<p>I think it’s worth mentioning that salary, at least as measured here, does not necessarily translate to success. Such jobs could be ones that their occupants hate, they could be harder to obtain than ones requiring a college degree, or they could have lousy security prospects, benefits, or insurance.</p>
<p>@Dreburton, why didn’t four-year universities work for you? Was the workload too much? Take some programming classes at a CC or teach yourself, and you might be able to get a job while you recuperate.</p>
<p>I can speak from the tech side becaus thats my industry (IT). Sure, the 2 year tech certificates get good money compared to social science majors. Its still about half of what their corresponding 4yr degree counterparts make. Typically the assignments are a bit more mundane, more about physical installation and monitoring. Many of these people pursue their 4 year degrees after they have a job beause of the ceilings for the 2 year credential. </p>
<p>Not critizing that path at all if that fits you, but you typically see them as someone who was challenged to get a 4 year degree and settled for what they could get. if you have the technical chops you will have more opportunities with the BS. Also their are way more jobs for 4 yr candidates, I would say 10 times more where I work.</p>
<p>The main point isn’t that everyone should do a 2-yr degree instead of a 4-yr degree. In many fields a 4-yr degree is far more valuable, and, of course, a typical 4-yr degree (even in a STEM field) will expose the student to a variety of intellectual challenges and humanities coursework.</p>
<p>Also, you can’t really compare the socialization and overall experiences in a 4-yr residential degree vs. a 2-yr commuter program. We are indeed talking about two very different things - apples and oranges have more in common!</p>
<p>The point is that for students who are primarily seeking a path to an immediate career, 2-yr degrees can be cheaper and yield short-term results as good as those from some (but not all) 4-year programs. The old “get a BA in anything and get a good job after graduation” strategy doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to, and that BA degree will cost a lot more than it would have a generation ago.</p>
<p>Dreburden - If you have completed several courses already for undergrad, will adding some computer science classes still require you to spend 4 more years?</p>
<p>I had engineering degrees and worked in engineering for several years. I went back to school and did a few courses selectively aiming to start work in IT. I was working in IT after 2 semesters of coursework (15 years ago though). If you have spent several years in undergrad, you should try to graduate and add additional courses in an area to help land a job. You can continue taking additional courses while you work if you get a job.</p>
<p>I suppose that a big part of the reason that I haven’t been successful in college is because I didn’t build the foundation I needed to in high school academically. I have since transferred to community college and am working on the pre-requisite courses for a computer science degree, but am facing obstacles with having money to pay for school. I work but have a lot of bills that chew up my money</p>
<p>fire123 “If we want to compare 2 year Nursing degree vs 4 yr History degree, we should have said so in the title.”</p>
<p>The point of the article is clear from the body of the text. The title is necessarily brief and written in a manner to grab your attention. The editor probably decided the title - - it’s not wrong or misleading IMO.</p>
<p>SilicianDefense “Anybody who has any common sense can see the problem with this comparison.”</p>
<p>The old adage “can’t see the forest for the trees” comes to mind.</p>
<p>Living in a good-sized city in the midwest, there are several local community or private, for-profit “colleges” that offer an associate’s in nursing, but only the community college is nationally accredited. The others are not and half the local hospitals won’t even consider an applicant from these schools…something to think about before starting their programs, in addition to their extrememly high fees. All of the major med. and lg. universities offer a 4-yr. BSN program, all of which are very competitive to get into (ie. 3.9 and 4.0’s sometimes don’t get in). In addition, often the programs are laid out where they are one yr. of pre-req’s followed by 3 yrs. officially in the nursing program, and I can say from having a daughter who is a Sr. in nursing that usually the pre-req’s are so many and require such a high GPA that they are done over 3 semesters, not 2, taking a total of 4.5 yrs. for the BSN. Many of the local hospitals are shifting away hiring associate’s in nursing and now taking only BSN.</p>
<p>@DreBurton: CS is one of the more rigorous BS programs. So if you didn’t do well in your last program, you shouldn’t expect to do well enough in CS to go anywhere with that degree.</p>
<p>Instead of comparing two completely different fields, why not compare English/history AA degrees to english/history BA degrees? Or, alternatively, a AA in nursing to a BA in nursing?</p>
<p>I mean, this data is just horribly misrepresented.
It says in order to earn anywhere near 40k you must be in a technical field. It cites the average of one specific field as 45k. All it mentions about other fields is they make about 6k less (34k average, that means).</p>
<p>Then, it mentions the average BA salary is 36k. If you look back at the statistic I mentioned, the average for all fields besides one specific niche, the BA is still 2k higher.</p>
<p>Then, even though the article admits 40k with an AA degree is only attainable in a technical field (and cites a statistic from one), it doesn’t use an example of a technical field for a BA. If they did, it would have lead to a fair comparison. Instead, it cites the 31k, 30k, and 29k earnings in fields statistically known to pay the least amount, LA/humanities.</p>
<p>The article admits AA degrees do not make 40k in the humanities. They do not cite what their pay is. Comparing the highest earning major for an AA degree to the lowest ones of a BA degree is worthless.</p>
<p>If you compared each major side-by-side, BA almost always make more.</p>