Love Animals? Consider a Career as a Vet Tech!

By Jim Hurrell on Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Finding a career field that you love doesn’t have to be painful, especially for students who prepare themselves to enter in-demand fields, like veterinary technology.

Veterinary practices across the country are currently in need of more than 140,000 college-trained veterinary technicians to work as “physician assistants” for animals. In Arkansas, there are less than 100 of these credentialed veterinary technicians, so the state is in need of newly trained technicians to meet the needs of a field expected to grow 52 percent by 2020.

The need is there and so are the opportunities, so why aren’t more people pursuing veterinary technician degrees? Currently, there are more than 200 American Veterinary Technician Association accredited veterinary technician programs in the country, but only one in Arkansas.

Jim Hurrell is Director of the Veterinary Academy at Penn Foster. He will be speaking at the Arkansas Veterinary Technician Association winter meeting, which will be held from Feb. 8–Feb. 10 at the Embassy Suites in Hot Springs. At the conference, Jim will discuss the growing veterinary technician field. 

For more information on becoming a veterinary technician, please visit www.PennFosterCollege.edu/VetTech/.