7 High-Paying Jobs You Can Get Without a 4-Year College Degree

A lot of ICU nurses go after CRNA degrees to double their salary. I just think that's too much school, 4 years to become a nurse then 2 years ICU experience and then 2 more for the CRNA program, **** that.
Right now I'm pushing my high school son to become an interventional radiologist. He has a 5.11 gpa, all AP classes and will graduate with an associate's degree and be certified as an emt and pharmacy tech.

 

Unless you are just terrible with your money you can pay it off pretty easily. There are also programs that will pay off your debt if you work at some hospitals.

 

I agree but it's a lot harder to raise a family, have a home, etc. before 40. That's what I was getting at.

 

you must be at least in your 60's

 

Nah, I'm about the same age as clutch. My first year at Texas was 600 bucks. My older siblings paid 200. The conditional law that allowed Texas schools to charge more than than 4 dollars a credit was changed in the late 80s.

 

...and then the same people complain and whine about all the high level high paying tech and non-tech jobs going to Asians that go on to complete their 4 year degree and then some. lol you cant have it both ways!

While you will be stuck making 60-80k in your trade job with limited opportunities and limited upward mobility, those Asians will soon be making 120-150k+

Ask an Asian family (Chinese or Indians) what they think about higher education? And then see how their demographic is doing in this country. These people are doing well because they understand the value of higher education. Finishing a 4 year college degree is a bare minimum requirement for them in their families.

Hey, if you cant do it or cant afford to do it, then thats fine. You are free to make your own choices. But dont try to hold everyone else back lol.

You want to work in high paying jobs? In most cases you better bring a good college education with you or you are going to be left behind.

Let me give an example of one of the companies I worked for: We had positions for non-college and Associate degree folks with salaries ranging from 35k-70k. This pool always had a high number of applicants. Why? Because all these guys that didnt go to college wanted a shot at a relatively high paying job for a non-degree position. We also had positions for Bachelor's degree and higher education with salaries ranging from 50k-150k, not including higher management which was higher of course. This pool had no where near the number of applicants as the first pool. Because there are a lot more people that did not go to college applying in the first pool that qualifies people applying in the second pool. Lower pay with limited salary ceiling and higher competition vs higher pay with higher ceiling and less competition. Also, the non-degree folks held on to their jobs for years. Not as many opportunities. The ones with degree, they had plenty of outside opportunities, which is why they had a higher turnover rate.

Using jobs like Air Traffic controllers as an example is misleading people. How many air traffic controller jobs are out there?? lol . Yeah I guess you dont need to go to college because can make millions in the NBA as a bball player *laugh*

US is a superpower because of tech and R&D. If people start abandoning higher education, we are going to be left behind.

Having said that, I understand that not everyone can go to college and succeed. Sometimes you have to honestly assess yourself. Am I disciplined to go to college? Am I financially responsible to go to college? Am I academically prepared to go to college? You should have been spending your middle school and high years years preparing yourselves so that you can answer yes to all this. If you have been slacking off or are not smart enough to go to college, then stop before throwing your money away. Or If you take out a $100k loan to go to 4 years in college to study pool management, then you are a dumbass that should not be going to college to begin with.

 

^^ ur mom goes to college

 

The OP's commentary is garbage and betrays their own sense that college is the province of non-minorities, like that mom who called the cops on that native American kid during the college tour because, as per the criminal statute "he definitely didn't look like he belonged there."

That having been said, It's good to see this or any meaningful career information online. I believe that the most valuable tool around that didn't exist when I was first looking for career roles twenty years ago is Linkedin. Not for the fake-job posting, contact mining piece of crap headhunters; or for the posts from undergrads "pleased to announce their being honored to have been privileged to have been selected as an incoming summer intern for RSM McGladrey," but because seeing the actual position history of people in desirable roles, particularly in your home town job market, can help individuals determine if college is necessary for your desired career path.

Major is less important for getting a decent office job than social, gender and class affinity with the hiring managers, or a narrow enough focus to aggressively pursue specific roles: by applying for an insane amount of the exact same type of job, or by networking through industry and non-profit events.

 

Damn! That is a lot. I barely got by doing the minimum and my GPA wasn't even in the top 25%.

FWIW MD Anderson has some radiology education programs. I don't think it's a normal four year degree (I know they don't teach History/English/etc there) but it is a degree of some kind. Just mentioning it because I don't know if they are widely-known.

Anyway, congrats on your son. He's accomplished a lot already.

 

If you consider half a million dollars in cash merely finance... Te salut, Air Langhi.

Spoiler

 

6000-8000$ bi-weekly for 120-140 hours is nothing special

 

For people with a dead end social degree (comm and psychology), tech has been hungry training apt people to fill positions. This ranges from business analyst, data analyst, scrum master, and quality analyst.

No coding boot camps necessarybut prepare to work your ass off for the first few years.

Those salaries bottom out in the low 100s in the west coast if you make it past the initiation.

To get your foot in, might have to do a year of support or other foot in the door role. That might be sucker status for well pedicured baristas.

 

You can go to the page that published state of TX employee salaries and find out how much the RTTs at MD Anderson are making. The numbers he quoted are pretty accurate for us up here in WA. RTT is pretty low stress compared to MD.

 

Awesome to see others on the board.

 

a few more advantages to be an RTs :

• you will be scheduled on call 24 hours , but highly unlikely you will be ever called for spinal decompression treatment procedure & it would still be counted toward your working hours
• if glitches to the system caused delays which happens so often, you get paid overtimes regularly
• unlike other medical jobs, its laid back neat semi regular working hours occupation

 

What is RT? A Putin troll bot?

Are people makin bank at the D&D?

 

Respiratory Therapist. There's a bunch of decently paying healthcare jobs that aren't well publicized like RT, perfusionist, PT/OT, speech therapist.

 

Trade schools are some of the best schools for ROI. One our biggest failures as society is adding a stigma to trade schools that implies they are somehow less valuable or somehow inferior to 4 year colleges.

By the way, If you are looking for a good career I would suggest getting your A&P license if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty and you like airplanes. You can get your license in 2 years and always have a job as long as you are willing to move and work odd hours. The pay is good to great depending on how good you are and if you manage to land a job with an airline. Even if you stay in general aviation you can make a very good living.

If you land a job with an airline you will eventually make in excess of 100K a year. Benefits are very good as well.

 

I've met so many people disillusioned coming from boot camps and/or self study that think they should be making 100k off the bat in non-West Coast locations.

I'll say most good places won't hire you without a CS degree, most places won't look at your resume without a bootcamp. Its definitely not an easy path and to even make it to a big west coast tech company without a CS degree, you're going to need to build up your resume at boring companies.