Colleges now offering courses in flying unmanned drones
To keep up with the latest trends in surveillance and warfare technology, several colleges are already offering courses and training programs in how to fly unmanned drones.
Jeb Bailey, 28, who has taken every drone-related course at Northwestern Michigan College, said one of his fellow students at the Traverse City, Mich., school recently landed a job operating unmanned aerial vehicles for a private military contractor overseas. “He got like $200,000 per year,” Bailey said. “And he didn’t even finish his associate’s degree.”
Bailey describes himself as lifelong geek, so the drones’ mix of airborne acrobatics and cutting-edge technology was definitely a draw, he said. But Bailey, who has spent $80,000 for classes and manned flight training, said the high pay that drone pilots can earn contracting in war zones made him take notice.
“Aviation, it’s not a cheap sport,” Bailey said. “The idea of going to Afghanistan for a single year and paying off all my loans — that’s very attractive. In an airlines career path, you really don’t expect to make a whole lot until you’ve been in the industry 20 years.”
By contrast, starting salaries for drone pilots range from $50,000 to $120,000 per year, said Tom Kenville, who founded a trade group called Unmanned Applications Institute International. Analysts who process images captured by the vehicles can earn $100,000 per year starting out.
Salaries are rising with demand. Governments, contractors and private companies need pilots as they launch more unmanned vehicles into the air than ever before. The market research firm the Teal Group reported last year that annual worldwide spending on unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, and related research is projected to double by 2020 — to more than $10 billion.
In addition, the pilotless aircraft industry will create more than 23,000 U.S. jobs over the next 15 years, according to a 2010 study by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group for robotic and remotely operated machines of all types.
“It’s a really hot field and it’s taking off quickly,” said Melanie Hinton, a spokeswoman for the organization. More than 150 colleges and universities nationwide have programs dedicated to robotics and unmanned systems, she said.
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