Bangalore: With healthcare reforms set to be implemented soon, many management graduates are suddenly showing an interest in an industry that until now attracted only a handful of business school graduates, reports Business Week.

According to a survey by the MBA Career Services Council, healthcare is one of the few industries generating a surge in recruiting on campus, with 31 percent of the 78 schools surveyed reporting an increase in this arena. While many management graduates are pinning their job hopes on passage of a healthcare reform bill, for many the industry is a good bet regardless of the outcome.

"I feel like a kid in a candy shop," says Joy Somerset, a second-year MBA student at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, who will be joining the Eli Lilly (LLY) leadership development program in a marketing capacity when she graduates in 2010. "When I see health care, with so many unmet needs and challenges, even if I decide to change my role over time, there will still be so much I can do."

One of the reason healthcare industry attracts MBAs is the number of problems affecting this sector. Jeff Freude, a second-year student in the healthcare MBA program at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management believes that an aging population requiring more care, a financially challenged Medicare system, and ever-rising costs make healthcare one of the greatest challenges facing America. "We must bring consumption and cost to a sustainable level," he says.

He's not the only one who thinks so. At Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, 10 percent of the class of 2009 took jobs in healthcare industries, up from three percent in 2007.At the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the number entering healthcare fields increased from 4.3 percent in 2007 to eight percent in 2009.