What is the value of a degree?

Nearly everyone agrees that a college education is an efficient investment. Although students often take out loans to pay for college, the degrees they earn (assuming they finish their degrees) place them in a much higher earnings category, statistically speaking, and these higher earnings can be used to pay off college debt. However, not all college degrees are created equal. A Bachelor of Arts in History, for instance, is not likely to put a brand new graduate in the six-figure earnings echelon. A specialized technical degree, such as a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering, could land grads jobs at or around $100,000 per year.

The very best Earning Majors

Which undergraduate degrees are the most valuable? This can be a difficult question to answer, because the worth of a level will be measured in alternative ways. One common method to measure it is when it comes to the starting salary for graduates with different degrees. On this scale, petroleum engineering often comes out on top, but industrial engineering and software engineering graduates earn over $50,000 per year right out of faculty, making these degrees quite lucrative as well.

Balancing Working Conditions With Salary

Although some bachelor’s degrees result in higher paying jobs right out of faculty, the character of the jobs should not be overlooked when determining the value of a level. For instance, petroleum engineering may come with a high salary, but additionally it is a very demanding job. Petroleum engineers often work long hours and are required to spend large amounts of time around industrial petroleum equipment. Compare these conditions to those encountered by the common software engineer. Software engineers often work in comfortable office buildings located in nice business parks. Their schedule are typically way more flexible than those of petroleum engineers, and the work environment is usually a lot better. Taking these factors into consideration over the span of an entire career, software engineering begins to look more valuable than petroleum engineering.

Which Universities’ Degrees are Most valuable?

The university a level comes from is also important to determining that degree’s value. For example, a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is more expensive than a level from a small, rural, public college. At first glance, it might seem that the increased cost-and, therefore, the increased debt burden that graduates will face – ends in a decrease in the general value of the degree. In the event you cherished this post along with you would want to get more details about Petroleum Refinery Companies generously pay a visit to the web-site. The calculation isn’t quite that easy, though. MIT is a much more prestigious school than a small, rural, public college, so MIT graduates have an edge in terms of getting the very best paying jobs once they graduate. A better paying job will make it easier to cope with loan debt, and will result in a better return on the student’s investment over the long run.

Overpriced Colleges

Beware of falling into the trap of thinking that a better price tag necessarily indicates a higher value when it comes to colleges and universities. It may be true in the case of schools like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT that the high cost of tuition could be worth it ultimately, but this isn’t so for every high-priced school. For example, there are various private colleges and universities that charge $40,000 per year or more but that don’t help graduates get better jobs. Unfortunately, many of those schools are private liberal arts colleges, which often espouse lofty educational ideals and attract students with their commitment to creativity. The sad truth is that the society we live in doesn’t value lofty educational ideals quite as highly as graduates of private liberal arts colleges would like.

When trying to assess the value of an undergraduate degree from a U.S. college or university, there are a lot of factors to take under consideration. Ultimately, however, no list or equation can rank degrees. A student’s personal circumstances have a job to play, so each individual must decide for him – or herself what to study.