
About 93% of technical college graduates are working in South Carolina and in the field they trained within a year of graduation, according to an analysis of state wage data.