CHARLESTON, W.Va. — With college commencement ceremonies around West Virginia over, Higher Education Chancellor Paul Hill weighed in on the job prospects of thousands of graduates statewide.
Hill thought that the state’s future depends on recent graduates’ willingness to stay at home and create jobs.
“West Virginia’s future depends on these bright minds staying here to not only move into the workforce, but also to become entrepreneurial,” Hill said. “To develop business here that will employ other people and continue along that vein, because the future depends on it.”
He emphasized that the biggest demand for jobs comes in the “STEM” fields, which is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
“There’s a big demand in this area for those jobs,” he said. “For example we produce a lot of engineers at WVU. All of those people generally have jobs when they graduate.”
He foresaw the medical field in particular in high demand for jobs in West Virginia, and he expected it to stay that way for a long time.
“Bio-medical is growing very strongly. We have a lot of health care in West Virginia. Those fields are going to be very strong from now on and into the future,” Hill said.
Both WVU and WVSU held their commencement ceremonies this past weekend.