|
Many new college graduates in the United States have trouble finding a job in the weak economy. But not graduates from the California Maritime Academy. The academy is the only school of its kind on the West Coast. Students attend classes on the university campus in northern California. But they also gain experience by going to sea in a floating classroom, the training ship Golden Bear. Two hundred eighty-eight cadets recently sailed on a two-month international training cruise. The ship travels south to the Panama Canal. Along the way, it visits countries in Central America and the Caribbean. Vasile Tudoran is a mechanical engineering student at the California Maritime Academy. He spends much of his time working deep in the heart of the ship. VASILE TUDORAN: “I knew I wanted to fix stuff since I was a little kid.” He says he is not worried about finding a job. VASILE TUDORAN: “When we get out of school you are basically guaranteed a job. There are not enough bodies for the positions that are needed to be filled.” Robert Jackson is one of his teachers. ROBERT JACKSON: “I would say the majority of our students have between one to two job offers before they graduate." He says most of those job offers are between sixty and one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year. In addition to working on ships, he says, engineering graduates from the academy also get jobs with power companies and satellite companies. | 
