Experts: Degrees don’t guarantee immediate success
Will your child’s college degree pay off right after graduation? The answer might surprise you.
Dennis Adams
Recent studies suggest that new graduates might not see a big financial bump for a long time. University of Houston Business Professor Dennis Adams says it depends on the field.
“For some fields, it may be five years or ten years and some fields you may never get a return from it,” Adams said.
So what fields should college students concentrate on?
“One of the professional fields. Business. Engineering. Those sorts of things. There is definitely a market value, a return,” explained Adams.
Marty Nemko
Career coach and author Marty Nemko says there are other factors.
If you are an African-American who has gotten into Harvard and majored in electrical engineering, I bet it’s going to pay off for you,” Nemko told KTRH. “But if you are going to the University of Houston and you are a white kid with a 3.4 GPA in Sociology I would bet it’s not going to pay off for you.”
Nemko also says that some students might be better off looking at public, as opposed to private universities.
“I do not believe that there can be a viable case for those schools that cost as much as an Ivy, but don’t begin to have the cache.”
The numbers are sobering. A recent study showed that 25% of full time workers in Texas with bachelor's degrees make less than 37 thousand dollars a year
