The positions outlined are like the teaching jobs addressed in the previous chapter, keep you within the world of mathematics on a day- to-day basis. Teaching does that, too, of course, but teaching also demands a tolerance for the distractions of classroom management, lesson planning, committee work, and even lunchroom duty!
Not every lover of mathematics is called to teach. And many in the teaching profession would be the first to admit that those other issues such as discipline and ancillary duties mean teaching is a profession designed for those who can maintain the balance between all of these competing demands. In Path 2, we consider a series of jobs that are representative of career situations that see your math education as essential. Many career guides will treat the jobs in this chapter as the only positions available for math majors who want to use math daily in their work. This book and the other career options it presents are evidence to the contrary.
The authors know that math majors are people, too. You're as different as any other group of bright, talented individuals. You all want different things out of your lives and workdays. Just because you're talented at math doesn't necessarily mean you want to live, breathe, and dream math. Some of you do and others may simply want to use their gifts to earn a living. Regardless of your motives, the authors want to give you as much information as possible to help you make a positive start to your career.
So while the good advice about the four areas of employment covered in this chapter should be available in any career guide, we'll endeavor to put a different spin on these traditional occupations. To do that, we'll be frank and direct about the pluses and minuses of each job and we'll also attempt to give you an opportunity to learn about a broad array of employers and job sites where these occupations can be found.
In every case, however, in the positions described below and in others suggested later in this chapter, your math degree will be the critical hiring qualification. More to the point, your math expertise will be something you utilize every day. It will figure as a major influence on your career from your first interview and could easily be the aptitude you credit with your advancement and promotion in any of these fields. The job ad below for an entry-level statistician is a good example of the emphasis employers will place on your math expertise:
Our first piece of straight talk in this chapter has to do with your value to the employment market. The latest issue of Recruiting Trends from the Michigan State Collegiate Employment Research Institute cites the estimated average starting salary for new graduates in mathematics as $33,180, That's a full $10,000 over the average starting salary for your classmates in education, and it's higher than business majors, communications majors, advertising, accounting, and other so-called, "glamour" majors.
If the expression "Money talks!" has any meaning for career counselors, it's a sure sign that the graduates of that major are in demand. There are two principal reasons for this demand: one is supply, the other is needed skills. Look around your math department and look at some of the other departments on your campus. Our guess is there are far more business, education, and accounting majors than math majors. That's one reason you're so much in demand. There simply aren't enough graduates to meet demand, and when the supply is thin, the price goes up.
But the other reason is more complex and has a tremendous impact on your entry into the fields in this chapter and your entire career progress. And it's something that needs to be made very clear. Let's return to that quoted starting salary for your major and ask very pointedly, "Which of your fellow graduates is ready to sit right down at a desk or conference table or go out on a consulting call and do something the math major.
The point we're trying to stress here in this book and especially in this chapter is that of the many college majors offered, math is one of the few that actually delivers up graduates who have specific skills and knowledge that can be put to work immediately with minimal training and grooming. Math may be science, but it's also incredibly practical, and that makes it easier for math majors to answer that famous question, "What are you going to do with that?"
Let's take a fresh look at those four standard career options for math majors to see what they might offer you.
Actuary
If you haven't appreciated the role of the actuary in today's business community, you will soon. The assumption of your own insurance payments when you graduate from college (if you haven't already) may expose you to some issues that actuaries have played a role in shaping and responding to. Why do young women pay less for the same coverage on their automobiles than young men do? How can term life insurance be so inexpensive and still be a good thing? How can they sell such enormous life insurance policies so cheaply at airports? The answers to these and many other questions about probabilities have been answered by actuaries.
Actuaries make a crucial contribution to any insurance organization that is attempting to stay competitive with other similar organizations and yet maintain insurance rates that will allow the necessary cash reserves to pay claims that come against the organization. There are all kinds of actuaries, with most actuaries specializing in a particular area-life insurance, health insurance, property or liability insurance, for example. There is a very large and growing field of pension actuaries who manage the risk involved in retirement planning.
The reason actuarial jobs are often mentioned for math majors are that their work involves lots of math. But here's our next piece of frank advice. Math skill is critical; however, actuaries are problem solvers who need to put their talents to work in a number of different settings. So they need to be good listeners in order to understand the issues involved. They need to be well- read and keep up on current trends and issues in business, the social sciences, law, and economics. They have a professional interest in news stories such as the risks of second-hand smoke, the length of hospital stays for pregnancy, studies on teenage depression, or any of a number of social and cultural factors that can affect longevity and risk management in insurance. Here's an entry-level job-the employer is a major life insurance annuity business that stresses just those factors:
Math may be crucial, but, hopefully, you are getting the point that actuaries really need to be very well-rounded. While they may have high salaries, they earn them. To be successful, they must have a combination of depth of math knowledge and breadth of general knowledge in regard to business and social trends.
Like any member of a management team, actuaries have to be good communicators-but with a difference. The truly valuable actuary is the man or woman who can take the complicated situations and variables to project probabilities of sickness, death, injury, disability, unemployment, retirement, or property loss and explain these in terms non-actuaries can understand.
And for anyone who might have the nerve to suggest this is a dull profession, we'll offer a bit of advice. There is perhaps no one as involved in the changing face of our culture as actuaries. Let's take AIDS for example. Think of the changes that have taken place in the number of people affected by this disease and the almost daily changing projection for their health and longevity as new treatments and medications come on the market. Actuaries dealing with these kinds of health issues are probably as well informed as anyone in the world regarding the cutting edge of AIDS treatment.
This brings up another important point. Actuaries just don't sit around figuring out when we're going to die. Remember, what actuaries do is create and maintain valuable statistics that help organizations predict the future and offer the best service at the most competitive price. Many students we talk with protest they don't want a "desk job," Well, we don't really know about too many jobs for college graduates that could classify as "desk jobs." Actuarial jobs often involve a lot of time away from the office. The example below is entry-level jobs where the actuary trainee will help consult on welfare benefit teams for different companies:
In this way, you can easily see how this is a helping profession. Without actuaries, we would have no idea of what to charge policyholders for the coverage they want and, more importantly, might not be prepared to pay out claims for the very damages insurance was purchased to indemnify.
Below is a short checklist of qualities that you need to be a successful actuary. If most of these are true for you, probably you should seriously investigate the actuarial field:
- Do you truly enjoy problem-solving? Actuaries are the not the kind of people who just want a problem to "go away." They enjoy looking at problems from different perspectives and finding new and creative ways of solving them. Is that you?
- Are you a curious person who enjoys learning? Do you read the newspaper, watch the news, and generally stay abreast of how the world works? Is your level of general information fairly high? Actuaries are very much in the world.
- Are your math skills superior? This question will be true for every job in this chapter, but it's particularly apt for actuaries. Math is the very heart and soul of this job, and you need to ask yourself not only "Am I good?" but "Is math something I can see myself doing every day?" If the answer is yes, give some serious thought to actuarial work.
