I just read an interesting article about graduates with a degree earning more in their career: http://chronicle.com/news/article/6386/
The comments following the article were even more interesting. Is getting a degree part of your careers planning strategy?
Here’s my thoughts:
Many people are getting things the wrong way round when planning. Remember Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? ‘Begin with the end in mind’ was one of the seven. Many people don’t know what they want to do for a career, but go for the degree anyway, which kind of violates this rule.
Yes, it may increase your prospects. But equally it may waste a lot of time, money and effort if your degree becomes irrelevant to get in to your ideal career which you hadn’t gone to the effort to identify first!
Get it the right way round. Identify your ideal career first, BEFORE choosing whether to get a degree (let alone which degree is the right one).
Once you know with a high degree of certainty what your ideal career is, then work backwards with your planning. Is a degree the fastest, easiest or best way in to it? If yes, decide which one and where best to get that degree. If ‘no’ then consider the path you’ll take to get in to it as fast, easily and enjoyably as possible.
You’ll need to talk to people who are already there about this.
Don’t forget to sign up to get my ideal career planning kit: http://www.careersplanningkit.com/