Here’s a new field of study that should help lots of college students find high paying jobs.

Katie Jones of The College Fix reports.

Public University To Launch Transgender Studies Program

Next fall, students at the University of Arizona will be able to pursue an education in transgender studies in an initiative billed as the first of its kind.

Administrators recently posted four job openings on behalf of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences seeking to hire professors who will teach exclusively on transgender studies in what one professor called an “unprecedented initiative.”

“Gender systems are changing rapidly worldwide, and this is a serious social phenomenon that merits serious scholarly attention; that’s why we are establishing this initiative,” Susan Stryker, associate professor of gender and women’s studies and director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, said in an email to The College Fix.

The development comes at a time when news stories about transgender people – biological men who want to be women and biological women who want to be men – have made waves across the country.

In the last month alone, such headlines have included: a Christian university that dismissed a longtime professor after she decided she wanted to live as a man; a high school that elected a transgender student homecoming queen; and a new California law that allows transgender students to use whichever bathroom and locker room they want, regardless of their biological gender.

“Gender is a complex socio-cultural system, like language or kinship, and we can observe it changing over time and place,” Stryker stated. “We would hope that the transgender studies initiative we are developing would be very broad and would encompass many viewpoints and academic specializations.”

University officials aim to fill at least two of the positions before the start of the fall 2014 semester, and the other two by fall 2015.

The University of Arizona is the first to develop a minor in transgender studies.

“The University of Arizona saw an opportunity to be a world leader in this emerging area of research,” Stryker said. “It saw an opportunity to attract grant money and tuition dollars, to address an emerging social issue, and it took a decisive step toward those goals. I think the decision was motivated primarily by a spirit of entrepreneurialism.”