School or Job?

M.D.

Hey folks, trying to get some advice here.

I'm in the military, been in for 8 years, and i'm about to be getting out come early next year. Sadly I didnt too much school work while I was here as i've been overseas a ton and just didnt really focus on it with shift work and such.

I want to focus on school now and get my degree hopefully in BioChem. With the state of things in the States though I was curious if it would be better to take a contracting job I was offered that pays 90k a year and then go to school after a year or two of that saving money. Of course if I go to school i'll be doing so under the G.I. Bill so it would be paid for and i'd be getting a housing allowance of 1k a month.

I'm 26 now so im already starting late and not sure how that would play in getting a job later with my degree too.

Not sure which would be the smarter choice here.

lonelyahava

To be honest with you, at the moment, i would say take the contracting job, look into maybe doing part time school working up to the degree, like get your GenReqs out of the way part time, and then considering going full time later.

Who knows where the states are going to be economically and if you have a job offer right now, take it.

But that's just me and my two cents.

Skeith

What sort of job is the contractor job? Would you be sent back to the sandbox? And are you willing to go back if it's that sort of job? If you're fine with it, doing it for a year is probably the way to go-- on top of the GI Bill you'd be pretty set for a while. I can't really speak for how starting at the ripe old age of 27 would affect job prospects, though.

M.D.

It's pretty much providing security for future Embassies or Consulates being built around the world. So I may get sent to the sandbox if they have anything planned there.

Usagi

Speaking from watching my brother go through a very similar choice a couple years ago, if you don't go back to school now the chances of you doing so later are much less (it's really hard to give up money like that full stop). There are things you can absolutely do with that kind of military experience and without a degree, but in the end it will limit your opportunities for advancement to not have that silly piece of paper.

Dr. Frenchenstein

Yeah, the further you go into "real life" (job, etc) the harder it is to go back to school. I'm 32 and want to go get some post grad stuff, but it's REALLY tough to get back in the swing of studying, let alone going to class. Will going back to school limit a job opportunity like this? Like, if once you are out, there is nothing in biochem, will that job probably still be lingering around? I'd go to school if i were you, especially if it's paid for.

Also, Damn, 90k for security work? is that hazard pay or something? or is that common?

Derrick

Dr. Frenchenstein wrote:

Yeah, the further you go into "real life" (job, etc) the harder it is to go back to school. I'm 32 and want to go get some post grad stuff, but it's REALLY tough to get back in the swing of studying, let alone going to class. Will going back to school limit a job opportunity like this? Like, if once you are out, there is nothing in biochem, will that job probably still be lingering around? I'd go to school if i were you, especially if it's paid for.

Also, Damn, 90k for security work? is that hazard pay or something? or is that common?

Considering the embassies getting bombed and such every other week? The cost is high because he'd be risking his life daily, and would likely be going back to some part of the sandbox.

I would advise you to get your degree, and plan to be a full time student through your masters. As I recall the GI Bill is quite nice these days, and if you plan it right, the money will stretch for a good long while.

M.D.

Yea, a friend of mine is in Kabul at the moment cause the embassy was bombed there about a week ago and they have to reinforce it and such so he's there as an outside security force. Earlier in the year he was in central Africa.

I was also thinking that if I didnt get school started right away how hard it would be to pick it up later.

I was planning on getting a part time job, nothing too big though as I really wanted to focus on school if thats the choice I make. I'll be living in SC and going to USC but the G.I. bill housing allowance covers what it costs to rent an apartment and leaves me with 500 left over.

The contract job was something considered because I dont think I saved enough while I've been in the military and I do plan on getting married (although my future wife and I aren't going to be living together till she finishes her phd in Germany)

L Ron Howard

My advice would be to go through and finish school first. I say this out of my experience. I was 25 when I started going back to school. I found it started getting harder to do things, like remember everything got harder as I got older. It sucks.
And I saw this happening before I decided to return. As I aged, I got further in my professional life, as a cardboard cutter (it sucked), and kept getting harder to go back, due to other commitments and work and stuff.
Now I decided to go back full-time, to try to get it out of the way as soon as possible. And because cutting cardboard is horrible.

To further help you, I met a guy in college who was in the military. He was in the first wave of our troops on the ground in Afghanistan. With his military experience and college degree, I know he went into the private sector that works with the government. I know he was paid an awesome rate, because of his military experience. I don't know exact details, because once we graduated I haven't kept in touch. Those were just things he mentioned in passing. I do know that he had like 'Top Secret' clearance from the government, which I think helped him.
So if you have a decent security clearance as well, you're golden. You can easily make more than that $90k a year right out of college, even without it.

Thanatos

If you take the security job, the GI Bill will still be there in a couple of years, right?

I mean, the whole point in going to school for most of us is so that we can be making $90,000 a year fifteen years down the line doing something we don't hate; you have an opportunity to do that now, without even having to give up the opportunity to go to school. You should really assume, though, that you're going to be sent back to the worst place you can imagine possible, and figure out if that's worth it to you.

I mean, if you're careful with your money (and I have the impression that it's pretty easy to be careful with your money on most of these jobs), a year or two of that kind of work is a down payment on a house, or a couple of cars, or your kids' college education, or you can just sock most of it away in an IRA or 401(k), and probably retire ten years earlier than you'd otherwise be able to. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's something to be said for an education, but there's also something to be said for having a metric fuckton of money in the bank. Looking at it from a straight-up economic perspective, making $90,000 now is conservatively worth nearly four times as much as making $90,000 fifteen years from now, assuming you use that money wisely.

You definitely do have to take into consideration your own health and well-being, though. But if you've been doing this for eight years, I'm sure you have a very good idea of how well you can handle it. I'm not saying you should definitely take the security work, but you should recognize that the opportunity to make that kind of money at this point in your life doesn't come along very often, and the fact that that much money at this point in your life is going to be worth way more than the far-future big bucks you'll be making off of your biochem degree.

Usagi

You have to remember Than, we go to school so we can eventually be making $90k doing something we don't hate without having to be physically separated from our families/friends for months on end and possibly facing severe injury or death.

Thanatos

L Ron Howard wrote:

To further help you, I met a guy in college who was in the military. He was in the first wave of our troops on the ground in Afghanistan. With his military experience and college degree, I know he went into the private sector that works with the government. I know he was paid an awesome rate, because of his military experience. I don't know exact details, because once we graduated I haven't kept in touch. Those were just things he mentioned in passing. I do know that he had like 'Top Secret' clearance from the government, which I think helped him.
So if you have a decent security clearance as well, you're golden. You can easily make more than that $90k a year right out of college, even without it.

Never say "easily" about something that's four years down the line, especially about work that's as volatile as military contracting. The next four years are likely to see some pretty serious cuts to the military's budget, and it's likely that a healthy amount of those cuts are going to be from private military contracting firms.

I'm not saying this is a bad plan, but I would definitely have a backup plan if this is what you want to do, and this could be a case of one in the hand being worth more than two in the bush.

Djeet

Seconding Than's advice to consider the contract gig. If I was in your position I'd do that (assuming I was OK with the danger I'd be putting myself into). Sock away as much high-pay I could get; 2 years would go a long way to buying a house. But I'd end it such that I could still get the GI bill to pay for my schooling.

Thanatos

Usagi wrote:

You have to remember Than, we go to school so we can eventually be making $90k doing something we don't hate without having to be physically separated from our families/friends for months on end and possibly facing severe injury or death.

This is true, but if you put down an extra $50,000 on a $500,000 house and that saves you a conservative 2% on the mortgage, you're talking about saving almost $300,000 over a 30-year fixed-rate loan, which means you're talking about $800 a month you're not paying. Number one reason most people get divorced is money, number one source of stress in most peoples' lives is money.

And yeah, having to spend those years doing security work is a pretty big sacrifice, and is very stressful. On the other hand, having to spend years living paycheck to paycheck because you don't have any savings to fall back on and you're fresh out of college jumping from temp job to temp job since you can't find anything better is also very stressful. Money is a big deal, and I think people try to trivialize it a lot of the time; passing this up is a carries a huge opportunity cost with it, and I just think Mr. Defecation should be aware of that.

At the same time, I don't want to trivialize the stress and risk that goes with a job like that. So, it's definitely something you have to weigh for yourself, and figure out for yourself, because it may very well not be worth it.

Inquisitor77

If it were a safe job, or at least "safer", I would recommend taking the work and going to school later, especially since your G.I. Bill benefits don't expire for something like 10 years (warning: IANAL). However, if you believe you will be placed in situations where you have a significantly higher risk of getting killed, that is definitely something you should consider as part of the equation.

Ignoring the safety aspect, the current job market is pretty bleak. There is essentially going to be a "lost generation" of people who have just gotten out of school and can't find a job. A lot of them will go back to school in the attempt to make themselves more marketable. You do not want to get caught up with this generation. Real wages have been declining for decades, and they face even more humbling earning prospects in the face of lower labor demand and their lack of working experience (in comparison to the people who got jobs just one or two years before the recession hit).

Now is a risky time to "go back to school" because that's precisely what the "lost generation" is doing, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It's best to avoid competing with them directly, if you can. This is especially true if you can get a good, high-paying job now that can provide you with legitimate working experience and future networking opportunities to find a better job down the line. If you could postpone going to school for another 1-3 years and then decide to jump back in, that should give you enough time for this down cycle to work itself out (2 years work + 4 years school).

People tend to think of school-then-work as some sort of tautological path in life. It's not. As Usagi mentioned, most people go to college just to get the $90k job in the first place. They don't care about bettering themselves or getting a well-rounded education. They just want to get a better, higher-paying job, and college is how you do that. Right now it seems you have the luxury to avoid those 4 years and just start in with a "good" job. It may well be that doing this job will give you just as many, if not more, opportunities to further yourself down the line. There's no set path in life, so try not to lock yourself into this choice based on false future hypotheticals. There's a vast spectrum of what may or may not happen during this time. For example, if you take the job, maybe you'll stand out as management material, in which case I'm fairly sure the company would be happy to let you go to school on your G.I. Bill to make yourself a better employee. Or maybe you take the job, find out you don't like it, and tough it out for a year until you can go back to school. In which case you've gotten $90k in the bank and learned that private contracting security work isn't for you. Or maybe you don't take it, go back to school, find out you love it, and become an expert in the field of cricket lobotomies.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to go back to school? Is BioChem something that you have a keen intellectual interest in? If so, then maybe going back to school right away is the option for you, as a personal life choice.

schuss

Question: What do you WANT to do?
If you don't mind the security work and just sock money away like a crazy person for a year or two, cool. If you fucking hate it, go to school. Don't worry about the money.

Pure Din

Mr. Defecation wrote:

(although my future wife and I aren't going to be living together till she finishes her phd in Germany)

Do you know what her plans are for after the PhD? If you both end up getting very specialized degrees, it will be harder to find places for both of you to find work, and could limit both of your abilities to move for better jobs in the future.

a5ehren

Pure Din wrote:

Mr. Defecation wrote:

(although my future wife and I aren't going to be living together till she finishes her phd in Germany)

Do you know what her plans are for after the PhD? If you both end up getting very specialized degrees, it will be harder to find places for both of you to find work, and could limit both of your abilities to move for better jobs in the future.

Also, how long until she's done? If you have 1-2 years, you could take the contracting job (assuming you're both comfortable with the risks there) and have a really big head start financially and not have to work while you're in school and get to live together (and you won't have to work during school).

M.D.

She wont be done for another 3 years, in both scenarios it either gives me time to do the job finish it be with her and go to school or go to school finish that and be with her. She also talks about wanting to use her degree for the environment or something like that.

I've talked with her and shes okay with me doing the job as well cause I pretty much do it now (for military pay). I dont have an issue doing the job its really easy to be honest, as it is now it's very stressful cause the military adds a lot stress for no reason. I mean i've been in for 8 years and got told I cant take leave because I dont deserve it, although I earn it?

Anyhow not to get sidetracked, I totally understand what risks there are with the job and I also understand the difficulty with starting an education later.

It's a tough choice and I still dunno which is better for me, I was thinking contracting would be more beneficial because with the state of things in the States, and worldwide even, with the economy and I dont know how often ill get that kind of money showing up.

At the same time not sure how long I have till I can no longer use the G.I. Bill it's something I have to look into. But I do know that starting at 29 for a degree sounds like it would be hard if I choose the job and not school right away. Why do life decisions gotta be so tough lol

Also thank you everyone for all the advice and such it is really helpful and gives me a better perspective.

Casually Hardcore

Are you planning to get a BS in BioChem or a BA in BioChem? Also, are you thinking about doing BioChem engineering or just hard science BioChem. Hard science BioChem means you're either going to get a Doctorate in order to make a decent salary, or forever work as a technician in a lab making $40k a year. BioChem engineering is a pretty niche field, but there is a steadily growing demand for people who can understand and implement biological processes.

Honestly $90K a year is nothing to sneeze at. The best Petroleum Engineering grads at my university start at around $100k, and the funny thing is that they end up dangerous and risky places anyways. On average, people are making about $60k right out of college at my university (this university specializes in Engineering degree). Personally, I would take up that contract. Coming home with $180k-$270k in the bank will make college life much, much easier. Particularly if you're planning to get a degree that requires so much time and dedication that it may not even be possible to get a part time job.

Also, if you're planning to get into any sort of field service engineering. Then having this on a resume will make you look 9000x more appealing then some twentysomething years old who spent the last four years essentially becoming socially inept.

a5ehren

Honestly, if you're both OK with the risks I would take the job. Assuming that a significant part of your living expenses are paid when you're on assignment, that kind of money will make your life much less stressful (especially considering the current state of the world economy) when you're in school.

Being an "older" guy at school isn't really a thing - at that age, people will just think you're a graduate student

Slider

As someone who has a BA degree and is unemployed, I would recommend choosing the job over school.

Zombie Nirvana

Take the job - no question.

Derrick

Zombie Nirvana wrote:

Take the job - no question.

Normally I would agree, but this is a "job" where you risk your life daily.

How much money is your life worth?

Paladin

Go to school and continually remind yourself that you gave up 90k a year for this

Powerpuppies

Like Than says, you need a pretty good reason to turn down that contracting job. Deciding the job is too dangerous, too stressful, or too far away from home for too long are all decisions based on good reasons. If you don't have a good reason, though, take the job.

Thanatos

Powerpuppies wrote:

Like Than says, you need a pretty good reason to turn down that contracting job. Deciding the job is too dangerous, too stressful, or too far away from home for too long are all decisions based on good reasons. If you don't have a good reason, though, take the job.

Not being eligible for the GI Bill once you're done is also a good reason; a very good reason. That's probably going to save you as much (or more) money than you'd pull out of the contracting job.

kaliyama

Thanatos wrote:

Powerpuppies wrote:

Like Than says, you need a pretty good reason to turn down that contracting job. Deciding the job is too dangerous, too stressful, or too far away from home for too long are all decisions based on good reasons. If you don't have a good reason, though, take the job.

Not being eligible for the GI Bill once you're done is also a good reason; a very good reason. That's probably going to save you as much (or more) money than you'd pull out of the contracting job.

I agree with everything Thanatos said in this thread. We are entering a period of 10-20 years, at least, of wage contraction and rising inequality. Defense contracting and PMC money is going to be harder to find, too. Even a STEM undergraduate degree isn't going to guarantee you anything. So if you can sock money away now without jeopardizing the GI Bill revenue, it makes a lot of sense. If you want a degree you will be able to get one a few years from now.

Zombie Nirvana

Derrick wrote:

Zombie Nirvana wrote:

Take the job - no question.

Normally I would agree, but this is a "job" where you risk your life daily.

How much money is your life worth?

I've got many friends who are contractors. They aren't really risking their lives daily to an extent that this question remains a valid source of fear to avoid taking the job, which frees him up to do much more in the future with his life. Freedom, in itself, is worth quite a lot. More than the figure on a paycheck.

Zombie Nirvana

Beyond that, the international experience will open up many doors for you in certain industries, like mine (O&G). If you pay attention and play your cards right you can set yourself up for life. Something that isn't nearly a given should you go to school right now.

Drez

90k a year is really nice.

But a contracting job is just that - a contracting job, which doesn't guarantee you any long term security if my assumptions on what you mean by "contracting job" are correct.

A college degree doesn't guarantee security either, but I would absolutely recommend school over the job, especially if you are 26 without a degree, and especially if you can afford to go to school without it being a massive struggle.

Then again, I think I would recommend "school" to anyone making this decision provided all else in their life is equal (meaning that they can actually afford to go to school). If you don't do it now, it may never happen, and it may come to bite you in the ass later in life.

jedikuonji

Speaking as former military who choose the school route, take the job.

Casually Hardcore

Unless he's planning to go to a for profit school that's grossly overpriced, or planning to become a doctor, there is no freaking way anybodies tuition costs $90k.

Hell, I've been at it for 4 years now and my tuition is only putting me $30k in the hole. If I was in his situation and I was able to do this contract and keep my G.I. Bill, then it wouldn't even be a question in my mind.

kime

Casually Hardcore wrote: »

Unless he's planning to go to a for profit school that's grossly overpriced, or planning to become a doctor, there is no freaking way anybodies tuition costs $90k.

Hell, I've been at it for 4 years now and my tuition is only putting me $30k in the hole. If I was in his situation and I was able to do this contract and keep my G.I. Bill, then it wouldn't even be a question in my mind.

If he wants a private school, 90k isn't unreachable. A quick Google search puts the average for private schools at a bit under 120k.

I'd suggest school instead of the job, but being in school now I'm both biased and a bit unqualified to speak from experience on which is better in the long run. A potentially dangerous job with no real long-term prospects doesn't sit well with me.

Djeet

Yeah, I'm not sure how 8 years of military experience dovetailing into security contracting equates to "no real long-term prospects". Just because it's contract work, doesn't mean it's not valuable professional development. It's security contracting, not telemarketing or tech support.

120K for 4 years of private schooling? Perhaps. Cause 120K per year for school is goddamn ridiculous.

An important element is to not lose your GI Bill eligibility. If the job results in that, it's decidedly less attractive (though I could still see how it might be worth it if you were pretty sure it'd be multi-year gig, or otherwise had a plan for long-term employ in security/logistics). While I get that one risks life and limb here, I cannot understand how anyone who actually has to work for a living would not at least consider a contract job for 90K/annum for a job that does not require a degree.

I'm not one to say college degrees are worthless, but unless maybe you want to do petroleum engineering in the Dakotas it's hard to get a well paying job nowadays, and there's a lot of educated and experienced competition for the jobs available right now.

M.D.

Thanks folks, I may take the job after most of this. If I do it'll probably be just for a year or two then go into school.

From what I was told from my SNCO's(boss) I have my G.I. Bill for 10 years, I can start using it any time 10 years after I leave the service and it's good for a 4 years, full tuition, at any state run schools (which I had planned to attend as private and overseas schools it only pays 17.5k a school year for it).

I still have to discuss with my fiance some more but all this advice really helps.