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Dmflying

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2005
Posts
8
is it better to have a degree in aviation or a degree in another field to fall back on? let me know what you guys and gals think?
 
Better to have it in another field. What if you lose your medical? What else would you be qualified to do?
 
to be honest, nobody in the real world really gives a s#!t what your degree is in, as long as you have one. However, you might actually learn something useful when persuing a degree in say, economics or finance or even art history. A bulls#!t degree in aviation science teaches you, well, nothing that's used outside the very narrow field of aviation. About the only degree I've seen aviation related that's of any value would be a management degree, but even that's of little value. (I know, because I got one- wishing I took the Finance degree instead.)

Get a degree in some other field that interests you, so you have something else to do when you get fed up with this industry.
 
I got my degree in hard knocks, or was it big knocks? I want to go back to college. ~~~~\0/~~~~
 
get the degree in intl finance and learn a couple foriegn languages....then you will be prep'ed to ride around in the back of a gulfstream.
 
You have to decide on what you want to be a college graduate or a pilot. If is a pilot, you fly airplanes and build resume stuff. It will take approximately 10 years to get to a career position in aviation. You have to commit to the time frame to make it. To not fly and get a degree may be fun but it does nothing for your flying career. Now to get a degree on the side while you are flying, nothing wrong with that. However, the fallback value of a degree is greatly over rated. I have a BS and a Master's in Management, but at age 53, I was making $250/wk loading cargo. After Zantop pretended to go out of went out of business in 1997, I had been a temporary High School Chemistry Teacher up until two weeks before the cargo job came along. However, they do not teach school in the summer so I had to take the cargo job. The value of an unused degree is highly over rated. 53 year old unemployed airline pilots are not eagerly greeted in any industry that I know of, even of having a couple degrees. Of course, I did not apply for many of the "College degree preferred jobs" such as apt manager, telephone direct sales, plumping floor manager at Home Depot, etc. If you get a college degree you have to use, the knowledge gained in college to develop a career or the degree is useless. After getting a degree, flying an airplane is not a knowledge expanding experience; it is skill development experience. Anyone care to chime in and share their experiences on entering the non-aviation job market after being out of college 20-30 years?
 
There are other jobs available than just flying with an aviation degree. I've been offered two, one for $45k and one for $55k since I graduated a couple weeks ago. They are out there you just have to look. But i'm with gringo on this one. Your degree doesn't matter much. My sister is high up in IBM and a guy she works with has a degree in Aviation Science :)
 
Get a degree in anything. If it has some fallback all the better. If not at least make it easy and cheap. It looks like you already have your ratings so the advantage of earning credits whilst you earn your ratings is negated. Go cheap and local then. My $0.02.
 

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