by Kysa Anderson Daniels
and Rebecca Rakoczy

 

What’s the value of an associate degree?

 

Is it a boost in employment potential? An increase in earning power? Does the value reside in the feelings of accomplishment, empowerment, self-worth and self-confidence you gain when you earn a college degree? Is it the money you save by completing your first two years at a community college? Do employers and others view you differently when you attain that initial degree?

 

Stories from graduates, as well as research on the topic, indicate yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

 

If you’re looking for a solid yield from dollars spent on your degree, an associate degree represents a good return on your investment. That’s according to an October 2013 study by the Nexus Research and Policy Center and American Institutes for Research.

 

The report looked at the labor market success of students who graduated with an associate degree as their highest academic credential.

 

“Even after factoring in the costs that graduates incur when earning the degree, the associate’s degree is a good investment: with a median net gain during a 40-year work-life of more than $259,000 compared with that of a high school graduate in the state where the community college is located,” says Mark Schneider, vice president of AIR and one of the study’s authors.

 

The study examined data from 579 institutions representing more than 80 percent of the nation’s community college enrollment. The report lists the net work-life financial return for Georgia Perimeter College graduates (how much more GPC graduates earn when compared to high school graduates in Georgia) at $451,456.

 

A clear example of the value of an associate degree is seen in the field of dental hygiene. Although pay varies by location, dental hygienists earn a national median annual income of more than $70,000 with an associate degree, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

It’s also one of the fastest growing occupations. “Employment of dental hygienists is projected to grow 33 percent from 2012 to 2022, much faster than the average for all occupations,” the bureau’s website states. “Ongoing research linking oral health to general health will continue to spur demand for preventative dental services, which are often provided by dental hygienists.”

 

An associate degree also provides a completed college degree to present to prospective employers.

 

“Three years of college study but no earned degree is worth less in the marketplace than two years of college that culminates in an associate degree,” says Inside Higher Ed magazine.

 

Often, companies see value in helping their employees with college tuition costs. C.R. Bard Medical in Covington, an international medical device company, has included tuition reimbursement as an employee benefit since the 1990s, assisting hundreds of employees in paying for a wide range of educational achievements—from their GED (General Education Development) diploma to executive education.

 

“It’s not good enough that you have a great skill set when you get here,” says Paul Murphy, Bard’s medical division vice president of human resources. “We encourage our folks to go back to school to keep pace in their area or prepare themselves for a bigger role in the company.”

 

An associate degree is part of that growth, he says. “Certain roles in the organization require certain educational skills, and there are jobs that pay better that require a minimum of an associate degree.”

 

Michael Washington, a business student at GPC, works 36 to 48 hours a week at Bard in the sterilization department. For the past two years, the company has paid his tuition for two courses per semester.

 

“It’s a great help,” says Washington. “The tuition assistance from Bard has meant a lot to me; it’s allowed me to go back to school and better myself. I didn’t think I would be able to do this, but they have encouraged me to further my education.”

 

A 2012 annual survey by Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute suggests that having an associate degree matters when looking for a job. The survey shows that job opportunities for associate degree holders in applied engineering, health care, technology, business and computer science increased 30 percent since the 2011 CERI survey, outpacing the increase in demand for four-year degrees.

 

Taking the community college route through higher education yields more than future benefits. There is an immediate advantage.

 

Famously frugal consumer columnist Clark Howard has preached for years that going to a two-year college saves money. The figures back him up.

 

According to the University System of Georgia website, GPC students paid $88.67 per credit hour in 2014, compared to $158 per credit hour for most state universities; $169.93 per credit hour at Georgia Southern University, a regional university, and $270.40 per credit hour at Georgia State University, a research university.

 

Beyond the financial benefits, an associate degree can make a dramatic difference in a student’s expectations of what they can accomplish in life.

It is a transformation recounted often by GPC graduates. Here are a few of their stories:

 

Jerry Wilson
Former Coca-Cola Executive
Author and Marketing Consultant

 

 

As a top executive with The Coca-Cola Company, Jerry Wilson logged millions of international airline miles and—along the way—plenty of business accolades. Yet he considers graduating from Georgia Perimeter College with a two-year-degree one of his biggest accomplishments.

 

“My career journey began at GPC, and I am grateful for all that has come from this early start,” he says.

 

He further says he can trace his “personal confidence in learning back to this initial success gained at GPC.”

 

Wilson graduated from GPC in 1974 when it was called DeKalb Community College.

 

He retired two years ago from Coca-Cola, after a 24-year career there. In his latest role, he was a senior vice president, serving as the chief customer and commercial officer for an enterprise that served 204 countries, 20 million customers and 1.8 billion consumers a day. Wilson also spent an earlier part of his successful corporate career at Volkswagen and Ford.

 

Today, he manages his own consulting practice and has written a book called “Managing Brand You.” The company’s website lists Wilson’s academic credential from Georgia Perimeter right along with his MBA from Mercer and bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia.

 

“First, there is no stigma associated with community colleges, just a misperception driven by a lack of understanding,” Wilson says. “It’s up to all of us to change perceptions and demonstrate the actual value of a 21^st century community college experience.”

 

Wilson stresses that, even in the early ’70s, part of this worth included attending an accredited college with quality faculty and a diverse student body, as well as the opportunity to build confidence and choose from among a broad selection of studies.

 

“Two-year colleges offer a stimulating environment at an affordable value and allow students to target areas of personal focus.”

 

 

Dr. Karen Head
Director of Communications Center
Georgia Tech

 

 

Dr. Karen Head, Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media and Communication and the director of the Communications Center has been at Georgia Institute of Technology since 2004. She received her bachelor’s at Oglethorpe University, her master’s at the University of Tennessee and her doctorate from the University of Nebraska.

 

All those degrees were important to her success, she says. But it was her Associate of Arts degree from DeKalb College (now GPC) that represented the most crucial part of her educational journey—and the one she values the most.

 

Head feels so strongly about the value of her associate degree, she recently wrote an opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed journal about it. Her editorial questioned the common practice of omitting the listing of an associate degree from your resume once you have earned higher degrees.

 

“The response has been stunning,” she says. “I got emails from people all across the country in very prestigious positions. They were all confessing they left their AA [Associate of Arts] off their resume. Many were people at top research universities who are now deans of major colleges. There were many of us out there who followed this path.

 

Head didn’t go to college immediately after high school. Though she was a good student with two college acceptances and a scholarship, she instead opted to get married and work.

 

Her parents, who had not attended college, “were disappointed, but there was no real pressure for me to go,” she says.

 

Divorced at 20, Head was working as an executive assistant at a national printing company when she realized she really wanted a college degree. She just needed the courage to enroll. At age 27, she became a college freshman.

 

“I had a mortgage and needed my job,” she says. “But there was this desire to get a degree. I thought I wanted to become a high school teacher,” she recalls.

 

“I really quite cautiously” signed up to take a class on the Dunwoody Campus at what was then DeKalb College, Head recalls.

 

“Frankly I wasn’t sure I could succeed in college, which is one reason I chose the local community college,” Head wrote in the June 25 issue of Inside Higher Ed. “By the time I graduated three years later, I was proud of my achievements, and I was confident about my ability to achieve even more academic success.

 

Head recalls spending an hour with her DeKalb College advisor. “The advice was, if you’re only going to take one class, take one that you think you really could not possibly fail. So I took public speaking. I figured, if I can’t be successful in public speaking, I don’t think I could be successful (in college) at all.”

 

It was a wise move. Her public speaking professor, Maureen Dinges, encouraged her to take more classes. “I remember her saying to me when I was just three weeks into school—‘you know you’re going to do this. You can lose your health, your keys, your right to vote—but they can never take away your college degree education once you’ve earned it.”’

 

Head cited countless professors like her first instructor who continued to encourage her over the next two and half years at DeKalb College—now Georgia Perimeter College. Her love for writing and poetry was nurtured by English faculty, including Rosemary Cox, Alan Jackson, Tim Tarkington and Jeff Portnoy. She wrote poetry and worked as a student editor of The Chattahoochee Review, the college’s literary magazine. She bonded with the magazine’s founder, Lamar York.

 

“I was working full time and going to school at night,” she said. “I never took more than two classes at the time, but I was surrounded by people who saw my potential and gave me encouragement to do better. These people never said ’if,’ they always said, ‘when you go to grad school,’ and at the time, I hadn’t even gotten my associate degree.”

 

When Head graduated from DeKalb College in 1996 with her degree in English, she was named an Outstanding Scholar.

 

Head cites the flexibility of going to a community college and her experience of writing at DeKalb College as the reasons she is now a director of a writing and communication center.

 

“Looking back, I can’t imagine not having this experience,” she says. “I know if I had not received the education at DeKalb, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

 

View video.

 

Huzaifa Hussain
Assistant Vice President
National Bank of Abu Dhabi 

 

 

Huzaifa Hussain moved directly into the work force after graduating from high school in his native Sri Lanka.

 

With information technology as his chosen field, he eventually relocated for a job in San Jose, Calif.—but it wasn’t long before he hit a roadblock.

 

“The lack of a degree hindered my progress,” Hussain admits.

 

An uncle living in Atlanta suggested he head east and begin pursuing his college studies. Hussain decided to seek an associate degree from Georgia Perimeter.

 

“GPC helped me settle into college life without the pressure of a four-year degree,” Hussain, now 34, says.

 

Additionally, he calls Georgia Perimeter a smart economic choice.

 

“Entering a two-year college also helped me financially; less strain in my pockets meant a better overall experience in enjoying (college life) and studying,” Hussain says.

 

With his two-year degree plus a bachelor’s from Georgia State University, Hussain now lives in the United Arab Emirates, where he works as an assistant vice president for National Bank of Abu Dhabi, amid a mix of cultures.

 

“Georgia Perimeter College was one of the first places where I learned to work with and respect different cultures from all over the world; and this is a trait that has helped me progress in my professional career,” Hussain says.

 

GPC also is significant to Hussain for another reason: it’s where he met Femina Huddani—his wife of six years and, like him, a Georgia Perimeter graduate.

 

Katie Thompson
Dental Hygienist
Manhattan

 

When Katie Thompson decided she wanted to go to college to upgrade her career, an associate degree in dental hygiene made sense—mathematical sense.

 

Thompson, a mother of two from Marietta who was working as a dental assistant, was 34 when she enrolled at Georgia Perimeter. She had considered going to dental school, but when she added up the costs of the student loans and the time it would take to become a dentist, she says “it didn’t make financial sense.” A dental hygiene degree from Georgia Perimeter College, however, added up just fine.

 

Thompson did well in her studies and found her calling in GPC’s Dental Hygiene program.

 

“I love to take care of patients and to make taking care of them not just a job,” she says. “I really feel like that’s the kind of education I got at Georgia Perimeter College—very patient-focused.”

 

In the spring of 2010, Thompson’s care attracted attention when she spent hours tracking down the prescription drugs that were causing severe gum swelling and bleeding for Romitechus Robinson-Alexander, one of her patients in GPC’s dental hygiene clinic. She discovered that the drugs Robinson-Alexander was taking for congestive heart failure, hypertension and diabetes were the cause. She also found that one of the prescriptions had been specifically banned for patients with congestive heart failure. She notified Robinson-Alexander, who later told medical providers, and they confirmed that Thompson had been right.

 

“Before Thompson came along and told me how these were the wrong prescriptions for me, I couldn’t lose weight, I could barely walk a few feet, I was always tired and worn out,” Robinson-Alexander said afterward. “But look at me now. I walk everywhere. I have more energy, my wedding band is loose and I’ve lost weight. Thompson has changed my life.”

 

Thompson stood out in other ways, too, joining professional organizations and serving in leadership roles in them. She was vice president of the Atlanta Dental Hygienists Society.

 

“That is another thing that GPC was really good at that I haven’t found as much here,” Thompson says: “Networking. All of the teachers are involved in professional associations—The Atlanta Dental Hygienists Society, the Georgia Dental Hygienists Association and the American Dental Hygienists Association. And that helped me.”

 

Now Thompson is working as a full-time dental hygienist at a prosthodontist practice in Manhattan. She and her husband and children moved there in early 2013 so that her husband, a pastor, could start a church in the city. Thompson says her job is helping to make her husband’s mission work possible and that her family is enjoying the change in culture New York City presents.

 

Earning an associate degree at Georgia Perimeter College was affordable and “gave me a great way to have a career that is high-paying,” Thompson says.

 

“I’m very grateful for GPC.”