But a new study is pointing to some surprisingly hot career trends. 

A study from the University of California San Diego Extension lists these 12 careers as the hottest for today’s college graduates:

1)     Casual Game Development: About 200 million people play casual games online every month. It’s one of the fastest growing areas of the video game industry.

2)     Clinical trials design and management for oncology: Specially, pharmaceutical drug and medical device development.

3)     Data Mining: For businesses in every industry, it’s all about information – who’s using which services and products. Analyzing this data, gives businesses a compass for their own offerings.

4)     Computer Software Engineering: This is expected to be one of the fastest growing careers for the next seven years.

5)     Web Feature Writing: As newspapers are vanishing, online publications are growing.

6)     Geriatric Healthcare: As Baby Boomers get older, there’s a greater need for nursingand home healthcare.

7)     Graphic Design for Mobile Media: 10% of Americans use the Internet or video via a mobile device every week. Web site design is big.

8)     Occupational Health and Safety: Careers in this field are expected to increase 9% over the next few years.

9)     Specialized Spanish/English Translation: Law, medicine and business are looking for people bilingual in Spanish and English.

10)  Sustainable Business Practices and the Greening of all Jobs: This is about meeting compliance and regulation changes as well as growth opportunities in going green.

11)  Teaching Adult Learners: With the economy down, adult education is up. Private education was one of only two industries that’s seen job growth in 2009.

12)  Teaching English as a Foreign Language: There’s an availability of teaching jobs abroad as well as at home for those who can teach English as a second language and English as a foreign language.

Are these career trends affecting academics at your school? Let us know in the comments section below.