Degrees That Will Guarantee New Career Paths

Are you struggling at work? Have you gone about as far as you feel like you can go, given your experience and education level? Maybe it’s time to start thinking about going after a new (or higher) degree!

There are a lot of reasons to go after a second or higher degree:

• Help you move up at your current job
• Qualify you to ask for a bigger paycheck
• Make you attractive to other employers (which helps incentivize your current employer to make staying where you are worth your while)
• Introduce you to completely new career opportunities and fields

So what kind of degree should you pursue? This is going to depend upon a few things.

Do you want to explore a completely new field? If so, a post-graduate degree is the best way to start doing this. It gives you the opportunity to explore the field a little bit before committing to it the way you would need to do if you wanted to go after a Master’s or PhD. For example, if you’re thinking about trying your hand at something medical or dental, colleges like Sanford Brown are a great place to start exploring your future career options.

Are you hoping to move up within your current career? Your best course of action, then, is to go after whatever degree is next on the ladder or succession. For example, if you work as an electrician, you probably have an Associate’s Degree and your certification. Your next step, then, would be to go after your Bachelor’s Degree. Talk to the school from which you obtained your Associate’s Degree and ask about any “feeder” programs for nearby four year colleges and universities. This way the work you did for your AA degree can be applied to your Bachelor’s and you won’t have to spend as much time in classes that don’t apply to the degree you’re going after.

For most professional careers, particularly those in the business, science and administrative fields, the degree you want most if you hope to move up is a Master’s Degree. The Master’s Degree is a fantastic option no matter what career path you want to pursue. Master’s Degrees do not necessarily need to line up with what you studied for your Bachelor’s Degrees. You can choose complementary subjects or completely unrelated subjects. Either way, you’ll be able to parlay that degree into either a higher position within your current field or a perfectly respectable position in an entirely new field. That’s the great thing about a Master’s Degree: it helps you skip over the “entry level” stuff, no matter what you want to do.

The next level up, degree-wise, is the PhD or Doctoral degree. You can get your doctorate degree in any field you want, but there are very few career paths that actually require you to have a PhD. Typically the only people who will need a PhD are those who hope to teach in a collegiate environment, who want to treat people medically or psychologically or who want to do advanced work in the sciences. Chances are you do not actually need this degree but there is zero doubt that being able to tell people to call you “Doctor” can be great for your self esteem!

Going after advanced degrees is something that should always be encouraged because the more (and higher) degrees you obtain the more options you will have available to you!