There are so many people who are encumbered with this seemingly necessary burden (of going to college and having to figure out how to pay for it). I didn’t see any gains from getting 2 degrees. Had I left my job to start at the bottom in a career related to my degrees, I would have had to take a nasty pay cut (by almost half) and work my way up for a few years. I could not afford it; who can? A college friend spent 6 years after graduating before she made enough to actually live on in the same field.