 is an information technology degree worth it. That's what we're gonna be talking about today, but before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers, and opportunities that are gonna lead you to success. And we also go over some of the common traps that so many people fall for. Now if you're new here and that sounds like something you'd be interested in and you haven't done it already, go ahead and hit that subscribe button, ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. And with that out of the way, let's jump right into it. Is an information technology degree worth it? Now information technology is basically the maintenance of hardware and software systems that are used to communicate information electronically. So these are the people that would be installing software and all the computers within a hospital or a business. They would also be conducting trainings, making sure that everybody knows how to use the software. They'd also be replacing and upgrading old computers when their hardware isn't good anymore. They'd be doing all kinds of troubleshooting, dealing with bugs, glitches in the system. And there's all kinds of different career paths that you can go down with this one. You can become an IT manager. You can become an IT specialist. You could go into the programming route and become a computer programmer. Now about 9,000 people graduate with a bachelor's degree in information technology every year. However, this is a little bit misleading just because of the fact that there's a lot of IT related careers that you can get into without a bachelor level degree. There's also a lot of certifications that you can get so that you're specialized in certain areas of IT. So it's definitely not cut and dry, but just to keep things simple in this video, I'm mostly going to talk about getting a bachelor level degree in IT and the careers that that would lead to. So with an information technology degree, you could expect to make around $56,000 a year starting out and mid-career pay would be around 93,000. Now that's pretty good overall, but it's honestly a little bit on the lower side when you compare it to a lot of the other technology related careers. Now careers related to information technology in general make around $88,000 a year according to BLS, which is about twice as much as the average of all occupations, which is 39,000 a year. One career path you could go down is becoming a network and computer systems administrator and they make around 83,000 a year and that's just with a bachelor level degree. Another career path you could go down is becoming an information security analyst and they make around $99,000 a year and that's with a bachelor level degree as well, although you'll likely need a little bit more work experience. Now there are a ton of other career paths that you can go down, especially in the technology industry. For instance, you see IT graduates becoming computer programmers and most of these careers are relatively high paying, although I will say that IT tends to pay a little bit less than a lot of the other technology related careers. Next we're gonna talk about satisfaction and I have to admit this is extremely subjective. What one person might absolutely love is a career, another person might hate. So this is extremely subjective but I try to do my best to break this down in such a way where it makes sense. Now when it comes to satisfaction I like to talk about two different areas which is job satisfaction and that's basically how much you enjoy doing the job itself that this degree would lead to and then the other area is meaning and that is how much you think your career is positively impacting the world. So when it comes to meaning, technology related careers and degrees tend to be pretty average, sometimes slightly below average. So for instance, information technology has about a 45% meaning score which basically means that 45% of the people think that their job significantly positively impacts the world and when you look at one career path you could go down like network system analyst, they have a job satisfaction score of about 71% which means 71% of people are satisfied with their career. That is above average and a lot of the technology related careers do tend to be above average when it comes to job satisfaction. Now another thing I like to talk about when it comes to happiness or satisfaction with your career is how flexible it is and by this I mean let's say that you plan on being a database administrator and then a few years into your job you think it's really boring and you wanna switch careers. How easy would it be for you to switch careers into something that also pays really well but would be better for you? Now one common problem that you see with technology related degrees is that they're a little bit too specific. So for instance, there's technology related degrees that are like printing technology. Now printing technology is extremely specific. You're learning something that's very niche and it's important in that field but outside of that field you might not be able to translate the skills that you learned. Information technology tends to be a little bit more general which is a good thing. This means that there's a lot of different career paths that you can go down with an information technology degree. Now in order to head your bets it would probably be a good idea for you to learn some computer programming on the side. It's also not a bad idea to learn some business related skills as well so that you can help the businesses that you work for. But overall I would go ahead and rank this one eight out of 10 for satisfaction. So next on the list we're going to be talking about demand and in my opinion this is probably the most important out of the four categories. Now BLS shows that technology related careers over the next 10 years are gonna grow at about 11%. This is two to three times as much as the average career and so that's really good. This means that there would be about half a million new jobs, 530,000 or so over the next 10 years. So for instance, a network and computer systems administrator has about 373,000 jobs available right now. It's growing at 4% which is average and that means over the next 10 years there's gonna be 16,000 new jobs created. When it comes to an information security analyst there's 131,000 jobs available right now. It's growing at a ridiculous 31% which is much, much faster than average meaning over the next 10 years there's gonna be 40,000 new jobs created. Now these are great numbers overall and you see that technology related degrees in general tend to have a lot of demand. So for instance, when you type in information technology degree into monster.com you see that 169,000 jobs have that listed as a keyword in the job listing. Whereas if you type in archeology degree only 409 jobs have that keyword listed. Combine this with the fact that IT is a relatively general degree. It's not super specific which is one of the weaknesses of a lot of the technology related degrees and that means this one has a ton of demand. It's very, very good when it comes to demand. I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a 9.5 out of 10. Now next on the list we're gonna be talking about X factors and this is another one that's extremely subjective and there's a ton of different things that go into this. So one thing that people always ask when it comes to X factors is automation. Is this career going to be automated? Are the skills that you're learning going to be automated as well? Well, when it comes to a network and computer systems administrator Willrobotstakemyjob.com thinks that there's only about a 3% chance that it's going to be automated. I tend to agree with this. A lot of technology related careers probably will not be automated. On top of this it would be very hard to outsource an information technology career as well. A lot of the time these people have to be basically in the business itself. They need to be present in the business in order to carry out a lot of the things such as installations or setting up computers. A lot of the time they'll be in offices communicating with people when a bug pops up or some kind of troubleshooting needs to be done. So there's pretty much no way that this one is going to be automated and there's a very small chance that this is going to be outsourced. Also with an IT degree you can get hired by just about any business out there in any industry and so it's extremely flexible and you can get hired by tons of different people. There's a very good chance that you'll be working in the technology industry which is one of the best industries out there. There's tons of opportunity, there's tons of growth within the technology industry and so you will have a lot of opportunity for advancement. Your job will likely not be automated. In fact, you might be the one automating other people's jobs. On top of that I think it would be relatively easy for somebody who has IT skills to transition into other careers where the pay is even better. So for instance, you could transition into becoming a software developer, you could move up into higher positions within a company or you could even go off and start your own business within the industry after you've gotten some experience under your belt. Technology related skills in general are very highly valued as well. Zip recruiter did an index where they basically kind of figured out all the skills that tend to lead to high paying jobs and information technology as a skill was one of the highest paying skills. It ended up with a score of 84 out of 100. That was one of the highest on the list and so that just goes to show information technology as a skill is extremely valuable. So overall I would rate this a nine out of 10 when it comes to X factors. So when it comes to the pros for this degree it's gonna lead to a very flexible career path. So let's say you go into the technology industry, there's a bunch of different career paths that you can take. You're not just stuck in one single career path which would kind of be bad if you decided for some reason that you didn't like being an IT guy. On top of that you're gonna be learning extremely valuable skills. We are in the age of automation, technology is huge right now. Getting good at technology, learning technology related skills is basically the best thing that you can possibly do. You can also work in just about any business out there or any industry. This means that you likely won't have to move anywhere in order to get your first job. You'll probably be able to find a job wherever you want to. Cons here is the pay is gonna be kind of mediocre when it comes to a lot of the technology related careers. It's still pretty good, but overall it's kind of mediocre. The meaning here is also going to be relatively low, it's not the best. You're probably not gonna wake up every morning thinking, oh my gosh, I can't wait to go fix bugs and troubleshoot and install software. And it's a good degree, but when compared to some of the other technology related degrees it's not the best. So overall I'm gonna give this one a score of 8.65 out of 10. That is really good. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below, share the video, and don't forget to definitely check out my other videos right here because I made them just for you.