Despite the commonly held belief, obtaining a bachelor’s degree from a four-year college is not the only option to get a job and make a decent salary at that job. In fact, it may not even be the best option.
By choosing the right field of study, some community college graduates and certificate holders can make a higher salary than bachelor’s degree holders. A new study by the Hechinger Report finds that community college graduates can out-earn bachelor’s degree holders, even 10 years out of school.
Two years ago, the non-profit education news outlet released research examining immediate post-graduation employment rates and said community-college grads out-earn bachelor’s degree holders. Mark Schneider, one of the researchers behind the study and a former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, recently went back to his data in four states to examine what happens five and 10 years after graduation.
He found that, over the long term, bachelor’s degree holders are making more money on average than the typical community college graduate or certificate holder, because their annual salary increases are generally larger. But he still found some surprising results that back up the original study.
“Even 10 years later, there are many students with certificates and associate’s degrees in fields where they make more money than the B.A.’s,” Schneider said.
In the states studied – Colorado, Texas, Tennessee and Florida – Schneider found that in some fields, graduates holding two-year associate’s degrees earn about the same as their B.A.-holding counterparts, 10 years post-graduation. Schneider even found unexpectedly high salaries for those with a short-term certificate that took less than a year to complete. For instance, he found a short-term certificate in health care diagnostics earns an average annual salary of more than $54,000, 10 years down the line. In contrast, the average salary for someone with a B.A. in history, English or psychology was still below $50,000 after 10 years.
Schneider’s results also indicated that a specialized certificate from a rigorous program could pay off. He saw some of the highest earners without bachelor’s degrees in Texas, where for instance, someone with a mechanical engineering certificate can earn more than $116,000 after 10 years.
“It’s not the degree that matters, but what you got the degree in and, to some extent, where you got it,” concludes Schneider.
