College: High paying career paths

With the debate of the value of a college education, financially, circulating, many fail to consider one of the most important variables: the career path. In a previous Founder’s Thought, titled “College: Is college education worth the time and money?”, we mentioned that a college degree opens up the door for incredible opportunities in the future, namely, high-paying jobs, but in today’s Founder’s Thought, we will dig deeper and analyze the specifics between 3 major career paths that a college education paves the way for.

STEM Careers

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics focused on a cluster of career paths in which students explore the world of innovation and go through a difficult 4-years in college to land a high paying jobs. STEM careers boast some of the toughest courses in college, including advanced, computing, mathematics, and physics courses. However, the perseverance pays off as STEM majors make nearly $7k more out-of-college than non-STEM majors out-of-college. However, the STEM industry is becoming increasingly saturated as more people are getting STEM degrees, making it harder for STEM students to land jobs out of college. However, for the majority of STEM majors who work hard during and after college, their career will thank them for their college degree as the financial burden will barely be felt considering their high-paying job.

Finance Careers

Another lucrative and growing industry are finance careers. Unlike STEM careers, those seeking finance careers out-of-college will not have to go through incredibly tedious courses through college although their courses are still of great difficulty depending on the program. Yet, finance careers, specifically investment banking is well-known for its monstrous salaries out-of-college up to $180k. Although, it is important to note the difficulty of breaking into investment banking and investment banking. Yet, even those who were unsuccessful in breaking into investment banking can still make well over the median salary working jobs in accounting and sales and trading.

Conclusion

Although STEM and Finance careers provide a strong rationale for students interested in such careers to attend college, there are various other careers, namely healthcare, that can offer students similar benefits. Furthermore, many see great value in college when exploring interdisciplinary areas that allow students to broaden their perspectives and connect the dots past standard lines. Overall, it is important to conduct a personal analysis to determine whether college will be beneficial for your intended to career path.