Someone has to know where i can find a list of the best college degree to have these days as far as getting a decent job with decent pay… thanks.
The best degree is the one you can get without wanting to shoot yourself because of the subject matter. That said, for a solid, if not *incredibly lucrative job, engineering degrees are always in demand.
do you mean most financially lucrative or most job openings?
Nursing has tons of job openings and good pay. Thats all i know.
If you can learn Ito Calculus, then a Ph.D. in finance just might be the ticket.
Ooh, that’s mean!
You might want to peruse the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook. Lots of good info in there, including salary and earnings data.
While that may be a start, one must consider the individual. If you pursue an engineering career, and it turns out that you either hate it, or are just not very good at it, you probably won’t have that rewarding a career. And, generalizing from a statistic to an individual is never reliable. One of the most successful people I know is my college roommate who got a BA in English with a 2.0 graduating GPA. He’s in advertising, and quite wealthy now.
Good luck!
I’ve taught college for many, many years. I never understood in the least questions like the OP’s.
In Computer Science, we got tons of students wanting to major in CS. (At one place, 25% of incoming freshman said they wanted to be CS majors. Um, we didn’t have an undergraduate major in CS…) Less than 5% of these people knew anything about programming, 0% knew what Computer Science was.
It’s like having 400 people a year signing up to be Math majors who can’t even do arithmetic, let alone understand the distinction between arithmetic and Math. Sheesh.
You have to look at it from an entirely different direction.
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What are you good at? What are you passionate about?
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What do you want to do after graduation?
Then look thru the career prospectus guides and find some things that match with 1 and 2. Never, ever, look at it from the point of view of “what’s going to get me the most money?” (The answer to that is simple: CEO of an oil/energy company.)
Also pay close attention to the data in links like Ringo’s. A 10% increase in jobs where there are only 10k people now is not nearly as good as 1% increase in jobs where there are already 1 million jobs.
If you want to be employable and financially comfortable then become a pharmacist.
yeah pharmacy is a good field. $40/hr is not an uncommon wage. then throw in about 25k in benefits. YOu need a masters for that though.
In my ever so humble opinion, find what you want to do. Do not approach work as " I need a good paying job" so I will go to school and do “X”. Find out what you are and then how to accomplish this. Money does not equal success. Unless you are a multi-millionaire, you spend what you make.
My Brother-in-law is/was an accademic underachiever if there ever was one.He barely graduated. he just happened to get a job in public relations for a supermarket and he is damn good at it. He is a natural bullshitter.
Point is, he basically went to school for nothing. Don’t get me wrong he will be able to write intelligently and present his ideas better, but he did not prepare for his job at school. It is just something he is naturally good at.
If you go to school and get a career for the money only to find out you hate your choice, then what are you going to do? You’ve just spent ten years to be a doctor and if you have to look at one more anus, you will puke. Then what?
Find out who you are first.
Yeah, but by studying finance ramper will have a lot of options.
I’m gonna pay for that, aren’t I?
thanks for all the help everyone. the reason i am asking this question (and btw, it is both for lucrative and most openings - either will help) is becasue my girlfriend earned her photography degree from Oregon this past spring and has been unemployed since. she loves photography with all her heart and i believe it is one of her true passions. so now, after months of having no job and spending practically all of her savings - let alone the financial debt she is in after college loans - she is misserable due to the fact that she is going to have to start looking for jobs that she could have gotten without ever even getting her photography degree. so she is now planning on going back to school for something job worthy and putting her photography to the side as merely a hobby. we just wanted to see a list of jobs that are currently almost certain to hire straight out of college and then pick from there. just one idea. just to see if anything looked worth while. thanks…
She may not have to go back to school to find a job outside of photography. My husband has a degree in psychology, and he’s worked in computers ever since he graduated. Enthusiasm in the interview goes a long way, even if you aren’t too familiar with the job itself.
Has she tried every avenue for photography, even the less obvious? My brother worked a short while as an aerial photographer. It wasn’t really a skilled photography job, as it mostly involved clicking the button on a mounted camera, but it’s photography. He does some portrait work now, though he does own a franchise and that’s where most of his income comes from.
What about small newspapers, catalogs, advertising firms, magazines or wedding photography? I can tell her from experience that it’s not worth going to school for a job that only pays well. I’m a computer programmer, and I hate it but it pays well. But what I like to do is write. I love it, in fact, and the miniscule writing income I get means far more to me than the programming salary I make.
I think DeadlyAccurate may be on target. (Heh, heh.) I’ve always been told that for a lot of jobs a degree is what matters, not what it is in. That’s obviously not true accross the board, but depending on the circumstances she may do okay.
No matter what the case, however, I don’t think that taking marketability into the decision is a bad thing. Folks talk about doing what you love, but they never mention the myriad people who end up getting royally fucked when they can’t turn what they love into a viable career. It is not a bad decision to shoot for a high probability career you can live with or even enjoy a little instead of going for a low probability career that will most likely tank and leave you in the shitter.
Besides, you may never really know how much you hate something until you make it a career. Things come with a lot of baggage. You may love gardening but that doesn’t mean that running a greenhouse won’t be hell on earth. 
i was looking at an associates in engineering technology not too long ago. that is a 2 year degree. she may hate it though.
there are alot of 1 and 2 year degrees she can look at if she wants a job. In some of the 2 year degrees if she buckles down and does more coursework she may be able to graduate in 1.5 years.