If you’re going to make money, it’s important that you know what degree is best for your desired career. The answer may surprise you as many of the best degrees are ones that have nothing to do with making money directly.
In fact, some of them might even lead to a job where no one expects much from you at all! Let’s take a look at the 20 best degrees to make money with, in 2022 based on how much salary they earn per year on a median average.
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How to Make Money with Your Degree without Going into Debt
Below are the major ways to make money with your degree without going into debt:
- Find internships
Finding internships can be an effective way to make money with your degree because they typically don’t require you to be formally educated in that field. If you have a passion for a particular field and are willing to work hard, consider volunteering or interning before taking on a degree program to find out if you enjoy it.
- Find freelance jobs
Work on your time and not your dime. There are countless ways to make money with a degree without getting into debt, whether you have a job or not.
Work part-time in a new field. Save money from family and friends. Gather up your art skills and do freelance graphic design jobs. Pitch an idea to businesses in need of a logo or other design work and bring it to life!
- Promote yourself
To make money with your degree without going into debt, you’ll want to find a job that puts your education and experience to use.
Whether it’s in an entry-level position at a company or in a full-time position at a nonprofit or agency, there are options available for those who go beyond just getting their degree and waiting to get paid.
- Become a social media influencer
Going to college is an investment. Earning a degree should be your ticket to greater opportunity, not a source of debt and regret. By embracing your entrepreneurial spirit (yes, even in college), you can make money with your degree without going into debt.
How? Become a social media influencer! Sites like YouTube or Instagram give anyone with a smartphone an outlet to share their life experiences with millions—and make money doing it.
Planning Your Career Path
The decision to go back to school is an important one. It could be the key to starting a new, more financially lucrative career path or an opportunity to gain new skills that would make you a better candidate for your current job.
The first step in making sure you get the most out of your higher education is choosing the right degree for your goals. There are many factors to consider when deciding on a major, but there are also some degrees that pay off far more than others.
For example, if you’re planning on pursuing a career in healthcare or engineering, then it’s worth it to consider getting an advanced degree because those degrees can lead to high salaries and high demand.
List Of The Best Degrees to Make Money With
Here is the list of the 20 best degrees to make money with:
- Pharmaceutical Science
- Computer Science
- Computer Engineering
- Actuarial Science
- Software Development
- Physics
- Nuclear Engineering
- Chemical Engineering
- Applied Mathematics
- Petroleum Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Material Science
- Construction Management
- Finance
- Economics
- Mechanical Engineering
- Statistics
- Civil Engineering
- Astrophysics
- Architecture.
20 Best Degrees to Make Money With
1. Pharmaceutical Science
- Stable Job: Pharmacist
- Median Annual Salary: $129,000.
Pharmaceutical science is a discipline that concentrates on designing and synthesizing prospective medications as well as testing them in disease models and biological systems to profile their preclinical safety, efficacy, dynamics, and metabolism.
Aiming to cure, immunize, or treat patients’ symptoms, the pharmaceutical industry finds, develops, manufactures, and promotes medicines or pharmaceutical drugs for usage as medications given to patients.
2. Computer Science
- Stable Job: UX Designer
- Median Annual Salary: $127,000.
The most crucial component of computer science is problem-solving, a life skill. Students research the design, creation, and analysis of hardware and software used to address issues in a range of professional, academic, and social settings.
Computer science also has a major human component because they address problems for people’s benefit.
3. Computer Engineering
- Stable Job: Computer Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $114,000.
The fields of computer science and engineering are combined in the academic curriculum known as computer engineering. It covers a wide range of topics and teaches the foundations of computer programming and networking.
Computation, algorithms, programming languages, program design, computer software, computer hardware, and other related topics are covered.
Innovation in the domains of healthcare, automobiles, robots, and the building industry is greatly aided by computer engineering. Additionally, there are numerous careers in the field of computer engineering as technology advances worldwide.
4. Actuarial Science
- Stable Job: Actuary
- Median Annual Salary: $112,000.
An academic program in actuarial science teaches students how to assess risks and preserve the financial stability of an organization. This course teaches students how to evaluate risks and estimate future costs using arithmetic, probability, statistics, and economic principles.
People with degrees in this field can assist organizations in determining the possible effects of unpredictable future events. Math, finance, and business subjects are often found in actuarial science degrees.
Actuarial science degrees can be obtained at the bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral levels.
5. Software Development
- Stable Job: Software Development Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $110,000.
It is a technique to develop computer software that offers functionality to meet particular professional or personal goals utilizing one or more distinct programming languages. The construction of operational software is typically the outcome of a planned project that includes a number of processes and stages.
Design, documentation, programming, testing, and continuous maintenance of software delivery are all included in software development.
These actions are combined to form a workflow pipeline, a series of procedures that, when followed, result in high-quality software outputs.
6. Physics
- Stable Job: Physicist
- Median Annual Salary: $105,000.
Science’s study of matter’s structure and the interactions between the fundamental elements of the cosmos is known as physics. By employing general relativity and quantum mechanics, it investigates everything from very small particles to the universe as a whole.
Fundamental knowledge generated by physics is essential for the technological advancements that will continue to power the global economy.
The technical infrastructure and the skilled labor force required to benefit from scientific developments and discoveries are both contributed by physics.
7. Nuclear Engineering
- Stable Job: Nuclear Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $104,000.
Engineering that focuses on the science and use of nuclear and radiation processes is known as nuclear engineering. These procedures include the use of nuclear energy for research, industry, medicine, and national security as well as the generation and usage of radiation and radioactive materials.
Nuclear interactions and the movement of neutrons and gamma rays are described by fundamental laws of physics and mathematics, on which nuclear engineering is built.
These phenomena are reliant on each other as well as on heat transfer, fluid flow, chemical processes, and the way materials react to radiation.
8. Chemical Engineering
- Stable Job: Chemical Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $102,000.
The creation and manufacture of products using chemical processes is a function of chemical engineering. This entails creating tools, frameworks, and methods for modifying chemicals, combining, compounding, and processing raw materials as well as raw materials.
Designing and troubleshooting processes for the manufacture of chemicals, fuels, foods, pharmaceuticals, and biologicals, to name a few, is the primary responsibility of chemical engineers.
Large-scale industrial facilities use them most frequently to enhance productivity and product quality while lowering expenses.
9. Applied Mathematics
- Stable Job: Data Analyst
- Median Annual Salary: $101,900.
Applied mathematics is a great choice for professional school applications because, when combined with the right electives or minors, the degree demonstrates the quantitative competence necessary to tackle conceptual problems in business, law, or medical studies.
The practice of applied mathematics entails the use of mathematics to solve problems that arise in a variety of fields, such as science, engineering, and other related fields, as well as the creation of novel or enhanced approaches to solving a variety of problems.
10. Petroleum Engineering
- Stable Job: Petroleum Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $101,000.
Petroleum engineering is the area of engineering that focuses on the methods used to develop and exploit oil and gas fields as well as the technical evaluation, computer modeling, and projection of how well they will produce in the future.
Mining engineering and geology gave rise to petroleum engineering, and the two disciplines are still intimately related.
Geoscience aids engineers in understanding the geological structures and conditions that support the formation of petroleum deposits.
11. Electrical Engineering
- Stable Job: Electrical Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $100,000.
In electrical engineering, problems with energy, the environment, transportation, communications, health care, and a variety of other sectors that have a significant impact on society are solved by using electricity.
The Electrical Engineering graduate has a wide range of job options, including research and design, teaching, sales, and management, thanks to their comprehensive background in theoretical and practical expertise.
Few careers provide the opportunities for diversity that Electrical Engineering does.
12. Material Science
- Stable Job: Materials Scientist
- Median Annual Salary: $99,800.
Materials science is the study of the characteristics of solid materials and how a material’s structure and composition affect those characteristics.
It evolved from a synthesis of solid-state physics, metallurgy, and chemistry because the wide range of material properties cannot be fully comprehended within the confines of a single classical science.
Materials can be chosen or designed for a huge variety of purposes, ranging from structural steels to computer microchips, with just a rudimentary grasp of the sources of features.
13. Construction Management
- Stable Job: Construction Manager
- Median Annual Salary: $97,000.
Construction management is a specialized service that gives project owners effective control over the project’s budget, timeline, scope, quality, and function.
All project delivery techniques can be used in construction management. No of the situation, the owner and a successful project are the duty of the construction manager (CM).
The best construction managers are civil engineers or architects who have an in-depth understanding of building construction. However, some facets of this activity, such as financial planning or procurement, can be completed by someone without an experience in building.
A non-expert can develop the necessary skills to function as a construction project manager with the right education and experience.
14. Finance
- Stable Job: Financial analyst
- Median Annual Salary: $94,600.
Obtaining capital or money for any form of spending is known as finance. In order to finance their operations, consumers, businesses, and governments frequently lack the cash on hand to spend, settle debt, or carry out other activities.
As a result, they must borrow money or sell shares. On the other side, investors and savers build up money that, if used wisely, could provide interest or dividends.
These savings may build up as savings deposits, savings and loan shares, pension and insurance claims, or any combination thereof; when lent out at interest or invested in equity shares, they serve as a source of investment capital.
15. Economics
- Stable Job: Economist
- Median Annual Salary: $94,400.
Economics is a social science that aims to understand and describe how wealth is produced, distributed, and consumed.
In the 19th century, economists wrote about economic policy but were infrequently consulted by lawmakers before choices were made; instead, they were the pastime of gentlemen of leisure and the profession of a select few academics.
Nowadays, it is rare to find a government, an international organization, or a sizable commercial bank without a staff of economists. Most economists work in various research or advisory positions, either for themselves (in economics consulting businesses), in industry, or in government, but many spend their time teaching economics in colleges and universities around the world.
16. Mechanical Engineering
- Stable Job: Mechanical Engineer
- Median Annual Salary: $87,300.
Mechanical engineering specialty that deals with the creation, installation, and use of machines, engines, and production methods. The principles of dynamics, control, thermodynamics and heat transfer, fluid mechanics, material strength, materials science, electronics, and mathematics are all applied in mechanical engineering.
It is involved with machine tools, motor vehicles, textile machinery, packing machines, printing machinery, metalworking machines, welding, air conditioning, refrigerators, agricultural machinery, and many other machines and processes important to an industrial economy.
17. Statistics
- Stable Job: Statistician
- Median Annual Salary: $87,000.
The study of data collection, analysis, presentation, and interpretation is known as statistics. Much of the early motivation for the subject of statistics came from governmental needs for census data as well as information about a variety of economic operations.
Current breakthroughs in statistics have been prompted by the need to transform the vast volumes of data that are available in many applied domains into usable information.
The facts and statistics that are gathered, examined, and condensed for presentation and interpretation are known as data. The two types of data are quantitative and qualitative, respectively.
18. Civil Engineering
- Stable Job: Civil Engineering
- Median Annual Salary: $86,600.
Civil engineering involves designing and building structural projects for the general public, such as highways, tunnels, bridges, canals, dams, harbors, lighthouses, and environmental projects (e.g., water-supply systems).
Power stations, airplanes and airports, chemical processing plants, and water treatment facilities are all part of the modern field.
Today’s civil engineering includes structural design and analysis, construction, facilities maintenance, site investigations, and feasibility studies. The application of design theory from numerous domains is necessary for the design of engineering works (e.g., hydraulics, thermodynamics, nuclear physics).
19. Astrophysics
- Stable Job: Astrophysics Technologist
- Median Annual Salary: $86,000.
The field of astronomy known as astrophysics is concerned with the physics of the cosmos, particularly “the nature of the heavenly bodies, rather than their positions or motions in space.”
Galaxies, stars, planets, extrasolar planets, the interstellar medium, and the cosmic microwave background are some of the objects researched. The luminosity, density, temperature, and chemical makeup of their emissions are all investigated across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Astrophysicists generally use a variety of physics disciplines, such as mechanics, electromagnetic, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear and particle physics, and atomic and molecular physics, because astrophysics is such a large field.
20. Architecture
- Stable Job: Architect
- Median Annual Salary: $82,000.
Architecture, as opposed to construction skills, is the art and technique of designing and building. Architecture is a discipline that satisfies both functional and expressive needs, and as a result, it serves both utilitarian and aesthetic goals.
These two ends can be identified from one another but they cannot be separated, and the proportional importance accorded to each can differ significantly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does having more schooling increase your income?
Over the course of their lives, people with more education earn greater salaries and pay more in taxes.
Why is a bachelor's degree necessary?
Having a bachelor's degree also makes you more likely to be given consideration for professional growth chances by prospective companies. A bachelor's degree is also a clear requirement for obtaining a master's or Ph.D. if you intend to continue your study after that level.
Does my major have an impact on how I perform on the working world?
You will have access to a variety of job fields after receiving your bachelor's degree that does not require a specific major.
What factors should I consider before choosing a major?
You should be aware of who you are and what your interests, principles, and abilities are. Instead of looking at a list of career descriptions, you should choose your major. You will excel at what you enjoy doing.
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Conclusion:
So there you have it, 20 degrees and 20 jobs that will make you a lot of money. Whether you’re looking for a career change or just want to get out of the rat race, we hope this list has inspired you to pursue your dreams!