___________________________________ The Best Jobs Lists: Jobs for Each of the Six Personality Types! Bachelor’s degree.! is degree requires approximately four to fi ve years of full-time
academic work beyond high school.
! Work experience plus degree. Jobs in this category are often management-related and
require some experience in a related nonmanagerial position.! Master’s degree. Completion of a master’s degree usually requires one to two years of
full-time study beyond the bachelor’s degree.
! Doctoral degree.! is degree normally requires two or more years of full-time academic
work beyond the bachelor’s degree.
! First professional degree.! is type of degree normally requires a minimum of two years
of education beyond the bachelor’s degree and frequently requires three years.
Another Warning About the Data
We warned you in the Introduction to use caution in interpreting the data we use, and
we want to do it again here.! e occupational data we use is the most accurate available
anywhere, but it has its limitations. For example, the education or training requirements for
entry into a job are those typically required as a minimum—but some people working in
those jobs may have considerably more or diff erent credentials. For example, most Registered
Nurses now have a four-year bachelor’s degree, although the two-year associate degree is the
minimum level of training the job requires.
In a similar way, people with jobs that require long-term on-the-job training typically earn
more than people with jobs that require short-term on-the-job training. However, some
people with short-term on-the-job training do earn more than the average for the highest-
paying occupations listed in this book. On the other hand, some people with long-term
on-the-job training earn much less than the average shown in this book—this is particularly
true early in a person’s career.
So as you browse the lists that follow, please use them as a way to be encouraged rather than
discouraged. Education and training are very important for success in the labor market of
the future, but so are ability, drive, initiative, and, yes, luck.
Having said this, we encourage you to get as much education and training as you can. It
used to be that you got your schooling and never went back, but this is not a good attitude to
have now. You will probably need to continue learning new things throughout your working
life. You can do so by going to school, and this is a good thing for many people to do. But
there are also many other ways to learn, such as workshops, certifi cation programs, employer
training, professional conferences, Internet training, reading related books and magazines,
and many others. Upgrading your computer and other technical skills is particularly
important in our rapidly changing workplace, and you avoid doing so at your peril.An old saying goes, “! e harder you work, the luckier you get.” It is just as true now as it
ever was.