On Sunday my wife and I dropped off our youngest child for his Freshman year of college at a school about 100 miles away from us.  Those of you that have been through this procedure know what it is like.  He is not entering the death care profession and I am okay with that.  There are so many avenues for these students today — and if funeral service is not their liking — more power to them to move ahead with their passions.

It got me to thinking, however,  about what our profession is doing in the education realm.  I was a 19 year old who entered mortuary school as part of my education at the University of Minnesota — which has a Bachelor’s Degree program for such and couples it with the “traditional major college experience.”

Knowing how education is different today with such things as high school/college dual credits, taking college classes at the same time you are taking high school credits, on-line learning for college credits and the like I wondered how the mortuary schools across the United States have changed.

While I’m sure that there is a lot of different “types” of learning going on in post-secondary education for potential mortuary students, it looks like the choices for students is still varied and tailored to specific student needs.  I took a good look and review of the site of the American Board of Funeral Service Education and was impressed by the number and differences in the programs.  It appears that students have the ability to get what they need — an on-line education, an associates degree, or even a bachelors degree — dependent on where they choose to settle.  And – depending on your state’s license requirements — all types of degrees can work in some places.

Take a look at the web-site above and peruse the statistics that are there.  There are such things as test exam scores by school and subjects and such items as employment statistics.  It sure appears to me that we have many students and young professionals in the business, but in looking at the 3-year retention rates for employment in the industry we still have some work to do.  That fact has been talked about since I was in school.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]