6 Advantages to Completing Your Bachelor's Degree at Rasmussen University
It’s time to let out a long sigh of relief. You’ve put the finishing touches on earning an Associate’s degree—and that’s an accomplishment worth celebrating! The long nights and busy weekends scrambling to make sure your assignments are buttoned up and in passable form are in your rearview mirror. That hard work has led to a degree and knowledge that can never be taken away from you, so take a moment to pat yourself on the back.
But at the risk of ruining the moment, the best way to celebrate a completed goal is to push yourself on to achieving the next. For many Associate’s degree graduates, the next step is returning to school to complete a Bachelor’s degree. If earning a Bachelor’s degree is on your to-do list, or even a consideration for your future plans, there are several benefits for continuing on with your education at Rasmussen University.
Benefits to completing a Bachelor’s degree
Returning to school at Rasmussen University for a Bachelor’s degree is a big step worth careful deliberation. Read on for compelling reasons to continue your education here.
1. A Bachelor’s degree can lead to additional opportunities
An Associate’s degree can certainly open doors to a variety of roles and opportunities you’d have little chance of landing without. Don’t get us wrong—an Associate’s degree-level education is perfectly suitable for many career paths—but in other areas earning a Bachelor’s degree can further expand your job prospects.
To help illustrate this, we used real-time job analysis software to identify the minimum education requirements from over 18.5 million job postings in the U.S.. The data revealed that about 1.5 million job postings were seeking an Associate’s degree at a minimum, while nearly 8.4 million were seeking candidates with a Bachelor’s degree.1
Even if you feel confident you’ll be able to find an opportunity that suits you with an Associate’s degree, it’s worth considering your long-term career trajectory. Depending on the field and your career aspirations, you might find that a lack of a Bachelor’s degree can be a significant and frustrating roadblock to advancement opportunities in the future.
“Earning my Bachelor’s degree allowed me to pursue opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise,” says Marketing graduate Jordan Flick. “It was also nice to get the program done more quickly through Rasmussen’s accelerated program.”
2. Bachelor’s degree graduates earn more and are less likely to be unemployed on average
Another point to consider if you’re on the fence about returning to school is the fact that, on average, those with Bachelor’s degrees earn more and are less likely to be unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that for workers age 25 and up, the median usual weekly earnings of full-time workers with a Bachelor’s degree was $1,334, compared to $963 for those with an Associate’s degree.2 Obviously this gap will vary substantially depending on the line of work you’re pursuing, but there’s generally a strong correlation between educational attainment and earning potential.
Additionally, the BLS reports a 3.5 percent unemployment rate for those with Bachelor’s degrees compared to the 4.6 percent unemployment rate of those with an Associate’s degree.2 This might not seem very significant in times of relatively low unemployment, but economic downturns happen—and when they do, you may end up feeling the effects. Competing for jobs against those with Bachelor’s degrees can already be a challenge with an Associate’s degree, and it doesn’t get easier when opportunities are limited.
3. Your credits will transfer easily between Rasmussen University programs
If you’ve earned an Associate’s degree from Rasmussen University, you don’t have to worry much about your credits cleanly transferring into another program here. It might seem like a simple thing that’s easy to take for granted, but this can be a significant advantage.
It might surprise you, but there’s really no one single agency or governing body who says, for example, that all business degrees must cover these specific courses for a certain number of credit hours. While many programs are naturally going to land on a fairly similar set of topics covered and time spent covering them, there still can be differences on the margins. As a result, there’s quite a bit of potential for compatibility issues if you move from one school to another.
Complications from credits not cleanly transferring from school to school can be a major source of frustration—and understandably so. Students in this position will likely be stuck spending additional time and money catching up completing what a new institution could view as unfulfilled credit hours. By sticking with the same school, you can avoid this.
4. You’ll already know your way around
Starting at a new school, while exciting, can also have some drawbacks. One that may be easy to overlook is the loss of familiarity that comes with it. Knowing the best route for getting to and from campus, where your classrooms are and the best place to camp out for a long study and homework session is always a plus.
But it’s not just the physical familiarity that matters—you also know how to navigate the technology and systems Rasmussen University uses. Feeling comfortable with knowing how to submit assignments, where to turn for writing help and who to call if you’re having technical difficulties can be a huge benefit that helps you hit the ground running.
5. You know Rasmussen University has flexible options that work for you
Balancing friends, family obligations, tricky work schedules and everything else can be a struggle alone. And you know first-hand how adding college coursework into the mix can increase that difficulty.
While you may have had to make a few sacrifices along the way to make it work, Rasmussen University’s flexible approach to learning has helped you make it this far. You know that online classes minimize or even eliminate the amount of time you’ll spend fighting schedules to make sure you can be in the classroom at set times during the week.
Plus, self-paced competency-based education (CBE) courses can provide even further flexibility. This format allows you to work ahead in classes you feel comfortable with and slow the pace down for others. As long as your work is completed before the term ends, you control the approach to how it gets done. You know the flexible options at Rasmussen University work for you already—so why risk a change?
6. You can set a positive example for your family
No matter where you come from, education is one of the best routes to building a better life for yourself and future generations. If you’re the first in your family to attend college, you’ve already taken a huge step by earning an associate’s degree. Now you have the opportunity to set the bar even higher for others in your family to strive for.
This isn’t just a matter of pride or family bragging rights, either. Earning a bachelor’s degree can potentially create a positive generational ripple effect when it comes to education. In fact, a National Center for Education Statistics report found a correlation between the educational attainment level of parents and their children. In this research, 74 percent of students whose parents completed a bachelor’s degree had either obtained a degree or were still working toward it after six years, while 56 percent of first-generation students could say the same.3
While obviously a lot of factors can influence the educational outcomes of your family’s future generations, the correlation makes sense. Kids look to their parents to set expectations, even if they’re unspoken—and having someone they trust to turn to with questions about college can help them stay on track. By earning a Bachelor’s degree, you become an example of what’s possible.
“I wanted to show my kids that education is very important and it’s something you can continue on with even if you’re a mother, working full-time and married,” says Sarah Kaeding, Rasmussen University Human Resources and Organizational Leadership graduate. “You can still go to school and get those things taken care of. The flexibility made it possible to reach my goals.”
Ready to return to a bachelor completer program?
Committing to further education is always a big decision, and you might need some time to determine what your best path forward is. No matter your plans for the immediate future, there are a handful of clear benefits to completing your Bachelor’s degree at Rasmussen University. If you’re ready to take the next step, reach out to an admissions advisor to discuss further.
Still need some time to think it over? Our article, “Should I Go Back to School? 4 Questions to Help You Find Your Answer”, can provide some food for thought.
1Burning-Glass.com (analysis of education requirements for 18,513,407 job postings nationwide, November 1, 2018 – October 31-2019)
2Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Employment Statistics, Unemployment rates and earnings by educational attainment, 2021 [accessed November 2022] https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm Information represents national, averaged data across all occupations and includes workers at all levels of education and experience. This data does not represent starting salaries. Employment conditions in your area may vary.
3National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Stats in Brief: First-Generation Students - College Access, Persistence, and Postbachelor’s Outcomes [accessed December, 2019] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018421.pdf
