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The Street

Samanda Dorger

27 Jobs That Pay Over $60,000 a Year With Just an Associate Degree

BLS

Education can be expensive, but it has great value beyond money. A well-rounded education teaches you more than just how to do a job. It teaches you life skills, appreciation for the sciences, art, music and nature, and how to be a more informed and productive member of society. (It also teaches you why those things matter.)

But education costs money, and recent student-loan forgiveness does little to help future college students avoid the burden of costly debt.

The cost of a bachelor’s degree at a four-year institution now averages $16,647 a year for tuition and fees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But the cost of an associate degree tuition and fees averages $3,621 a year.

So a two-year degree can cost you less than $7,300 (not including room and board) but a four-year degree could cost you over $66,500. You’d also spend two more years not earning a salary. Factor in the student-loan interest over time, that can add up to a lot of money.

The median weekly earnings for someone holding an associate degree is $938 (or $48,776 a year) while a bachelor’s degree is $1,305, or $67,860 a year, according to the BLS.

Statistics do show that over their lifetime, those with bachelor’s degrees earn more--but it can depend on the job.

Having some postsecondary education, even without earning any degree, adds nearly a quarter of a million dollars to lifetime earnings, according to a report by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Getting an associate degree adds a bump of nearly $200,000 in lifetime earnings.

And about 28% of workers with associate degrees earn more than the median earnings of workers with bachelor’s degrees, the report says.

Some low-paying college majors, such as fine arts or family & consumer sciences, pay median salaries of $38,000 to $32,000, respectively. That's well below the median $67,860 for all bachelor's holders.

So which are the high paying jobs for an associate degree?

We searched the BLS to create this list of jobs that pay more than $60,000 a year and only require an associate degree. Three of them pay more than $80,000. The list includes 2021 median pay, projected growth rates through 2031, and how much (if any) on-the-job training is required. (Don't forget, on-the-job training pays you to learn.) We also added three jobs at the end that only require a high-school diploma that pay over $60,000 and even over $80,000 a year.