Workers with associate degrees in occupational and technical fields make about $6,000 a year more than those with associate degrees in non-occupational programs
Want a solid, middle-class salary straight out of college? Skip the last two years.
A site that analyzes state-level data of how much people earn a year after graduating college found some counterintuitive results: Certain students who earn associate's degrees can get higher salaries than graduates of four-year programs -- sometimes thousands of dollars more.
"These numbers and the consistency of these numbers are surprising to me," said Mark Schneider, president of CollegeMeasures.org and a vice president at the American Institutes for Research. CollegeMeasures aggregates anonymized education and earnings data to figure out who earns what after graduation.
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. Full article
In the Math of Education, Two Years Sometimes is Worth More than Four Years
January 3, 2013 Central Piedmont Community College Foundation Admin Central Piedmont Community College Foundation Central Piedmont Community College FoundationPosted in Alumni, Announcements, Campus, Community.