Salary Information for Online Master’s
Interested in making more money? Who isn’t, right? One of the quickest ways to boost you salary is to earn a masters degree in your field. At one time, this required lots of work, as you had to commute to a campus to take classes, fitting your schedule around your advanced schooling. Today, however, online schools make it easy to earn your masters degree – and all without leaving the comfort of your own home. This is still a time commitment, however, and it is also a financial commitment for most (although online schools are less expensive, they certainly aren’t free unless you earn a number of scholarships and grants). Is earning your online masters degree worth it? Let’s take a look at salary information to find out.
Salary Expectations for Various Degree Types
It’s hard to pin down exactly how much you’ll earn one you have a masters degree from an online college, since salaries vary greatly from industry to industry. However, you’re guaranteed to earn more if you have no education at all, and most people earn significantly more than they did with just a lower-level degree. On average, with a master’s degree you can expect to earn…
- $10,000 more than you would with a bachelor’s degree
- $20,000 more than you would with an associate’s degree
- $22,000 more than you would with some college experience
- $27,000 more than you would with a high school diploma or GEDs
- $33,000 more than you would as a high school drop-outs
That means that over the course of just 20 years (and most people work much longer than that), you’ll earn $200,000 to $660,000 more if you get a master’s degree in your field of choice – and in some fields, the salary potential is even higher.
Online Masters Versus Traditional Masters
But what about getting your education online – will you earn as much as you would if you got your degree at a brick and mortar school? By and large, that depends on your potential employers. In the past, employers didn’t take online degree students as seriously in many cases, but today, most employers don’t care where you went to school as long as it was an accredited program. So while there are still some employers out there who are leery of online college degree holders, most offer just as high of a salary as those employers who earned their degrees more traditionally.