Five Online Degrees That Won't Disturb Your Work Life Balance

You don’t need too much effort to find a suitable degree for yourself. All you need to know is your interest, average study time, and career prospects of a particular degree.  We have taken data from the National Survey of Student Engagement 2011, published by the Washington Post, to decide which undergraduate degrees would be best for you. This data shows the average study time required by seniors in their academic major.  We have also taken data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), to analyze the annual median salaries and career prospects for professions associated with the following degrees.

Will you be happy to bring a positive change in people’s lives? You could do that by getting a speech pathology degree. Good news is that the degree does not demand too much of your time. According to the survey, speech pathology students spent only 10.8 hours per week. That’s the lowest time reported for any degree in the survey. As a speech pathology student, you will study courses such as speech perception, speech and language disorders, communication sciences, and human language development.  After acquiring a master’s degree in speech pathology, you may begin your career as a speech pathologist. BLS states that speech pathologists earned a median annual wage of $69,870 in May 2012. Job outlook for the degree is quite bright, as the employment opportunities are likely to grow at a rate of 19 percent from 2012 to 2022, which is much faster than the average of all occupations. Since this degree requires fewer hours of study and has great career prospects, this could be one of your potential degree options.

• Speech Pathology

Good communication skills can work wonders for your career and a communications degree could definitely give you an edge over others. Communications is a multipurpose degree that will be easy to complete and offers job options. The survey shows that communications students only needed an average of 12.5 hours a week to spend on the degree. You could easily take out this much time in a week to get this rewarding degree. While there’s so much you can do with a communications degree, a popular career option is to become a public relations specialist.  According to BLS, median annual salary of public relations specialists was $54,170 in May 2012.  The career opportunities for PR specialists are expected to grow at 12 percent from 2012 to 2022, which is as fast as the average growth of all occupations. If you think you have a knack for communications or you are a people person, go for the degree.

• Communications

Do you wish to see yourself as a manger with a leading role in an organization? Luckily, you can get your dream career by getting a business administration degree. You could use this degree to work in many different settings. It’s also one of those degrees that won’t give you a hard time as a working student. The survey shows that business administration students only needed to spend 13.2 hours a week. You can complete this degree by spending less than two hours every day. While there are lots of career options available for business graduates, one major option is to become an administrative services manager. According to BLS, administrative service managers had a median annual wage of $81,080 in May 2012. Plus, the employment of administrative service managers is expected to grow at 12 percent from 2012 to 2022, which is as fast as the average growth of all occupations. If you really have a thing for administration, go for this degree!

• Business Administration

Does the human mind intrigue you? Do you want to know how human behavior could be altered for the better? If yes then psychology is what you should look for. This degree will not be time consuming and you could get good grades by spending some quality time reviewing your lectures. As per the survey, students needed to spend an average of 13.9 hours a week on this degree, which means that you’ll only need to spend less than two hours a day. You will study courses such as sensation and perception, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and principles of behavior. While psychologists need a graduate degree to practice in the field, an undergraduate degree in the field provides a solid foundation for graduate studies.  According to BLS, the median annual salary of psychologists was $69,280 in May 2012. Besides, the employment opportunities for psychologists are expected to grow at 12 percent, which is as fast as the average of all occupations.

• Psychology

The survey shows that political science students only need to spend an average of 14.6 hours a week as their study time. You would only need a little more than two hours a day to complete this degree, which isn’t bad at all. The degree does not only lead to a meaningful career, but political scientists are known to earn extremely high salaries. According to BLS, the median annual wage earned by political scientists was $102,000 in May 2012. Moreover, the employment opportunities for political scientists are expected to grow at 21 percent from 2012 to 2022, which is much faster than the average growth of all occupations. Taking out time for a political science degree would be totally worth it!

• Political Science

There’s no point in staying in a dead-end job when you could really grow and acquire an impressive career. While it is never easy to give up your job to get a college degree, you can still acquire an online degree in any of these not-so-demanding fields.  They are definitely made to strike a balance in your work, life, and education