why is the services sector gaining popularity among management students?

Answer 1

Service industry will always be around, even in third world countries.

Answer 2

Because the government won't do anything about China's trade and currency policies with the US. China first put embargoes on raw metals and the steel companies here were gradually put into the reduced capacity, smaller steel mills, that we heard about for years. In the meantime China's mills (supported by China) got a larger share of the world market and support to sell at reduced prices,
Then China began buying metalworking tools and machines. They reverse engineered them and began producing their own, they don't respect copyright laws so no royalties to the machinery they copied. Then they branched into electronics, farm machinery and heavy equipment, appliances, etc.
Meantime they were granted most favored trade status here, meaning little or no tariffs, taxes, etc. The big corporations here saw that trade status, new cheap machinery, low wages, and currency that should be at one and a half to two times as valuble as American dollars that was instead controlled and tied to the dollar.
Given the greed of American corporations, it wasn't long before they began investing in China and not in the US. The corporations have / are taking manufacturing out of the entire N. & S. American continents, with it goes transportation, communication, and much of the infrastucture needed for hi-tech.
Service is about all thats left. We're losing skills jobs & engineering jobs for "Would you like fries with that?" jobs. Thanks to W, the rich get richer, and more jobs are created, you just have to work two of them to make what you used to make. Take a look at Wall St. Industrials at over 12,000.00 right now, and manufacturing jobs are at an all time low. It is not productivity either, productivity has risen some but not enough to account for 12,000.00 on Wall St. No, the future looks bright to the investors because they are eliminating overhead here in the corporations, and having goods manufactured cheap elsewhere.
Don't call them American Corporations, they're multi-nationals, because when our service based economy reaches saturation level they'll have to sell to other markets. Only the wealthy will be bringing money in, the rest of us only think there's a trade deficit, wait until then.
Sure go service based! Let's just get it over with! Nobody here seems to want to do the hard work anyway. Fewer engineers, more salesmen, just what we need to turn this around so that we don't become a third world country.