Why Should I Complete My Degree?

Why Should I Complete My Degree?
November 9, 2024

Wondering why you should complete your degree? Explore these 10 reasons to go back to college.

Completing your degree can be a daunting prospect, especially for busy professionals seeking to maintain balance amid work, family, and personal commitments. It’s worth pausing to consider, however, what a bachelor’s could mean for you – especially since assessing the benefits can help shed light on what you want from your career and your life as a whole.

So… if you are a working professional, what ARE the benefits of completing your degree? 

Ultimately, a bachelor of arts or sciences empowers you to:

  1. Discern your calling by engaging meaningfully with an area of personal or professional interest. A degree program can clarify unexplored possibilities for growth within your chosen field, helping you to discover where an inquiry or an industry awaits the contribution only you can make.
  2. Increase your earning power. Full-time professionals with a bachelor’s degree earn a substantially higher median salary than those whose highest level of education remains at the secondary level, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
  3. Learn from experts in your chosen field, men and women whose combined education, training, and experience uniquely qualify them to provide the formation and the guidance you need to excel both personally and professionally. A degree program provides unparalleled access to educators who have dedicated their exceptional knowledge and skills to helping you achieve success.
  4. Alongside a verified standard of knowledge, skill, and critical thought, a college degree demonstrates your disciplined commitment to a field. A bachelor’s degree signals not only that you are prepared for enhanced responsibilities and greater opportunities, but also that you are willing to embrace challenges, learn new skills, and develop your potential. Colleagues and supervisors recognize this, and the recognition transforms your professional landscape.
  5. Expand your professional network through the connections and opportunities available within a college community. Even beyond hands-on learning, internships, or conferences, the institutional life of a college includes a community of alumni, professors, and peers who can provide support and invaluable connection.
  6. Raise your promotion potential. Don’t let an unfinished degree keep you from career advancement, especially in an industry where education thresholds might otherwise curb your upward mobility or hold you back from the leadership only you can offer.
  7. Learn together with other motivated seekers. Aside from the professional advantages of completing your degree, the personal benefits of a learning community shouldn’t be underestimated. Engaging in the shared pursuit of excellence and exploring the depths and challenges of a chosen field offer a basis for lasting friendships and community.
  8. Open up new career opportunities. As you grow and develop both personally and professionally within a degree program, the career opportunities open to you grow commensurately, providing new challenges and satisfactions that can increase your sense of accomplishment and overall well-being.
  9. Embrace your God-given potential. When you develop your capacities and gifts to their full potential, you participate in God’s creative work and embrace His will. Of course, formal education isn’t the only way to do this, but it can be a powerful means of responding to the vision of our Creator and taking on the vocation that is our particular calling in life.
  10. Transform your community. Remember that embracing your calling benefits not just you but also your entire community. Your gifts transform the world and change the lives of those around you, so developing them through a degree program has truly unimaginable effects. 

Consider investing in yourself, your career, and your community. Take the next step today by exploring Belmont Abbey’s flexible, affordable online degree programs, whether Interdisciplinary Studies, RN to BSN, Business Management, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or Digital Marketing