This is a tricky scenario, because most of the jobs that will allow large donations are also jobs that require at least four years of higher education. But the idea of ‘personal fit’ is also pretty important. Have you read through some of the guidance from 80,000 Hours on choosing a career?
If you could realistically get a bachelor’s degree, that would likely open up higher earning paths for you, and a college degree does tend to pay off very well over time (although the difference might not be visible in the first few years after college). But if you are confident that you could earn plenty of money and be satisfied with the work doing HVAC (or something similar), that could get you a larger amount of money sooner. There are some careers that offer good earnings that don’t require a college degree, but they tend to be some combination of A) requiring lots of work, and B) only allowing a small percentage of people to succeed, such as self-taught software engineers.
In the end, I think it really depends on two factors: your personal preferences/affinities for different types of work, and how confident you are in your timelines.
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This is a tricky scenario, because most of the jobs that will allow large donations are also jobs that require at least four years of higher education. But the idea of ‘personal fit’ is also pretty important. Have you read through some of the guidance from 80,000 Hours on choosing a career?
If you could realistically get a bachelor’s degree, that would likely open up higher earning paths for you, and a college degree does tend to pay off very well over time (although the difference might not be visible in the first few years after college). But if you are confident that you could earn plenty of money and be satisfied with the work doing HVAC (or something similar), that could get you a larger amount of money sooner. There are some careers that offer good earnings that don’t require a college degree, but they tend to be some combination of A) requiring lots of work, and B) only allowing a small percentage of people to succeed, such as self-taught software engineers.
In the end, I think it really depends on two factors: your personal preferences/affinities for different types of work, and how confident you are in your timelines.