This article originally appeared on Today’s article is meant for the high school and college crowd, not for our usual audience of insurance professionals, so help us out by sharing it with your kids and all their friends!

7 Reasons to Major in Risk Management & Insurance (RMI):

1. 100% Employment: One of the big reasons to go to college is to make sure you’re employed in a good career after you graduate. The Insurance Industry is predicted to continue growing for decades to come, and the existing RMI programs only feed 15% of its needs each year, which means if you graduate with an RMI degree you’ll be a hot commodity! RMI programs had 100% employment, even through the 2008-2012 recession.

2. An RMI degree is basically a focused business degree: Majoring in business is a very popular choice already, but it’s a very general degree that usually takes a few years after graduation to really get you a solid career. RMI degrees are usually housed by a University’s school of business and have all the usual classes you’d get in a business degree (accounting, finance, marketing, statistics, management, etc) with the addition of a few RMI specific classes. What this means is that even if you change your mind and decide you don’t want to work in insurance (which you won’t), you can still easily get the same jobs that you would have been getting with a general business degree.

3. It is preparation for a career making a difference: If you love making a positive difference in the world, you’ll absolutely love the insurance industry! Even though we get a bad name in the press sometimes, the reality is that we are here to help people and businesses get back on their feet when unexpected things happen and being a part of that is very rewarding. Also, many carriers offer time off to volunteer and to study for insurance designations.

4. Insurance is an incredibly stable career: The economy will continue in its ebbs and flows, and that means every few years people will lose their jobs when the economy contracts. Some very popular careers like banking, consulting, and real estate are usually among the worst hit when the economy slows down. Insurance is incredibly stable because pretty much regardless of what happens in the overall economy, people and businesses continue to need insurance. This means career stability for you!

5. You’ll have more vacation than most of your friends: Most insurance carriers start you up with around 18 days of vacation a year. That means much more time off than most employees just starting careers in other industries.

6. Your senior year will be a LOT less stressful: RMI majors are expected to continue to be in high demand and feed only a portion of the Insurance Industry’s need for new talent which means that a lot of RMI majors have accepted great job offers by December of their senior year, a good 5 months before graduation and senior year is a LOT more fun, when you don’t have to worry about finding a job afterwards.

7. You’re pretty much mathematically guaranteed to be in demand: The current makeup of the insurance industry workforce is very mature, meaning that 1 million insurance professionals, 43% of the workforce, are expected to retire in the next 10 years. In addition to that, the industry is growing and is expected to create 400,000 jobs. RMI majors are already pretty much immune to unemployment; they will be in increasingly high demand right around the time you graduate!

You pretty much can’t go wrong by majoring in RMI! There are not a lot of RMI schools out there, so click on the map below to open an interactive map of RMI schools. Schools marked in red have a full RMI Major while schools marked in green have an RMI Minor or Concentration.

This article was co-written by Tony Canas, RVP of the West Coast at and Carly Burnham, RVP of the East Coast at

Tony Canas is a young insurance nerd and speaker. He has worked in claims, underwriting, finance and sales at three different insurance carriers, five cities and four states. Tony is currently seeking new full time opportunities, you can learn more about him here. Tony is also the Vice President of the Golden Gate CPCU Society and a member of the New Designee Committee at the National CPCU Society. Tony is passionate about insurance, technology, innovation and about engaging Millennials in the insurance industry.

Carly Burnham is the other half of the dynamic duo. She’s currently a Commercial Lines Underwriter at Erie Insurance. Carly is also a Director at the Presque Isle CPCU Society and a member of the New Designee Committee at the National CPCU Society. As a co-founder at she has the difficult task of being Tony’s co-author, keeping his constant flow of crazy ideas focused and helping fleshing them out into useful articles.

Tony and Carly are both CPCUs and have MBAs from Iowa State and they met while running Nationwide’s Gen Y Associate Resource Group.