Fitness Professional and Exercise Physiologist
SOC 39-9031
⚠⚠⚠ The entry-level education for this occupation is a HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA, and it has about 68,000 openings a year — one of the largest figures on this site. What the job requires is a CERTIFICATION, not a degree. ⚠⚠ So a Florida student in a kinesiology degree needs an answer to a direct question: what is the degree for? There are three good ones — clinical exercise physiology ($59,460, +13%), graduate school in a health profession, or management — and this page is organised around them.
⚠⚠⚠ Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Professions — where a large share of exercise science students are actually heading. ⚠ The decisive prerequisite is anatomy BY NUMBER: DPT programmes name BSC2085C/BSC2086C, and the APK version taught in kinesiology departments is not reliably accepted in its place.
Occupational Therapy Assistant
SOC 31-2011
Occupational therapy assistants deliver the treatment that gets people back to doing ordinary things — dressing, cooking, writing, working, playing — after injury, stroke, developmental delay or mental illness. ⚠ A median of $72,300 on a two-year degree, growing 21%. ⚠⚠⚠ And the finding worth acting on: it pays MORE and grows FASTER than the physical therapist assistant, and Florida trains a QUARTER as many. Four institutions, 57 graduates a year. This page covers the assistant, the aide and the therapist.
Rehabilitation and therapeutic professions — the professional tier this path sits beneath, covering occupational therapy's own master's and doctoral programmes as well as physical therapy's. ⚠ Included so the reader can see the level above, but note the assistant degree is not advanced standing toward it.