I have a couple of co-workers who received bachelor’s degrees (previously having none) this year and am wondering how this will affect their salaries. This is the time of year when employees get merit increases (ranging from zero percent if your performance review rating is “does not meet minimum expectations” to a maximum of four percent for a rating of “significantly exceeds expectations”). Neither is formally a manager, although one is a team lead of sorts.
So I’m wondering if they will or should get an extraordinary raise, beyond the four percent maximum merit increase. I was thinking that ten percent or more seems appropriate. (Note that I am just wondering out of curiosity.)
Typically this would put them in a different category which would have a different salary range. If they were in the bottom, middle or top on their current category, they’d go to the same position in the new category.
I think that it probably depends a lot on what their job is. There are a lot of jobs that require a bachelor’s degree, and those usually come with a significant raise if you get a master’s, but I’m not at all sure that the same situation would apply with a job that doesn’t require a college degree at all.
That’s a good point. If the job doesn’t require a degree then it’s just an extracurricular as far as the job is concerned. It does make them eligible for a promotion to a different position which could come with a substantial raise.
I worked with a person who got an MBA at night at a legitimate school. She worked in the Documentation Department and the MBA didn’t help at all with that. There were no current openings in an area where the MBA would have been helpful so she didn’t get her demanded raise and quit.
It probably won’t have much of an impact. Hi, my name is Odesio, and I work in HR (thought I hate compensation). Someone who receives a bachelor’s and continues in the position they were in before is unlikely to receive a significant raise. What having a college degree does is open up new positions that might not have been available before. Being able to move into those positions is why people with degrees make more than those without (on average).
I suppose that it might also give them more leverage in a salary negotiation. “If you don’t pay me more, then now that I have this degree, I can go take a different, higher-paying job”. Though I suspect that, for most no-degree-required jobs, the boss would just say “OK, then go ahead, I’ll just hire someone new”. If the job even has any such thing as salary negotiation at all.
Thanks for the replies everyone. Both were doing their jobs before they received a degree, so to some extent, it didn’t appear to be a job requirement. But I would be annoyed if I went to all that trouble and it had no impact on my compensation. I would hope they had a discussion with management before they started the degree program.
Thinking further, I think there is a program that provides a small amount ($2500 or so) annually for course or other education. That much won’t go far if you go to a conventional private school (e.g., tuition alone at Harvard is about $60,000) but I think both went online (Western Governors University and Arizona State University).
Getting a raise for a degree while remaining in the same job only happens in a few jobs - teachers are the only ones I can think of but I suppose there might some others. It’s usually a matter of the degree making you eligible for a higher paying job - a clerk with a master’s isn’t any more valuable than he was before getting the master’s and a dispatcher at a trucking company isn’t worth any more because she got a bachelor’s. She may be worth more if she takes that degree and moves into HR or finance
I have never worked at an employer where your acquiring a degree somehow earned you a raise without you changing your job itself. If you were a shop manager making $60k a year before you got your MBA, bachelor’s, PhD or whatever, you were still a shop manager making $60k a year after you got the degrees. They didn’t care.
I had a BSEE when I started at Company, and 15 years later I started working on a master’s degree. Company paid for everything: enrollment, books, tuition, (reasonable) time off to attend classes, even having a proctor for tests. I didn’t get a pay raise or a promotion after completing my degree, just a steak dinner at a recognition event in cafeteria. It was the biggest perk that Company offered, and is now more restrictive.
When I got laid off from Company 10 years later, the master’s degree helped me land a college instructor job. That was a pay cut, but certainly a improvement in life satisfaction. At that college, getting additional degrees were big step-up levels in determining pay.
I suppose the questions is “why should they”? They are doing the same job. Did the degree enable them to do the job more effectively resulting in more revenue or lower costs?
The value of the degree is typically that it qualifies you for jobs in a higher income bracket. When I finished my MBA, the retail clothing company I worked for at their corporate headquarters didn’t just bump up my salary. My salary increased because I took Deloitte Consulting job in New York. Although I suppose I could have tried to get a management or other higher paying job at my current company, but there were other considerations.
At one of my jobs, one of the field engineers went and did a MBA from one of those online schools. The company didn’t do anything because he didn’t need it for his work.
When I was working at a government contractor there were some raises for extra certifications. You might get a 2-5% bump for getting your Professional Engineer’s license or finishing an MS, even if not moving into a new position. The purpose is that the company could advertise “we have X% of the people that would work on this contract with advanced degrees” or whatever.
At my (former) aerospace company, getting a PhD resulted in a nice raise. But if I understood the rules correctly, only for specific STEM degrees. Nothing changed when I completed my Master’s, but I got selected later for some new projects in our R&D division, and pay went up rapidly after that.
Similar here. Company paid for everything, including tuition, fees, books and even meals (on school days). I went to the most expensive private school in my state (according to local magazine) and the company never balked at paying for it.
IMO that’s a completely unrealistic expectation. The new degree helps you get your next job; it doesn’t improve your current job. Except to the degree you may be able to tell the boss “I demand a raise or I walk to my new opportunities down the street.” Which convo usually ends badly for the worker at their current job one way or another sooner or later.
ISTM that was their “raise”. The company gifted them some or all of the cost of a degree. As a couple people upthread have attested happened to them.
In my job, a degree is a requirement although it doesn’t matter what field it’s in, just that you have one. My employer will not pay for me to take an additional degree but since I work at a University, they will give me a significant reduction in fees for some specific courses.
I would not expect a salary raise simply because I got a degree whilst I was in that job, unless the degree was related to the job and my employer had made it a condition of employment - that’s a discussion to have been had with HR/line manager etc.
In my experience, an extra qualification makes you more attractive to the next employer, not the current one.