Students Seek University Casino Class as Path to Employment
Across the United States, the economy is struggling, and workers are being laid off. The fears of recession are just another reason why William Eadington's classes at the University of Nevada-Reno are packed.
Eadington is the acclaimed director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. His economics class deals with many aspects of casino management and the gambling industry.
Students looking to find jobs after graduation line up for Eadington's lectures. Even though the Nevada casino market is presently soft, the global expansion of gambling offers a more secure future than many more conventional industries.
New land casinos continue to arise around the country and the world. Online casinos are a rapidly growing area of the market, and potentially will explode if and when looser Internet gambling laws are passed by the U.S. Congress.
Students from Eadington's classes travel to where the jobs are. Even if the Reno market is not expanding, there are many opportunities elsewhere.
Mikel Alvarez told the Las Vegas Sun , " I am looking at Macau, at the Bahamas, at Asia, Europe, South Africa and Las Vegas."
Eadington himself noted that the global market would continue to provide jobs in an overall economy in which new employment may be scarce. When asked if he was training students to draw business from Nevada, he said, "If you draw a parallel argument, it might be that universities should not be training students in engineering because they might move to California and build better factories and industries that would take jobs away from Nevada."
Internet gambling and tribal casinos may dilute Las Vegas revenues, but new jobs are being created while much of the world faces layoffs.
