 So a little bit over a year ago, I posted the video, the top five college degrees that are actually worth it and it ended up blowing up to over a million views. This video was all about which college degrees on average are going to be worth going $40,000 in debt for. And the reason I know so much about this is because I just went all the way through the college system from the bottom all the way to getting a doctorate. And for some reason people always ask me to show it, so I guess I'll go grab it really quick. 12 seconds later. All right, yeah, so yeah, this is my very expensive piece of paper. This is my doctorate. So you know these quotes, you've probably heard them. If you pick a major you love, you'll never work a day in your life because they aren't hiring. And this video really resonated with a lot of people because the cost of college, especially here in the United States, has gotten ridiculously high. So I'm somebody who has recently gone all the way through the system. I know the pros and the cons, the good and the bad, and I also have a lot of friends who have done the exact same thing. And trust me, we've talked. And a lot of people get mad at me when I talk about the college degrees that are actually worth it and leave out the ones that aren't. Whoa, whoa, whoa, listen. I know the struggle. I was in the same exact situation and I was trying to pick my college degree just a few years ago. And picking a college degree when you're just a young padawan can be one of the most frustrating decisions and it's one of the biggest decisions you're ever gonna make in your life. I understand this. I went through it just a few years ago and I can almost guarantee you if you watch this video until the end, it's going to help you make your decision. Maybe a few years ago, if I had a video like this when I was a padawan, I wouldn't have gotten sliced up with so much student loan debt. But the truth is that was one of the first videos I ever posted on this channel. I really didn't know what I was doing when it came to editing and researching and presenting or anything. And a lot has happened in the world since then. And you know, 2020 has been the worst year in all of human history. Well, you know, to be fair, ancient history was pretty bad. But anyways, after spending a year in quarantine with nothing else to do but research college degrees, I am now going to release my updated and improved list of the top five college degrees that are actually worth it. And on top of telling you the best ones, I'm going to show you how you can identify which college degrees are worth it and also how you can mercifully prod the like button. All right. So number five on the list is going to be math degrees. And this is going to make some people more confused than a cow trying to eat astroturf. Now, there are several different degrees that you can go for here, but one of them that I've talked about before is going to be actuarial mathematics. And with this major, you'd make around $61,000 a year starting out and $130,000 in mid-career pay. But there's actually a ton of different career paths. You can go down with a lot of these different math related degrees. And one really common one that I'm a big fan of is going to be data science. Now, data science is all about gathering, understanding, and interpreting data. And it's usually the type of information that is going to lead to the company making more money. This is one of the hottest careers right now because data is actually worth more than oil, believe it or not. And if you don't believe me, think about it. So let's say you're trying to sell a ferret backpack, okay? So a general audience, most people probably don't want to buy a ferret backpack. And if you showed that ad to a bunch of people, you would probably end up losing money. But what if you could show that ad only to people who have actually searched for ferret backpack in the last month? They would probably be at least 10, maybe 100, or even 1000 times more likely than the average person to buy that product. So every dollar that they were spending on ads would probably go 100 to 1000 times further. Now this is an extremely simplified example, but I think you get my point. Now on top of what I've already talked about, gathering data, making sense of it, and then figuring out what to do with that data, they're going to be doing a lot of research, coding, and communicating with other people within the company. And data scientists make around $113,000 a year. So some of the pros of being a data scientist is going to be that it's in demand. There's lots of versatility and high pay. Some of the cons of being a data scientist is mastery is nearly impossible because there's new stuff coming out all the time. There's also a large amount of knowledge required, and many people end up getting master's or even doctorates to become data scientists. And then another con is you could potentially get phased out by ageism, which is basically when you turn a certain age and the company kind of doesn't want to keep you anymore. Number four on the list is going to be business. Now one thing here is you're going to see all these videos and all these posts on Facebook about college dropouts that, you know, dropped out of college or dropped out of Harvard, and they ended up making billions like Mark Zuckerberg. And there's just one thing I want to say about that. If Mark Zuckerberg never went to college, he would have never been able to steal the idea of Facebook from somebody else who was at Harvard. Just facts. No, but seriously, whenever you hear stories like this, they're basically just that. Stories. They're exceptions to the rule because if you look at the actual statistics, 80% of millionaires have college degrees, 90% of billionaires do, and 95% of Fortune 500 CEOs also have at least bachelor level degrees. Now one degree I really like here is going to be management information systems. And with this one, you're going to make around $61,000 a year starting out and 107,000 in mid career pay. And of course, there's lots of different career paths you could go down. But one I really like is management consulting. So basically what you would do here is you'd spend a lot of time investigating a company, and then you'd make suggestions to the CEO, the management and the staff on how they can change the company with the processes, et cetera, to make it better. Now a lot of the time you're going to have senior, mid-level and junior consultants, and they are going to work with their respective people in the company. So for instance, senior consultants are going to be working with executives, mid-level consultants are going to be working with mid-level management, and then your junior consultants will be working with a lower level management. Now as a management consultant, of course the pay is going to change. It probably will take you around five years or so to get to a senior level consultant, but you will make on average around $105,000 a year. Number three on the list is going to be engineering. And I remember I got a ton of comments about this one because I put it in fifth place last year. And I also got a lot of comments saying that an engineering degree in India isn't really worth much. And I just want to say to that that these videos, this data is based here in the US. Sometimes you're going to find things that, you know, make sense in other places, but to be honest, every place is going to be different. And so you want to make sure that you do your own research. A lot of the time this information transfers well over to other countries, but sometimes it doesn't. So keep that in mind, always do your research, never believe a stranger on the internet, and also never forget to boop the like button. Now another thing I want to say here is don't light yourself on fire just to keep somebody else warm. Okay. So, you know, engineering is great if you're somebody who enjoys engineering, but if you hate math, you don't want to do engineering, then don't do it. I think there's a lot of people out there that think that the only three careers worth going into are doctor, lawyer, or engineer. And that is simply not true. In fact, a lot of those traditional careers that have classically been like the best careers you can go into, because of the fact that so many people think that they're becoming saturated. But with that being said, let's use mechanical engineering as an example, because it's one of the more flexible ones. And you would start off making around 67,000 a year and 111,000 in mid-career pay. Now there are a lot of engineering degrees that pay more than that, but mechanical is one of the most flexible ones. So you have a ton of different options in different areas that you can work. One career path you might go down is becoming a hardware engineer, and they make around $89,000 a year. Now overall, in my opinion, I think that engineering is a little bit overrated. Now that doesn't mean that it's not good. Engineering degrees are still very good. It's just that people think that engineering is a lot better than it actually is. One thing you need to be prepared for if you get an engineering degree is the fact that you will likely not work in the field of the engineering degree that you've got. So for instance, if you got a mechanical engineering degree, you're probably not going to work as a mechanical engineer. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you're prepared to work in a different career, but I think a lot of people go into engineering thinking that if they get an electrical engineering degree, they're going to work as an electrical engineer, and most of the time it doesn't turn out that way. On top of that, engineering is ridiculously hard. I lived in a scholarship hall that had 50 guys in it, and I'd say like maybe five of them were engineers, and they basically just studied all the time. And these guys were really smart. Like it didn't matter. They had to study all the time while everybody else was basically having a good time. So keep that in mind. If you go into an engineering degree, it is going to be very challenging. Next on the list, we have my personal favorite, because I chose this one, which is health degrees. Now I got to be fair, I might be a little bit biased here. I'm very passionate about health care. I became a pharmacist myself, but I'm going to try to keep my biases out of this. So one career path you might go down is becoming a physician assistant. And this is one of my favorites, you could possibly go down and they make around $108,000 a year. Now keep in mind when it comes to health care related degrees, they're a little bit weird. So usually it's not like two years, four years, six years, eight years, like other types of degrees. A lot of the time it's going to be one year, three years, two and a half years, four and a half years, just weird intervals like that. So for instance, I was able to get a doctorate in about five years and 10 months. Now this could be completely different depending on what school you go to and all kinds of other different factors, but a PA degree or physician assistant degree is going to take around six years. And PAs are basically like many doctors. You can do many of the same things that physicians do like prescribing and diagnosing, but you do have to be under one of their direct supervision. Now I have a friend who's a PA in real life, she loves the flexibility and she's actually gotten to work in multiple different specialties at once. Now that's one of the amazing things about becoming a PA because if you became a medical doctor, you'd have to go to a residency that lasts three to seven years. And if you wanted to switch specialties, you'd have to do another residency that would last three to seven years, which is probably not feasible. Now according to Glassdoor, four out of the top five paying jobs are all medical related degrees. You've got physician, pharmacy manager, dentist and pharmacist, and they all make well over six figures a year. However, all of those are doctoral level degrees. So you will have to go to school for a significant amount of time. And they're usually very, very expensive as well. But to me, the pay is not the most important thing when it comes to medical degrees. And again, I know that I'm a little bit biased here, but I just really love the fact that you can help other people and take care of people. And then on top of that, medical careers are some of the most stable that you can possibly go into. And you can see that when you look on BLS, they are growing on average about 14% over the next 10 years, which is higher than any other type of degree or career. Number one on the list is going to be of course technology. This is probably the biggest opportunity right now. One thing I like to talk about is the fire movement, which stands for financial independence, retire early. And this is basically a little subreddit of people, actually not so little anymore, but basically they try to figure out ways that they can retire early. And one thing I found when I was investigating this is a lot of the people that are involved in the fire movement are in the technology industry. And the reason for that is because they get paid so well. Sometimes I get comments on this channel saying I'm all about the money and I'm only concerned with finances. And that could not be further from the truth. The truth is I grew up in section eight housing and trailer parks. And the reason I got so passionate about personal finance is not because I'm all about the money. It's because I'm all about freedom. For me, it's all about having the freedom to live life the way I want to live life I've always dreamed of. It's never been about buying fancy cars or buying a mansion or anything like that. And that's why it makes me so happy that I have this channel to talk about personal finance and share what I've learned with people. And if I can even help one person, then it's all been worth it. But if you look at the top 10 jobs from last year on Glassdoor.com, when all rankings are considered from job satisfaction to pay, et cetera, six out of the top 10 are technology related. Now one I really like is dev ops engineer. And this is basically a type of coding job where you're responsible for getting stuff out onto the market as quickly as possible. So it's almost like a hybrid between an IT person and a coder. And basically the value of this job is, you know, a company wants to release some kind of new software and they want to test it and get all the bugs out of the way as fast as possible. DevOps engineers are basically people who can test on both sides, both the IT side as well as the coding side and get all the bugs and the glitches fixed as fast as possible. So that can get rolled out to the public quickly. And if you can even save the company a few days or even a few weeks when it comes to rolling out a new project, that can literally translate to millions of dollars. And this is why it's one of the hottest new technology careers out there. And the average person is going to make around $99,000 a year. Now, if you haven't done it already, make sure to gently boop that like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video. I'm especially curious to hear from people who have gotten degrees and they're either happy or unhappy from those. Whatever you do, make sure to not click out of the video, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.