How does your college choice affect the pay rate in your career field?
I am enrolling at the University of Georgia for Business Administration and Mechanical Engineering in the fall. I am asking to get more insight on whether attending graduate school at a more prestigious university is a waste of time and money. #business #engineer #advisor
3 answers
Hector’s Answer
Claire Hong’s Answer
Attending a graduate school is a big decision in life. The best you can do is to analyze the cost of benefits of attending schools. You have to weight the opportunity cost as well as the benefits. In general, you need to have a career goal to attend graduate school. If your current career aspiration cannot be achieved with your current educational background and experience. Graduate school might not be a bad choice. Otherwise, it is a waste of time.
Nicole’s Answer
As a high school student and likely as a college student, you learn some basic economics. One basic point in economics is the concept of supply and demand. When a product and/or service is in high demand, that generally means that the cost of that product and/or service will be higher. I use this analogy to try to illustrate that pay rate can follow in the same way. In other words, if your degree is in a space where there is high demand, there is a greater likelihood that jobs that are offered are at a higher payrate (or the growth of pay is higher than in other spaces).
Candidly there are some schools and notable curriculums, particularly at the graduate school level, that can contribute to higher pay rates but again, my experience has been that focusing on those jobs that are in demand (and stay there, like engineering iambiased :)) have a better long term return on investment. As one of the pieces of advice offered, there is definitely a cost component to consider is you develop your college/career journey.
Best of luck to you!