I don’t think there’s much you can do with an Associate’s degree, but that is where I’m stopping my education due to lack of money and motivation. When I get out there in the real world am I basically screwed? Would it have been better to not get the Associates’s and started working after high school?
If you are not motivated, that is indeed where you should stop.
Noone should go to college if they are not motivated to take advantage of it and be an active participant in their own education. Otherwise, its just wasting your time and everyone elses.
Look at it this way: you can always go back to school later if you find your motivation.
And more education is ALWAYS better than less. You are better educated and hence more productive than your peers with only a HS diploma or GED. Employers will give you a degree of preference because of this.
The number 1 reason I’m not motivated is because of a series of Math classes I must take to transfer to a university. I just dropped the 2nd semester of a 4 semester math sequence because I received an F on the first test. I would love to get a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, but it’s this college Algebra that’s holding me back. I’m going to give it another shot in the Spring while subsequently taking an easier Math that I know I can pass to get my Associate’s degree.
No, you’re not screwed, depending on your field and where you live (i.e., you can be a nurse with an associates in most states, but there are a few, like North Dakota, where you need a bachelors). An associates degree is usually a very focused course of study. A bachelors degree includes a healthy dose of liberal arts along with some advanced and more specialized study in your field. It supposedly gives you a more well-rounded education.
Your best bet is to compare requirements for both degrees. You’ll see that your Associates degree has probably covered most, if not all of the course work required in the first 2-3 years of bacclaureate study except for the liberal arts component.
Think of it this way: There’s a pile of resumes a boss is looking at. Your resume will look better than someone with no Associates Degree. It won’t look as good as someone with a Bachelors.
But that is quite general. If it’s an Associate in HVAC, then clearly there won’t be any Bachelors in HVAC to worry about. Etc.
I earned an associates degree in mainframe programming in 1988 at the age of 34. Prior to that, my so-called career had been a depressing series of service and sales jobs that kept me just above the subsistence level. Since then, I have have enjoyed seventeen years of continuous employment at ever-increasing salaries. I have achieved a standard of living I didn’t think was possible twenty years ago. It is clear to me that I always had the aptitude to do what I’m doing now, but the degree was my ticket to an entry-level job in my field. I think this is true of most technical associates degrees. A technical degree in a specific field can do you a lot of good, but a general, non-technical one will help only in the way described by ftg above. IMO, a technical associates degree will lead to more opportunities than a BS in psychology. I think you need at least an MS to do much in that field. Isn’t there a career counseling office at your school? That’s how I got my first programming job.
I am presently interviewing canidates for a CAD design position and am giving preferance to people with associate degrees over people with bachelors degrees. People with Bachelors degrees tend to be concerned about thier corporate upward mobility in engineering type jobs. You get them trained and then they move on after a year or two. People with associate degrees tend to stick around and do the job for a longer term and like becoming experts in a focused technology.
I generally don’t consider people without an associates degree, but thier are exceptions because I recognize that not everyone has had the same opportunities. Someone with a high school education and lots of work experiance and referances can sometimes be the best fit. But that is an exception, generally I just toss non-degreed resumes.
An associate degree is typically less study than a minor in the same field from a 4 year school. I don’t know if that tells you anything.
However, I am mystified by people dropping out of college because of basic Algebra. I’m honestly starting to think that it’s the amount of homework in math classes - the classical math education system is just not fitting a lot of people. Maybe if math classes concentrated on having students understand the concept rather than the stupid repetition that tries to teach math as skill… grumble I think 99% of people have inherent abilities to grasp enough math to pass vector calculus and ordinary differential equations, it’s just there’s no place for them to apply those abilities the way only they can.
I don’t mean to be an ass, but, come on! College Algebra is holding you up? And, why on earth would you take a class you already know you can pass? What good is that going to do? Go back and take the Algebra class and park your butt in the instructor’s office till you get it. You are never going to get that Bachelor’s degree with such a defeatist attitude. The main point of a degree is not to learn a bunch of obscure facts ( well, maybe it is a little bit ) but to show a future empolyer that you are willing to apply yourself. So get in there and apply yourself.
Wow… I have finally turned into my dad.
That’s true, but it’s worth remembering that “education” doesn’t always equal a formal schooling environment. I’m a college flunk-out (like the OP I had no motivation) and I now earn about double what a graduate with a BS in my field can expect to make at their first job, and I’m 25 years old. The most valuable stuff that I learned was all self-taught and on-the-job experience, and I’ve been able to advance very quickly because I was willing to constantly learn new things. That sort of thing is more do-able in some fields and not others, though. It doesn’t work if you want to be a surgeon, for example. 
Oh, and I second the notion that college algebra is worth it. I can understand trying out integral calculus and not getting it, but basic algebra is a skill that every functioning adult should have.
Uncle Rogelio kinda has a point, but I think he’s missing a big one. Math skills are cumulative. If you are not ready for this Algebra class, it is most likely because you need more background in the skills that build up to it. So taking the math class you can pass accomplishes 2 things: it gets you your associates degree and helps prepare you for the Algebra class.
I rarely if ever took a class that I thought I could wind up failing (as in getting an F). I was already pretty confident I’d get an A through a C. Build up your math skills on easier classes then tackle the algebra. Also, make sure you take the class with someone who is a good teacher, not just good at math. Don’t take the class if the the prof has an accent you find hard to understand.
I have a bachelor’s in Psychology, and I would agree you may want to rethink that goal. What exactly do you want to do with it? Because unless you have something specific in mind within the very few Social Services jobs you can actually get with a Bachelors degree in Psych, it will just move your resume up in the pile, but won’t actually qualify you for much. I wound up getting a Masters in something else, and am currently working toward a PhD in yet another field, to let you know how useful my B.S. in Psychology from a very good school was. [Note: I did learn a ton of really interesting stuff, and it definitely helped me get into and succeed in grad school].
What can **you ** do with an Associates degree? You can probably get a slightly better job than you could have with just a H.S. degree. Get some experience, develop knowledge of yourself, your interests & strengths, the variety of jobs that are out there, and come back to school in a couple years.
I second what Crotalus said. If you can get an associates in a trade - any trade that involves labor - you may well do just fine. I landed in telecommunications and I’m sometimes a bit embarrassed to tell people how much I make with no 4-year degree. To make matters worse, upper management here likes to refer to me as a network engineer even though I have no engineering degree.
Now, not everybody can fall upstairs like this; I am sure I was helped by many years of electronics tinkering which helped me decide to enroll in a 2-year electronics school. But if you can take a skill that you already have and get schooled in it, you may do just fine.
Oh by the way, algebra comes in quite handy from time to time. Especially if you end up in a technical trade. Try seeking out an algebra tutor. I had a tought time learning it in a classroom setting, but the moment a tutor helped me and showed me how to apply algebra in real-world situations, I soaked it up like a sponge.
True.
The first half of my nursing career was with a AD. I’m still not sure the other two years to get my BSN were worth the time or money.
I have my Associates degree from an art school, where I majored in animation and multimedia design. It’s a very specialized field and I had a helluvatime landing a job, but now that I have one, I’m better paid, happier, and have better benefits than most of my bachelored friends.
The downside is that I’ll probably never end up in management, where the big bucks are. By the end of our careers, my more-educated friends will probably have better jobs with more money and the like. It just depends on what you want to do.
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People with this stereotypical attitude are keeping good people like me unemployed. I am told over and over again that I am “overqualified”. I don’t know what makes them think I’ll “move on” - if I’m moving on it’s becuase they have not offered me the opportunity to move UP in their company. I’ve been at the bottom before, that’s how I got where I am now - by moving up becuase of what I could bring to a practice. I don’t mind being at the bottom again, becuase I assume I will once again move to the top becuase of my merits.
I’m basically being punished because I’ve had the audacity to try and educate myself, rise to challenges, and improve my skills.
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One thing…
Many, many universities offer both a B.A. and a B.S. in psychology, mine included. I’m on the B.A. track in English, with double minors in psychology and religion, and only had to have one semester of math. FWIW I chose “Elementary Statistics Using Excel” and found it to be “easier” than college algebra. Typically the B.A. track trades the math for a foreign language, so I DO have to have quite a bit of Spanish.
Truth be told, I’ve also found statistics to be infinintely more useful in psychology. Much of the material crosses over.
That said, psychology involves quite a bit of math, including algebra, so you might re-think the goal if you’re uncomfortable with it.
You will find that, with the jobs you can get with either an Associates or a Bachelors in Psychology, when the ad says, “degree required,” they often don’t care which degree you have as long as you have one. To illustrate the value of a degree or its relevance sometimes, I had a technical job once where my boss told me that my degree ahd put me ahead of the other candidates. “But my degree is in Anthropology!”
“Doesn’t matter. It showed you could stick to a goal for four years.”
That was your problem in a nutshell: you were just practicing. 