 What's happening guys? Hello there. So this is another highly requested video. Today we're going to be going over the master's degree tier list. We're going to be talking about the best and the worst master's degree from a personal finance perspective. Which ones are going to be worth the student loans that you're going to have to take out for them? And if you appreciate this type of content, as always, smash the like button, you must help with the algorithm, it will. First one on the list we're going to talk about is going to be an art related master's degree. So this one could be a degree in drama or film or art history. Now for a lot of these, I'm going to talk about the debt to income ratio. It's tough to say for this one, but I can pretty much say that it's not going to be that great. Now a lot of people end up going for an art related master's degree just simply because of the fact that they can't find a job with a bachelor's degree. Then the counselors at the school tell them that they should go back to school, spend even more money and even more time getting a master's level degree and that's how they'll be able to get a job. A lot of the time this is not going to work out for them, they're just going to end up even deeper in debt. I've talked about this before, how higher education in a lot of different circumstances is very similar to what's known as a pyramid scheme. The only people that end up making money are the very few lucky ones that end up at the very top. These are going to be the top level people at the very top of the university structure of course and then there's also going to be professors that are right under them. Then they convince more suckers, I mean students that they too can become professors and of course almost none of them do because that would make no sense whatsoever considering a lot of the lecture halls are like one professor to a hundred students. This one is going to go into F tier, F for you're probably not going to get paid to make fan art. Next one on the list is going to be an acupuncturist or a natural medicine doctor. Now the debt to income ratios, I took all of them from studentloanplanner.com which is a really good resource for people who are really deep in student loans. They basically work with those who have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans and they're trying to get out of debt. So realize that these numbers, the debt to income ratio is likely higher than the reality just because of the fact that the people who tend to seek out these types of services are those that are much deeper in debt. Don't pay so much attention to the actual number itself, pay more attention to the relationship between the different numbers. So for acupuncturists, natural medicine doctors, the debt to income ratio is 4.6 to one. Now believe it or not, there are many schools out there that will charge students $50,000 a year in order to learn this stuff. A debt to income ratio of 4.6 to one more or less means that if you had a job that let's say made $100,000 a year, that means you'd be $460,000 in debt. That of course is a very simplified way of explaining it. Most of the time, they're probably not gonna be making $100,000 a year. Now to put this in perspective, I don't ever recommend going over a three to one debt to income ratio. The only time that would ever be okay is if you're going into a career where you're gonna be making a ton of money. So if you're gonna become like a neurosurgeon, for instance, who makes over $600,000 a year, you're gonna have so much disposable income that it doesn't really matter how far you go into debt. You're still gonna be able to pay it off. Realistically, I wouldn't recommend ever going over three to one debt to income ratio and you probably wanna stay under two to one. Now all of this is for a career that's so bad that it's not actually officially listed on BLS. The closest I could find on BLS is naturopathic physicians make around $75,000 a year. And this is for the ones who are actually able to find a job as many of them aren't. I have a cousin that went into this. He became a naturopath, like a natural medicine doctor. He was not able to find a job. He tried for years. He was never able to even get an entry level job. He eventually gave up after trying to get a job in multiple different states and he went into a business related career instead. He doesn't ever plan on paying off the insane amount of student loans that he's racked up. He's just gonna do the minimum payment basically forever. Now in terms of the numbers, this one is by far the worst on the entire list. Like I don't even think F tier is low enough for this one. We probably need to just create another tier that is just dedicated to this one specifically. But I'll be nice and put this one into F tier. F for absolutely awful investment, please do not do this one. Next one on the list is going to be becoming a college professor. Now this one is gonna have a 1.8 to 1 debt to income ratio. Now it's gonna be pretty tough to become a college professor with only a master's level degree. A lot of the time you're gonna have to get a doctorate. However, there are some community colleges and smaller universities where you can become a professor with just a master's. College professors are gonna make around $79,000 a year on average. There is 1.3 million jobs available and it's growing at 11%. Now with a master's level degree, you're probably gonna make less than the $79,000 a year that's listed because most of them are gonna have doctorates. Additionally, it's pretty difficult to get into academia. I mean, think about it. A professor is gonna teach hundreds and hundreds of students a year on any given subject. How many of those students are gonna be able to become professors themselves? Not many. Many people who go into academia, who go the PhD route for instance, end up realizing that it's very similar to a pyramid scheme. And by that, I mean the only ones who make really good money are the ones who are at the very top. So you've basically got teachers teaching teachers, how to teach teachers, how to teach teachers, how to teach teachers, how to teach teachers, and so on. Now if you don't believe me, check out the subreddit, our grad school, where they talk about this sort of thing all the time. One comment read, one of the funniest, most depressing parts of this sub is how many of us have independently come to the conclusion that academia is a pyramid scheme slash scam. Still, this isn't one of the worst on the list. There's others on this list that are actually quite a bit worse, believe it or not. Now if you are able to make it as a professor and get tenure, this one actually can be pretty sweet depending on your goals. Just make sure that you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. This one is going to go into C tier. C for don't get caught into a pyramid scheme. Next one on the list is going to be data science. Now this is one that's very popular in the comments section of my videos. A lot of people talk about this one and it's definitely one of the better options on the list. Data science is going to be all about the processes, algorithms, et cetera, that are responsible for managing and collecting digital data. This one has a 1.5 to one debt to income ratio which isn't too bad. Now data science is complicated enough that for the most part, a lot of people end up getting master's level degrees in order to work as a data scientist. Now this is a relatively new field. However, there is a lot of opportunity. One example is you could become a computer and information research scientist for instance. They get paid around $122,000 a year. There's 31,000 jobs available and it's growing at 16% which is much faster than average. This one is really good, especially for a master's level degree. I'm gonna go ahead and put it into S tier, S for superb. Next one on the list is going to be an MBA also known as a master's of business administration. So out of all the ones on this list, I'd say this is the toughest one to rank just because there's so many different factors that go into ranking this one. There's just a lot of different things to talk about here. There's so many MBA programs out there these days. It's almost like you can get an MBA in a cracker box and this has decreased the worth of the MBA in my opinion by quite a bit. However, if you get an MBA in combination with another really good degree, it sends a signal to hiring managers and bosses. You're someone who at least wants to become a leader. I've talked about this before, but management, leadership positions, they tend to make a lot more than the equivalent, a normal type of position. Now there's a lot to say about this one. I'd probably have to make an entire video on its own. You want to be careful what program you go to. You want to make sure that you don't go to one of those scammy for profit programs. But overall, all things being equal, I'm going to go ahead and put this one into A tier. A for acceptable risk. Next one on the list is going to be another very common degree that you see at the master's level, which is going to be a master's level education degree. So you're going to see these types of degrees in high schools, for instance. The debt to income ratio here is not very good. It's about 2.5 to one, which is really high, especially considering the fact that you're not going to be making that much as a teacher. As a teacher, you can expect to make around $61,000 a year. There's one million jobs available, and it's only growing at 4%, which is average. This is all teachers, though, and most of them only have a bachelor's level degree, so you'd likely make a little bit more than this with a master's level degree. Still, this one isn't that great. I'm going to go ahead and put it into C tier. C for college professors still get paid better. Next one on the list is going to be nurse practitioner. Now this one right now is a master's level degree, but within the next few years, they're going to be phasing it in a lot of states into a doctoral level degree. This is one of my favorite degrees, and it's very similar to MD or medical doctor where you can diagnose, you can prescribe, but you weren't going to have as many of the downsides of being a medical doctor. This one has a 1.3 to one debt to income ratio, which isn't bad at all. Nurse practitioners are going to make around $115,000 a year. There's 240,000 jobs available, and they're growing at 26%, which is much faster than average. These are incredible stats to say the least. This is a great one. This one is going to easily go into S tier. S for six figure salary without having to sell your soul. Next one on the list is going to be occupational therapist, and they basically help people that are injured to fulfill their daily routines and roles. Now this one has a very nasty 3.2 to one debt to income ratio. The numbers on this one are pretty good though. You make around $84,000 a year. There's 133,000 jobs available, and it's growing at 18%, which is much faster than average. Another interesting note here is this one has some of the highest job satisfaction or meaning score as they call it on pay scale out of all the jobs that I've studied. It comes in at 89%. So as long as you're smart about it, you don't go to one of those mill schools that charge you a ridiculous amount of money. You can definitely make this one work. This one is going to go into B tier, B for best job satisfaction on the list. Next one on the list is going to be a master's level psychology degree. And if you've watched any of my videos, you know what my opinion is on this one. Psychology is one of the biggest degree traps out there. So many people find this subject interesting. They end up majoring in it. They get a bachelor's level degree and they cannot find a job. Because of that, they end up going back to school getting their master's. Sometimes they even get a doctoral level degree just to be able to find a decent job. Now on this one, there is a 3.2 to one debt to income ratio. Psychologists can expect to make around $80,000 a year. There's 181,000 jobs available and it's growing at 14%, which is much faster than average. This is a master's level degree though, not the doctoral level degree that's mentioned on BLS. And so you'll probably make quite a bit less than $80,000 a year. And making a low wage like that, it's going to be very difficult for you to pay off all of those student loans, especially if it's a 3.2 to one debt to income ratio. Now there is a legitimate need in the world for mental health professionals. I do think that it's still a bit saturated here in the US just because of the fact that so many people are going and getting that bachelor's level psychology degree. However, at the master's level, if you plan it out, if you know what you're getting yourself into, you're not surprised when you go to school and you find out that you have to get a master's or a doctorate in order to get a job, this one can be okay. I'm going to be nice here. I'm going to go ahead and put this one into C tier. C for be very careful here because this is a very popular one. There's tons of horror stories out there of people getting masters and doctoral level degrees and still not being able to get a job. Next is going to be physician assistant. Another one of my favorites on the list, physician assistants are basically like mini doctors. They do have to practice under a doctor. However, they can do a lot of the same things that the doctor does as long as they have the medical doctor's permission and they don't have nearly the amount of stresses to deal with. They have a 2.1 to one debt to income ratio which isn't too bad. They're going to make around $112,000 a year. There's 118,000 jobs available and it's growing at an astonishing 31%. These are incredible numbers to say the least. With a healthy salary like that, you should be able to pay off your loans, no problem. This one is going to go into S tier, S for safety career if you don't get accepted to med school. Just kidding, I actually think this one's a better choice than MD for a lot of people out there. Next is going to be speech language pathologist. Another one in the medical field, they basically help people that have communication and swallowing disorders. This one does have a nasty 2.7 to one debt to income ratio that's a little bit high on the list especially since they don't get paid as much as some of the other medical related degrees. You can expect to make around $79,000 a year. There's 153,000 jobs available and it's growing at 27% which is much, much faster than average. That's ridiculous. So the pay isn't that great but this is another one that has really high job satisfaction and with that much demand you can expect to get higher pay in the future. Overall, again, as long as you make sure you go to a school that isn't going to charge you like $50,000 a year, something crazy like that, you should be okay with this one. I'm going to go ahead and put this one into B tier, B for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next one on the list is going to be a science related masters level degree. So this is going to be basically any science related degree where you go on to get a masters. So biology, chemistry, these would be two common examples. In my opinion, not all STEM degrees are created equally. Out of the four, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM is definitely the least good when it comes to personal finance, how much money you can actually make. Many people end up having to go to grad school, get a masters or even a doctoral level degree because they can't find a job with their bachelor's level science degree. This is becoming more and more common. A lot of people don't think this is going to happen because it is technically a STEM degree but it's happening a lot. Still, this one can end up being pretty decent. You definitely want to plan this one out. Don't go into it blind. I'm going to go ahead and put this one into B tier, B for it can be worth it if you're a bookworm. Next one on the list, I'm going to do the masters in social work. This is another one that a lot of psychology grads go into. The debt to income ratio here is 3.5 to one. That's one of the worst on the list. And it's especially bad considering that they don't get paid a very good salary. They make around $50,000 a year and there's 700,000 jobs available and it's growing at 11%. So yeah, the salary's pretty low there. The other stats are all right. So another one of those careers, kind of like teachers where I think that they should get paid more but unfortunately they don't. So yeah, I have to be fair here. I'm going to go ahead and put this one into D tier, D for the debt to income ratio is awful. Next one on the list is going to be liberal arts, social science, humanity related master level degrees. So this is one where you'd get a master's level degree in something like sociology or anthropology or one of my favorite subjects, which is history. Now again, it's hard to say what the debt to income ratio is because there's just so many degrees out there but generally speaking, most of these are not going to be worth it. There are a few exceptions of course but for the most part, this one is not worth it. It's going to go into F tier, F for fapoleon. Next one on the list is going to be technology, engineering and mathematics related master level degrees. So these are some degrees that actually can be worth it. And the reason for this is because the technical skill, the technical knowledge that you need to know in some industries does require a master's or a graduate level degree. At least it does in many cases. There are quite a few math or engineering jobs out there that are higher level and they want you to have a master's level degree. So this one is going to go into A tier, A for above average, especially if you're a straight A student or a nerd, you might as well keep going to school because that's what you're good at, right? 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