Forest Technology/Technician

Types of Degrees Forest Technology/Technician Majors Are Getting

The following table lists how many forest technology/technician graduations there were for each degree level during the last year for which data was available.

Education Level	Number of Grads
Associate Degree	220
Basic Certificate	74
Undergraduate Certificate	10

What Forest Technology/Technician Majors Need to Know

In an O*NET survey, forest technology/technician majors were asked to rate what knowledge areas, skills, and abilities were important in their occupations. These answers were weighted on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most important.

Knowledge Areas for Forest Technology/Technician Majors

According to O*NET survey takers, a major in forest technology/technician should prepare you for careers in which you will need to be knowledgeable in the following areas:

• Public Safety and Security - Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Law and Government - Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
• Geography - Knowledge of principles and methods for describing the features of land, sea, and air masses, including their physical characteristics, locations, interrelationships, and distribution of plant, animal, and human life.

Skills for Forest Technology/Technician Majors

forest technology/technician majors are found most commonly in careers in which the following skills are important:

• Critical Thinking - Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
• Active Listening - Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
• Reading Comprehension - Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
• Speaking - Talking to others to convey information effectively.
• Time Management - Managing one’s own time and the time of others.

Abilities for Forest Technology/Technician Majors

A major in forest technology/technician will prepare for your careers in which the following abilities are important:

• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.

What Can You Do With a Forest Technology/Technician Major?

People with a forest technology/technician degree often go into the following careers:

Job Title	Job Growth Rate	Median Salary
Forest and Conservation Technicians	3.9%	$37,180

Amount of Education Required for Careers Related to Forest Technology/Technician

Some degrees associated with forest technology/technician may require an advanced degree, while others may not even require a bachelor’s in the field. Whatever the case may be, pursuing more education usually means that more career options will be available to you.

How much schooling do you really need to compete in today’s job market? People currently working in careers related to forest technology/technician have obtained the following education levels.

Education Level	Percentage of Workers
High School Diploma - or the equivalent (for example, GED)	36.2%
Post-Secondary Certificate - awarded for training completed after high school (for example, in agriculture or natural resources, computer services, personal or culinary services, engineering technologies, healthcare, construction trades, mechanic and repair technologies, or precision production)	4.7%
Some College Courses	10.7%
Associate’s Degree (or other 2-year degree)	35.8%
Bachelor’s Degree	14.4%
Post-Baccalaureate Certificate - awarded for completion of an organized program of study; designed for people who have completed a Baccalaureate degree but do not meet the requirements of academic degrees carrying the title of Master.	0.9%

Online Forest Technology/Technician Programs

The following table lists the number of programs by degree level, along with how many schools offered online courses in the field.

Degree Level	Colleges Offering Programs	Colleges Offering Online Classes
Certificate (Less Than 1 Year)	0	0
Certificate (1-2 years)	7	0
Certificate (2-4 Years)	0	0
Associate’s Degree	30	0
Bachelor’s Degree	0	0
Post-Baccalaureate	0	0
Master’s Degree	0	0
Post-Master’s	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Research)	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Professional Practice)	0	0
Doctor’s Degree (Other)	0	0

Majors Related to Forest Technology/Technician

You may also be interested in one of the following majors related to forest technology/technician.

Major	Number of Grads
Forestry, General	943
Forest Sciences & Biology	353
Forest Management/Forest Resources Management	299
Urban Forestry	111
Forestry, Other	103
Wood Science & Wood Products/Pulp & Paper Technology	87
Forest Resources Production & Management	43

References

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

• College Factual
• College Scorecard
• National Center for Education Statistics
• O*NET Online
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers First Quarter 2020
• Image Credit: By Bureau of Land Management under License

More about our data sources and methodologies.