Let’s talk salary for a moment.
eLearners has a great link at here...We all know that going back to school can provide an endless amount of satisfaction both on a personal level and a professional level. We’ve also all heard about how much more people can make if they have a degree. I wanted to write a post on this topic to show how much of an impact a degree can have on the pocket book.
If you take the time to look on Monster.com and other job sites, you will see that we’re rapidly moving toward an economy that is becoming more competitive all the time. A job that might have been considered to be on the lower end of the scale a few years ago is now only attainable with a degree of some sort.
What this does is forces a lot of people who might not have otherwise earned a 4-year degree to go get one just to stay minimally viable in the workplace. When this comes full circle in several years, the graduate degree will be the credentials needed to get anywhere in the job market. It will definitely be the defining factor in the career of a lot of people.
I took a look at a
study done by the University of North Texas.
You can see that a high school grad makes about $37k a year. With the cost of everything going up, that is slowly becoming a minimum standard just to get by in life. You can also see the difference between that and the Bachelors degree (almost twice as much). This is very telling when someone asks what kind of impact a 4-year commitment can mean to a person over the course of a lifetime.
Look at the big picture for a moment. Let’s say you are a high school grad making $37k a year. You have no plans to go to college, and you are comfortable in your current position. At your average yearly raise of 3% - 5%, that’s not enough to keep up with the rising costs of food, gas, housing, clothing, and all the essentials of life. As time goes on, and the economy keeps getting bigger, you keep getting poorer.
There are a ton of other salary surveys out there. Take the time and look them up. Keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, but these basic numbers are very telling.