Associate Degree Tier List 2024 (Associate Majors RANKED)

the associate's degree tier list for 2023 in this video we are going to be ranking different associate Majors from s tier which is the best to F tier which is the worst so I've been in the kitchen cooking this up for you I've been working really hard on this year's list and I have no doubt that it is going to be the best list I have ever made so I always talk about the two most important things which are salary and demand and then I also get into other things like job satisfaction meaning Etc but on this year's list I changed something that I thought was extremely important so basically there's a lot of careers out there that have good demand but they don't necessarily have a lot of demand at the entry level so in this year's list I focused on the degrees that lead to careers that have a lot of demand at the entry level right because we've all seen those job postings that are entry-level jobs that require you know three to five years of experience so if you appreciate all my hard work on this year's list go ahead and swoosh that like button like a Steph Curry three-pointer and let's go ahead and get into it alright so first one we're going to talk about is of course art degrees okay so art degrees at the associate level now I typically do not recommend getting an art degree for anybody except for a very small percentage of people like probably 0.1 percent you know if you're in the top 99.9th percentile as a guitarist for instance okay maybe you should go to Juilliard and get trained by world-renowned classical guitarists but it is such a small percentage of people that I recommend art degrees to however if you are going to get an art degree if you have your heart set on it and you're absolutely gonna get an art degree an associate's degree is probably the way to go again I highly recommend not doing it I think you can learn much more by just putting yourself in an environment with other artists that do whatever your preferred art is and then just collaborate with them work with them share your ideas you can learn a lot more from doing that in my opinion and I always talk about this I recommend the book steal like an artist that has nothing to do with stealing like an artist it's just a clickbait title really really good book if you and art artistic type of person you want to learn how to make money with art spoiler alert it does not involve going to college now with that being said I'm going to go ahead and pick out one it's multimedia and web design with this one you'd expect to make about forty thousand dollars a year starting out and 65 000 in mid-career pay and the meeting score is about 37 percent we can do another one like a video editor for instance if you type that in on Glassdoor you're gonna see they make about fifty five thousand dollars a year if you type in just artist in general you're gonna see they make around forty six thousand dollars a year and if you type in artist on LinkedIn at the entry level you're gonna see 29 000 results now interestingly enough the skill of art is actually on the rise for instance a lot of AD platforms are moving towards being more creative focused and by that I mean they're much more focused on the actual art behind the ads because it's getting easier and easier to do the analytical part of things so there is hope for artists out there you definitely can make money from art there's a lot of great careers out there are like web design ux UI design Etc but I typically do not recommend going to college in order to get a job in art and I definitely don't recommend going to college in order to start your own business in art so overall I'm going to put this one into D tier next one on the list is going to be Communications degrees at the associate level all right so this one you're going to make about 33 000 a year starting out and 56 000 in mid-career pay and has a meaning score of 50 percent now if you type in Mass Communications on Glassdoor you're going to see the average salary is about sixty four thousand dollars a year and if you type in Mass Communications on LinkedIn at the entry level you'll see about 2 400 results so yeah again this is one of those um typically don't recommend Communications degrees to most people this one is going to go into D tier next one on the list is education degrees at the associate level so this one you'd start off making thirty thousand dollars a year and mid-career pay is forty five thousand the meaning score is a little bit bit higher at 60 percent so if you look on glass door and you type in teacher you're going to see they make about forty five thousand dollars a year and if you go on LinkedIn type in teacher at the entry level you're going to see about 22 000 results so this is of course an incredibly important career in society but with that being said I can't you know just give it a better rating because of that reason right like I have to stick with the numbers and and be objective and fair here at the associate level um it's okay you know you can get certain positions at that level I'm going to go ahead and put this one into C tier my recommendation for somebody who does want to become a teacher like you have your heart set on becoming a teacher is to go to a school like WGU because you can actually get a bachelor's degree in education relatively quickly like within a year or two and just check out my videos on WGU if you are confused about what I'm talking about next one on the list is going to be engineering degrees at the associate level now these are actually really good so there are a bunch of like random technician related careers out there where you need to have a good amount of you know academic knowledge but not quite as much as you need for like a bachelor's degree so an example of one of those careers would be instrumentation and control engineering this is an associate level degree and you'd start off making fifty four thousand dollars a year and mid-career pay is 85 000 and if you type in engineering technician on Glassdoor you're going to see they make about fifty five thousand dollars a year and if you type in engineering technician on LinkedIn you're going to see 44 000 results at the entry level so yeah engineering degrees are pretty much good at every single level and there's a reason you see so many millionaires and billionaires having engineering degrees it teaches you practical real world problem solving skills so yeah this one definitely goes into s tier next one on the list is Health degrees these are also incredibly good at every single level now one thing that's great about health degrees and also engineering degrees is much of the time you actually have to get the degree in order to get into certain careers right so with something like technology for instance the degree is optional for many careers now do eight you know hiring managers prefer a degree in many cases yes there are many cases where hiring managers will prefer a degree but it's still optional you don't have to get it when it comes to health degrees and engineering degrees you pretty much have to have the degree so that creates what's known as a barrier to entry to everyone else they have to go through that Gauntlet in order to get into the career which is good because that means when you're thinking about supply and demand you have a competitive Advantage there now one associate health related degree would be radiation therapy they make sixty five thousand dollars a year starting out and 95 000 in mid-career pay and it has a whopping 92 percent when it comes to meaning score and this is another thing that I'd like to mention is Health degrees and health careers do tend to have very high meaning scores and meaning does tend to correlate with happiness over the long run right so the two big things you want to pay attention to when it comes to how satisfied you are with your job is of course job satisfaction you know how well do companies treat you for instance and then meaning and meaning is basically how much you think your job positively impacts the world and both of those things are very important when it comes to your overall happiness with your job now when you look up radiation therapists on Glassdoor you're going to see they make about 97 000 a year and when you look up radiation therapists on LinkedIn at the entry level you're going to see 5 800 results and there's honestly like probably thousands of these little random Niche health degree and health careers out there so you do want to make sure you do your research for these some of them require an associate's degree some of them require some level of like certification that might take you one to three years to get into but yeah definitely do your research these random little niche health careers can be really good this one absolutely goes into s tier Health degrees are good at every single level associate Bachelor Masters and doctorate next one on the list is going to be language related degrees at the associate associate level so this one is surprisingly okay when it comes to the statistics so you start off at thirty two thousand dollars a year with something like Spanish for instance mid-career pays forty seven thousand and meaning score is 62 percent and if you get into a career like translator for instance you'd expect to make about fifty thousand dollars a year and if you type in translator on LinkedIn at the entry level you're gonna see about 14 000 results now you technically don't even need a degree to become a translator it's really just all about your skill but with that being said getting an associate level degree does seem to help a little bit with that but still you know it's not amazing the numbers aren't incredible I'm gonna go ahead and put this one into D tier next on the list is going to be a liberal arts degree at the associate level so an example of this one would be one of my favorite subjects if not my favorite subject which is history if you look at history at the associate level you're going to see thirty four thousand dollars a year starting out fifty eight thousand mid-career pay and a forty percent meaning score one career path you might go down a nice so might because you know history degrees don't have a lot of career paths you can go down let's be honest is uh paralegal and paralegals make about fifty one thousand dollars a year according to Glassdoor and if you look up paralegal on LinkedIn at the entry level you're going to see about 26 000 results the only problem with this is you can go into that paralegal career path with a bunch of different degrees right you don't have to get a history degree to go down that path you could get any number of different liberal arts degrees or non-liberal Arts degrees so yeah liberal arts I'm gonna have to put this one into F tier next one on the list is going to be associate level math degrees so with this one you'd expect to make thirty nine thousand dollars a year starting out sixty nine thousand in mid-career pay and 51 percent meaning score one career path you might go down is becoming an accounting assistant and they make about forty thousand dollars a year and if you look up accounting assistant on LinkedIn you're gonna see about 20 000 results at the entry level so yeah math you know is a pretty valuable skill a lot of people can't do math a lot of people are math phobic they're are afraid of it so if you are somebody who is good at math it might make sense for you to get a degree in mathematics so get off your app let's do some math Madness Madden but it isn't necessarily that applicable to the real world in the same way that an engineering degree is so overall I'm going to put math degrees in C tier next on the list is going to be Science degrees at the associate level so an example of this one would be a chemistry degree and they make 35 000 starting out and 64 000 in mid-career pay and the meaning score is 54 which is pretty good now with this degree you could become a laboratory technician and they make about forty two thousand dollars a year and if you look up laboratory technician on LinkedIn at the entry level you're going to see 29 000 results so I actually think Science degrees at the associate level are a little bit better than science degrees at the bachelor's level in many cases especially when you talk about a degree like biology and the reason for that is because a lot of those laboratory technician jobs you actually don't need a bachelor's degree to get you can get into them with just an associate's degree and the bachelor's degree doesn't actually help you out all that much there's tons of people who graduate with Biology Bachelor degrees and they can't find a job or if they do find a job it's not a good one when it comes to science a lot of the really good jobs are going to require at least a master's and in many cases a doctorate so overall I'm going to put this one into C tier next one on the list is going to be psychology degrees so psychology degrees at the associate level you're going to start off 33 000 a year mid-career pays 51 000 and meaning score is 55 percent now again uh not that many jobs for psychologists at the associate level um you know one thing you might do is paralegal like I mentioned already before you know they're not going to let you help somebody with their mental health which is an incredibly complicated thing with just an associate's level degree that would make zero sense so this one goes into F tier next one on the list is social science degrees in general and this kind of falls under the same category so let's do an example like Anthropologist for instance you know they make fifty two thousand dollars a year and if you type in Anthropologist on LinkedIn at the entry level you're going to see 865 results but here's the big problem you can't become an anthropologist with an associate's degree you can't become an anthropologist with a bachelor's degree you probably can't become an anthropologist with a master's degree you're very likely going to have to get a PhD and there's only 856 jobs available well this is going to hurt like a mother so you know this this one's really tough especially at the associate level you know it's just not going to be a good one so social science degree is at the associate level go into F tier next on the list is going to be business degrees so at the associate level you'd expect to make 50 000 starting out 85 000 mid-career pay and 52 percent meaning score now I actually have a close friend who graduated with an Associate level business degree and he started off working at a manager in a store and I believe he started as an associate manager then he worked his way up to manager then he transferred over to another store became a manager and then he finally transferred to a company that's really good and became a manager at that company and now he makes super super good money all with just an associate level Business Degree so business degrees are actually pretty good at the associate level so for instance if he became a store manager you'd expect to make about fifty one thousand dollars a year and if you type in manager on LinkedIn app entry level you're going to see one Million results so there's lots and lots of demand for people who have management skills now with business degrees there's always that question of whether it's correlation or causation and by that I mean are the types of people who would probably make more money no matter what degree they got the types of people that tend to go for business degrees because people who tend to go for business degrees are probably more likely to be interested in making money interested in becoming managers maybe even interested in starting their own businesses so there's always that question of correlation or causation and that's very difficult to actually determine now that being said you can get into project management without a degree but I think an associate's degree is going to give you a little bit of a boost there now if you're somebody who basically wants to get into a career as fast as possible and start making money as fast as possible you don't want to have to go to college you don't want to have to have a bunch of previous experience you just want to get into a career where you can make money really quickly I highly recommend looking into Tech sales so I've interviewed a bunch of different people on this channel who have gotten into Tech sales and they make really good money right off the bat so for instance Della went through the whole college process she bounced around to a bunch of different colleges she had a really bad experience overall but then she discovered Tech sales while she was still in college and she was actually just a stay-at-home mom taking college classes and she decided to take the plunge try to get into text sales and she was able to actually get in within a month and a half with over one hundred thousand dollar a year salary at her dream company and if you want to know how she did it I'll go ahead and put the free training down in the description as well as the pinned comment below and if you choose to use their Advanced plan where they'll give you training they'll put you into a community of a bunch of other people who are also trying to get into Tech sales and on top of that they will get you guaranteed interviews with their partner companies then use my code down in the description below which is Shane fifty for fifty dollars off so overall business degrees at the associates level I'll put this one into a tier and speaking of Technology degrees that's the next one on the list technology degrees at the associate level are also very good so for instance Computer Science and Mathematics is the number one degree at the associate level of course forty five thousand dollars a year starting out hundred and six thousand in mid-career pay and a forty nine percent meaning score one career path you might go down is becoming a web developer they make about seventy thousand dollars a year and if you type in web developer on LinkedIn at the entry level you will see twenty four thousand results this one absolutely goes into s tier so yeah like I said before check out that interview with Della highly highly recommend that I'll put that right here

Channel: Shane Hummus

Views: 45,185

Keywords: Shane, Hummus, Shane Hummus, college majors, college degrees, tier list, college degrees that are worth it, best college degrees, college degrees that earn the most money, useless college degrees, college degree, highest paying associate degree, best 2 year degree jobs, highest paying 2 year degrees, best associate degrees, top associate degrees, jobs with an associates degree, associate degrees that pay well, best paid jobs with an associate degree

Id: R_lyy0BPAWA

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022