I’m 38 and completely broke.
I have a bachelor’s degree (humanities and social sciences-related) that doesn’t bring in more than $45,000 to $50,000 a year. With inflation and the cost of childcare, I really regret not getting a professional degree right after my bachelor’s degree when I was 22.
Let me get straight to the point: I am willing to put in an extra one to four years of schooling and use student loans to pay for it. I intend to work nights while in school so that my student-loan debt is almost zero by the time I graduate in my early 40s.
If I put in an extra 1 to 4 years of schooling, what job/degree is GUARANTEED — I repeat — GUARANTEED to payout six figures as soon as I walk across the stage with my degree?
Bachelor’s Degree
Here’s the headline: There are NO get-rich-quick careers.
Choose a job that is also a vocation — detergent and fabric softener in one handy bottle. Here’s another takeaway: Even if you enter a high-powered, high-paying career, you will have to work your way up and may not land in a six-figure job at the outset. There is no transaction — I give you a degree, you give me $100,000 a year — that fits your description.
Whether you decide on a professional degree, which is more practical, or a postgraduate degree, which focuses more on research and academia, it’s hard to answer in absolute terms. Not only does it depend on the profession, but the company and economic climate play a role too. An entry-level attorney with less than a year of experience can expect to earn an average salary, including bonuses, of $64,563, according to careers website Payscale.com. Other sources suggest that you will earn six figures if you become a corporate lawyer (another long, slow, arduous, and exhausting career).
A variety of data scientists, enterprise architects and software engineers — among other tech jobs — are frequently mentioned in analyses of six-figure jobs. But it’s folly to choose a career on salary alone, particularly as you could be doing this job eight or 10 hours a day. Unless you truly enjoy what you do and/or have an aptitude for it, your life will become gray and gruesome faster than you can say “Is it five o’clock, already?” IT often requires intense, data-heavy work — and many hours in front of a computer screen.
U.S. News & World Report also has a list of graduate jobs that are more likely to pay six figures upon entry — there are no guarantees in life, my friend — from software to space. They are extremely challenging professions and ultra-competitive. They include aerospace engineers, anesthesiologists, astronomers, biophysicists, computer hardware engineers, environmental engineers, human-resources managers, marine engineers, doctors and pharmacists. You have a wide selection of careers, but start with what you love. I believe that, if you love what you do, you’ll make it to the top of your field. If you don’t love what you do? Your $100,000 will feel like one dollar.
Be extremely careful before signing up for for-profit colleges, especially those that tell you what you want to hear: “Yes, we GUARANTEE you a job with six figures upon graduation.” Anyone who speaks in such terms should be greeted with much skepticism. Prior to the Great Recession, workers who studied at four-year for-profit universities had earning parity with those who attended other four-year colleges, but they suffered a sharp decline in salary compared to their peers in the years after the Great Recession. Word of warning: Zero debt after attending a non-profit college is also not a given.
Blame a rise in low-quality colleges. “Setting aside that for-profit institutions enrolled a larger share of working adults who may have started at a higher income level before entering higher education to begin with,” this report — “Paying More for Less?” — by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Third Way found that “the combination of deregulation of for-profit colleges and the proliferation of online education during the 2000s led to substantial increases in for-profit enrollment and the rapid decline of for-profit students’ labor market outcomes.”
It may seem hard to believe now, but money is only one part of the equation.
More columns from Quentin Fottrell:
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