NBC
Want a solid, middle-class salary straight out of college? Skip the last two years
Community college degrees, long considered also-ran prizes in the race for academic achievement, “are worth a lot more than I expected and that I think other people expected,” Schneider said.
But there is a catch: You have to earn your degree in a technical or occupational program to earn anywhere near $40,000. That’s the approximate average earned by students who went to school and worked in the state of Virginia and graduated with two-year degrees in these fields between 2006 and 2010. Graduates of two-year nursing programs earned am average of $45,342.
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Get a welding certificate or degree and then head for the oil states, you will have more work and make more money and have more job security than you ever dreamed.
Bishop on December 31, 2012 at 10:14 AM
Or work part-time when studying and with 2-3 years of work experience and a business network by the time you graduate getting a proper job would be 100 times easier and the degree will get you a better pay grade.
lester on December 31, 2012 at 10:24 AM
Um, duh?
cptacek on December 31, 2012 at 10:32 AM
Frankly, If you’re not taking 2 years of calculus and diff eq’s, then you are probably wasting time and resources at a 4 year university…
phreshone on December 31, 2012 at 10:42 AM
Absolutely right. Almost everything in the universe is governed by differential equations.
Hous Bin-Pharteen on December 31, 2012 at 10:49 AM
Ran into some people at the recorders office in a gas fracking county. $275 per day to pull deeds for title searches.
forest on December 31, 2012 at 10:51 AM
$34/hour if it’s an 8 hour day…that’s some fine money for clerical work.
I have friends who headed for the Dakotas to drive trucks, they work a LOT but are swimming in dough.
As an aside, the most successful and busiest Chevy dealer in the U.S. is in Rapid City, specifically they sell more Corvettes than anyone else and 75% are for cash. The oil workers are scooping them up.
Bishop on December 31, 2012 at 10:57 AM
A degree in engineering is still pretty solid.
I know several electrical engineers who have entirely shrugged off the Oconomy. A couple of them have moved even entirely upped sticks – not for the sake of their career, simply because they wanted to live somewhere else and they could.
CorporatePiggy on December 31, 2012 at 10:58 AM
Tsk, tsk, doesn’t NBC know that the NYTimes is concerned about the younger generation bypassing colleges and going straight to well-paying work?
How can they be indoctrinated in to lefty identity politics, anti-Americanism and “fairness” in politics if they skip out on four years of college? The left can’t count on the public schools doing it all.
/s
Wethal on December 31, 2012 at 11:01 AM
The headline here is shockingly bad advice. Majoring in “general studies” will leave you unemployed. You have to be something of a strategist with your education. There is work in the sciences, but you have to look at what is going on in the market and try to look for trends that you can take advantage of when you graduate.
Do physicians need Calc? Engineers do.
dogsoldier on December 31, 2012 at 11:11 AM
Absofrigginlutely right!!!
My husband is a welder/fabricator. He and his co-workers will be retiring and dying in the next 10 years or so. There are virtually NO young men learning their skills.
It’ll be a employee’s market out there with welding and fabricating skills.
Unfortunately, the young men we advise to take up welding do not want to get dirty, or work in dirty and sometimes hot and dangerous conditions.
Mommynator on December 31, 2012 at 11:21 AM
Premed majors at Purdue had to take 2 semesters of calculus but they took different courses than us engineers.
Dave Ramsey is dead set against incurring debt for college these days. He thinks the 2 year community college first is the way to go as we’ll as working part time to pay for it. In state tuition and dorm/books is costing about $20,000 a year at plain old Western Michigan U. Zowie. What middle class family can afford that? My out of state tuition and dorm at Purdue my senior year was only $4500 total in 1978. I was a co-op engineer and earned my way through school. No loans. Which was a good thing since I graduated in Jimmy Carter’s failed economy with 15% inflation, 18% mortgage rates, and 16% unemployment rate. Thank goodness and my hard work to get an engineering degree landed me a job upon graduation. Other majors got squat back then.
College inflation costs are ridiculous.
karenhasfreedom on December 31, 2012 at 11:32 AM
As a plumbing, wet mechanical contractor I can assure you that welders much less certified can be a pain. However if you can do it it ain’t bragging. Six figures is not out of the question. Today too.
BullShooterAsInElk on December 31, 2012 at 11:33 AM