Flight School or College: Which is the Better Choice?
In the past, especially in the United States, people saw a college degree as very important. If you had a degree, people looked up to you. It helped you get good jobs that paid well, had great benefits, and offered steady work for your whole life. Basically, getting a college degree used to be a sure way to achieve the American Dream.
However, college costs have gone way up recently. At the same time, many degrees don’t lead to high-paying jobs anymore. Because of this, people are starting to wonder if spending four years and a lot of money on a college degree is still a good idea.
At the same time, the airline industry has grown a lot. It has created more job opportunities for professional pilots than ever before. Planes for training now feature modern digital screens in the cockpit. They also have more fuel-efficient engines that use unleaded gas and more reliable automation than older planes.
Also, learning to be a professional pilot is usually done with one instructor for each student (the FAA now calls them “learners”) for every new license or rating they want to get. This makes flight training look like a perfect option instead of college.
So, many of us are asking: What’s the better choice? Should I go to college hoping to find a good job after I graduate, or would it be better to focus on flight training to become a professional pilot? Let’s look at the pros and cons of both choices.
College vs. Flight School: A Comparative Look
College usually takes four years and costs about $146,000 for things like tuition, fees, and a place to live. Sometimes, in online classes or big classrooms, a teaching assistant teaches instead of the main professor. After all this, the degree you get might not be worth as much when you start looking for a job.
On the other hand, flight school usually takes a year or less. It costs between $80,000 and $100,000 to get different licenses and ratings, ending with a commercial pilot license. If you finish flight school, you can fly professionally anywhere in the world. The classes you take on the ground are usually small, so you get more attention from the teacher. And when you’re learning to fly, it’s just you and the instructor. This way of learning helps you build skills, confidence, and practical abilities that can directly lead to a career with great pay.
The Modern Status and Earning Potential of Pilots
Today, people respect professional pilots just as much as they used to respect executives with college degrees. While the first jobs might not pay a lot, like in any new job, the pay quickly goes up to a level that puts airline pilots in a high social and economic class.
Also, unlike college degrees, which might not be as valuable as they used to be, most professional pilot jobs don’t even require a college degree anymore.
The Growing Case for Flight School
So, should you go to college or flight school? The answer to that question is becoming clearer each year, and flight school is looking like the better choice for more and more people.
