Kentucky is facing a severe shortage of home economics teachers.
Sandra Miller, director of the Center for Home Economics Education at UK, said there will be more than two times as many job openings as job seekers in home economics education in the state by the year 2000 if current trends continue.
UK's College of Human Environmental Sciences is helping the demand by recruiting students into a combined master's degree/teaching certification program. The program, which began in 1993, prepares people with undergraduate degrees in other disciplines to teach home economics.
Miller traces today's shortage of home economics teachers to the late 1970s, when the feminist movement encouraged women to enter careers previously dominated by males, such as law and engineering.
At the same time, women began to stay in the work force after having children, thus creating a stagnant job market in the traditionally female fields.
Miller said these events caused enrollment in home economics education programs to decline, creating the current shortage.
"Today, a third of Kentucky's home economics teachers are near retirement and schools are challenged to find replacements," Miller said.
A study published earlier this year by the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences listed Kentucky as one of 13 states with a particularly acute shortage of home economics teachers. The study also said that 77 percent of home economics teaching vacancies across the country will go unfilled through the year 2000.
The job market is anything but stagnant, yet it is difficult to get that communicated.
The study projected that Kentucky would need 270 new home economics educators through 2000 to replace retirees, but noted that only 99 undergraduates across the state were enrolled in home economics education programs.
Miller said she received calls regularly from concerned middle school and high school principals and teachers who understand if they cannot find qualified people to teach home economics, their programs will be in danger.
Currently, UK has 21 students in its home economics teacher education programs.
"Three will graduate in December, and we expect seven new students in the spring," Miller said. "I feel good about that."
To produce more teachers, home economics education programs at colleges and universities must develop more effective recruitment strategies, Miller said. She also added that discussion about the shortage will definitely be on the agenda this month when the American Vocational Association meets in Denver.
"If home economics education in middle and high schools in middle and high schools is allowed to die out, society will not be well served," Miller said.