Online Degrees Launches Free Online Calculator to Help Job Seekers Determine Value of College Degree

Career Advice on OnlineDegrees.org Identifies Highest Paying Jobs but Finds Gender Wage Gap Still Prevalent

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Online Degrees announced today its launch of a free online calculator and career advice designed to prepare job seekers with greater knowledge about professions that pay both the highest and lowest salaries.

“We focused a lot of attention on data relating to ROI so people will be able to quickly determine the highest ROI degrees and the lowest ROI degrees and learn when it’s worthwhile to make tuition investments and when it might not be.”

The College Degree Calculator reviews more than 300 professional degrees and more than 800 occupations with the express purpose of evaluating a degree’s financial and employment value. The college degree calculator uses official Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate lifetime salaries for hundreds of occupations and covers issues such as the gender wage gap and the best and worst investment in college degrees.

“With the job market exceedingly tight right now, we thought it was the optimal time to develop these employment resources to assist job seekers,” said Giovanna Villanueva, founder of Online Degrees. “We focused a lot of attention on data relating to ROI so people will be able to quickly determine the highest ROI degrees and the lowest ROI degrees and learn when it’s worthwhile to make tuition investments and when it might not be.”

Online Degrees explores the highest paying degrees and finds that degrees with mathematical backgrounds, such as accounting and economics, routinely earn students higher paying salaries. Job seekers should also be aware of investing in education and ending up with the lowest paying degrees. Jobs such as library science, sociology and psychology can be fascinating, but they prove to have a low ROI.

Those interested in engineering degrees are in luck because those make up the highest paying jobs, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. Data indicates that engineering degrees continue to pay extremely well; it is not uncommon for starting engineering or science oriented salaries to surpass $50,000 a year.

Online Degrees also included a list of the lowest paying jobs. It comes as somewhat of a surprise that, aside from part-time workers, public servants are the worst paid degree holders in the United States. Pursuing an undergraduate liberal arts degree won’t pay as well, although pursuing an undergraduate education overall is still easily affordable for most students.

Online Degrees provides research into the gender wage gap and lists median salaries by gender and degree. While 58% of women and only 42% of men were awarded undergraduate degrees in 2008, women disproportionately major in subjects that pay poorly, and men disproportionately major in subjects which pay well.

About Online Degrees

Online Degrees is a leading online education portal. The site offers research, shares career advice on its education blog, and offers tips on how to pick the right school and how to get the most out of college. Their Degree Finder makes it easy to search for organizations that offer online degrees, from associate to doctorate, in categories, from business to engineering and others, and in every imaginable subject.