When you were younger, it is highly likely that your family, your friends, and those adults around you, both at school and at home, fell into one of two clearly defined categories.

Either the belief and general rule was that, after finishing high school, university and college was the next logical step for anyone who wanted to pursue a career full of success and longevity, or else getting a job in the ‘real world’ was instead the way forward.

It is in no way accurate to say that if you are someone who is passionate about and even more dedicated to building a successful and profitable life based on working hard in your chosen profession, a university degree is always going to be of benefit. There are, however, a myriad of other reasons to consider before enrolling in either an online or in-person degree program. So, with this in mind, continue reading to discover the main advantages of a university degree.

Improve Your Current Career Prospects

You may well be in high school and are now choosing your degree options for the near future, but it is equally likely that you are someone who has been involved in a particular industry for some years and is now looking to climb further up that proverbial ladder.

If so, then returning to university as a mature student will expand not only your mind but also your prospects for career progression within your current role or else within a different industry entirely. Furthermore, by choosing to enrollwith a prestigious and established online university, such as https://online.pointpark.edu/, you will be able to easily balance your current professional responsibilities with your studies.

Get Your Voice Heard!

Perhaps a surprising point to carry on from the one above, but one of the most rewarding reasons why, if you are considering attending university either this September or in the future, is that you will be in a much more secure and pivotal position to speak out on the issues that matter most.

Not only does this have advantages in terms of your overall confidence levels and feelings of self-worth, but, for example, if you have always been dedicated to animal welfare, studying for a degree in the subject will mean your passion is now backed with knowledge and experience to affect a positive change.

Enrich Your Brain

One of the best ways to stay connected to the world around you, not to mention the people close to you now and in the future, is to never stop learning, and it does not take a genius to work out that the best way to do this is to immerse yourself in a college program.

Learning new things, especially in the areas of life thatyou are most naturally interested in, will not only prepare you to launch yourself into an entirely new career direction but a greater depth of knowledge will also afford you the following:

• A sense of pride and accomplishment every single day
• A boost in your emotional health and well-being levels
• Time to yourself to work on your own interests
• A way to have fun learning about things you love
• A way to set an example to your children, friends, and other family members

Increased Level of Professional Marketability

Across the United States, there are four areas within the main titans of industry that are reporting the fastest growth in terms of job availability: STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), education, healthcare, and government services.

If your career aspirations are indeed based within any of these exciting and challenging industries, then a university degree, whether that be at undergraduate level or a postgraduate program, will give you an important competitive advantage.

This increased level of professional marketability may well make the significant difference between being passed over for a coveted role and being successfully hired.

Impressive Salary Opportunities

Inarguably, the successful acquisition of a university or college degree will greatly increase your chances of earning a higher annual salary, even in those more practical trade-based career pathways.

From a recent US government study, this has been further proven, with those professionals who have a bachelor’s undergraduate degree earning, as an approximateaverage, between $55,000 and $63,000. For those people involved in the research study whose education stopped after obtaining a high school diploma, the average annual salary ranged between $34,000 and $37,500.

Naturally, even though it is not automatically assumed that when a new hirewith a degree certificate starts at a company, they will be earning more, the individual is much better placed to apply for promotions, which come with substantially higher annual salaries.

Higher Self-Esteem & Confidence Boosts

Even though, as previously noted earlier on in this article, holding a university degree will open a plethora of professional doors and present you with unique opportunities that are unavailable to others, obtaining a university or college degree means so much more than this, with the experience of studying and learning on the program itself affording the individual unique experiences that they will find highly rewarding.

Both during your academic training and practical placements and work experiences, and indeed after you have completed your degree, you will feel incredibly empowered, and your levels of self-esteem and self-worth will experience a huge boost.

Furthermore, when it comes to your levels and quality of mental health and emotional well-being, there can be no better method of improvement than to enrollin a university degree program. A sense of meaning and the motivation to work towards an endgoal is both consciously and subconsciously empowering, and feeding your brain with new information is a proven way to energize your mind.

Overall, even though some people may feel as if continuing education to a bachelor’s, master’s, or even a Ph.D. level is simply not for them, it is irrefutable that further learning can empower the mind, enhance life experiences, and openup the available career pathways for a better future.