Posted by Will Joe, Your absolutely right about new grads taking any job they can find and then getting burned out. Most ATC's have to work very long hours, 55-60 hours a week, and get paid very low wages. Employers know that when someone leaves there will be 50 ATC's waiting in line for the job. Many ATC's who would like to leave for better pay and work schedules but won't because they know it's pretty much the same everywhere. A couple of years ago the school I worked at advertised for an assistant athletic trainer. The job paid 25k with no benefits. We had 60 plus applications within 7-10 days. At least 90% of the applicants had their masters, many from very good division I schools with accredited athletic training programs. We could have lowered the salary to 15k and still had a dozen ATC's waiting in line for it. Why the NATA is allowing so many schools to gain accreditation is beyond me. Flooding any profession with workers will only diminish the salary and respect for those employees. The employer is totally in charge. The concept of supply and demand is very real. Another problem the profession faces is too much athletic training work is being done by temporary non-career employees. I live in Florida and watch the Florida job market pretty close on the NATA job site. There are usual 10-15 jobs listed at any given time. But, when you look at those positions, 75% of them are usually some type of GA postion, internship, or part time. On average maybe 3-4 postions are career type jobs. There are 3-4 times that many ATC education programs in Florida. When the number of certification programs out number the number of jobs, there is a serious problem. Most ATC's love their jobs and are dedicated to their professions, but at some point things have to change. The NATA is doing very little to manage this profession. Just my 2 cents.........
on 3/13/2004, 8:53 am, in reply to "Re: Internship vs. Curriculum Route Certification"
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