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Graduation is months away, but po­tential employers already are circling Justin Ayers, hungry for a new hire.

Re­ces­sion? What re­ces­sion? There are plenty of jobs in Mid­dle Tennessee -- if, like Ayers, you have the right train­ing and degree.

"Ev­er since I was a child, I was always inter­ested in technology," said Ayers, who is earning a certification in com­put­er information technology at the Tennessee Technology Center in Nashville.

The jobs are out there. Quali­fied can­didates with the nec­essary degrees and train­ing might not be.

That's where the state's newest high­er ed­ucation sur­vey comes in. The Tennessee High­er Ed­ucation Commis­sion and the Uni­versity of Tennessee Center for Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ic Research stud­ied the degrees be­ing produced at Tennessee's public and private col­leges and uni­versities and com­pared them to the degrees the state's employers will need in the com­ing years.

The study found wide gaps in some cases be­tween the supply of graduates avail­able and the job mar­ket de­mand.

Un­less some­thing changes, Tennessee will have twice as many job openings for com­put­er programmers and soft­ware devel­op­ers as it will have new graduates with those degrees through 2018. Right now, there are 1,161 high-tech job openings in Mid­dle Tennessee, a sep­a­rate report re­leased by the Nashville Technology Council shows.

The high­er ed­ucation study es­ti­mates there will be an av­erage of 200 job openings in construction trades a year, and only 88 students earning the certificates nec­essary to work in the field. Ev­ery year for the next sev­en years, an av­erage of 37 students will earn a mar­keting degree and go into a job mar­ket with an av­erage of 397 job openings.

On the oth­er hand, Tennessee's public and private in­stitutions will churn out 13 journalism graduates for ev­ery job avail­able, twice as many mental health counselors as the job mar­ket needs and sev­en graduates with a degree in perform­ing arts for ev­ery one job avail­able through 2018 -- if the job mar­ket doesn't change.

Changes may result

But things are likely to change in Tennessee high­er ed­ucation. THEC, the state's high­er ed­ucation governing body, wants in­stitutions to use the study as a blueprint that could dictate which majors it offers and which de­part­ments get more funding in the com­ing years. Degree paths that steer students to­ward jobs are likely to take precedence over those that do not -- al­though there is no chance that uni­versities will entirely elim­inate cours­es in phi­los­ophy, lit­era­ture or art, no mat­ter how few people make a ca­reer as philoso­phers, writ­ers or artists.

"Is this go­ing to dictate new programs at in­stitutions? Not dictate, but perhaps guide," said Richard Rhoda, exec­utive di­rector of the Tennessee High­er Ed­ucation Commis­sion. "It's not all about jobs, but jobs are a big part of it."

The study isn't per­fect. By ne­cessity, it lumped some in-de­mand pro­fes­sions -- such as nurs­ing and teach­ing -- in with lower-de­mand pro­fes­sions -- such as coach­ing and some types of nurs­es aides. That meant that both nurs­ing and teach­ing ended up on the list of least-in-de­mand degrees, al­though some types of nurs­es are in high de­mand.

Like­wise, many of the state's touted STEM degrees -- sci­ence, technology, en­g­i­neering, math­emat­ics -- also popped up on the bottom of the desir­able degree lists. That's mainly because Tennessee doesn't have that many employers who need those skills, said Matthew Murray, as­sociate di­rector of the Uni­versity of Tennessee's Center for Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ic Research.

But that doesn't mean the state is go­ing to cut back on STEM ed­ucation. Tennessee wants those graduates -- even if they have to leave the state to actually find jobs right now.

Busi­nesses no­tice

Murray, who sits on the indus­trial devel­op­ment board for Blount County, has seen the way prospective busi­nesses size up a community before they consid­er moving into the state. They look at things such as the number of en­g­i­neers per capita in a community. They look at the number of students earning en­g­i­neering degrees, trying to fig­ure out whether Tennessee's workforce is tech-savvy enough to supply their needs.

"As an aca­dem­ic, I would not want to see high­er ed­ucation just become an enlarged tech school," Murray said. "But we need to produce the graduates employers want. There will be ample (job) opportunity for students who want to study lib­eral arts."

In fact plenty of those lib­eral arts majors might end up with the state's surplus high-tech jobs.

"I'm a mar­keting major my­self," said J. Tod Fetherling, pres­ident of the Nashville Technology Council. "I don't re­ally know that it's about the degree. It's about your expe­ri­ence and whether you have the right skills ...Can you lead a project? Can you learn a programming language?"

For job hunters with the right degree, or the right skill set, technology jobs in Nashville have an av­erage starting salary of $44,000 for students straight out of col­lege, Fetherling said. For more expe­ri­enced workers, the av­erage salary is $66,000.

But col­lege tuition gets more costly ev­ery year, and public in­stitutions that receive millions of dollars in taxpayer support are under increas­ing pressure to demonstrate students and taxpayers are getting their mon­ey's worth.

"The system of high­er ed­ucation re­ally needs to be held account­able to the public and to the needs of the students," Murray said.

The report tracked the fastest-growing degree programs in the state. Healthcare, busi­ness ed­ucation and lib­eral arts programs led the list. By 2018, research­ers expect the state to dou­ble its sci­ence, technology, en­g­i­neering and math degree-hold­ers.

To view the entire report, vis­it: www.state.tn.us/thec/Divi­sions/Aca­dem­icAffairs/aca­dem­ic_programs/THEC%20supply%20and%20de­mand%20­Final.pdf.