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Getting an education is an expensive juggling act of sorts.  Here are four suggestions from Clair Schwan for balancing finances, getting the most of your time in school, and getting all of this investment to pay good returns.

1. Work while in school.

Whether it’s a job at school, after school, during the summer, or you alternate between a year at school and a year of work, it’s nice to keep the bank account replenished. Showing prospective employers that you worked your way through school isn’t a bad credential to have either. It shows tenacity, planning, and a willingness to work steadily toward important goals.

One of the better ways of working yourself through school is the co-op or intern program where students work for a few months and then go to school for a while. This approach to helping fund your education has more than simple financial benefits – it allows you to build real work experience and create important personal points of contact in the working world. At the end of your studies, you have more than a diploma – you have a resume and references. That gives you a huge advantage over graduates that simply have a degree to their name.

2. Meet the challenges of living expenses with creativity.

As if the cost of education wasn’t enough, some of us face added living expenses as well. To minimize additional expenses, try starting out at a local college or university where you might be able to live at home and commute. How about selecting a school near friends or relatives that could help out by providing you with a low or no-cost housing arrangement? It might not be the most desirable, but then neither is trying to swing the cost of education and a place to live.

You might investigate alternatives to student housing. How about renting a room in a home instead of renting an apartment? Could you exchange work around the house and yard for room and board? Get some “feelers” out there and see what might be available.

There are also on-line study programs that can get you off to a good start and allow you to live and work at home. Carefully investigate these as a means of getting started in higher education. Be sure whatever you select is accredited, so it will be recognized by other schools and prospective employers.

3. Keep the investment perspective in mind.

At times school can seem much like a boring chore or an exceptionally difficult challenge. Many times it’s all of that and then some. A key to successful completion is to recognize your education as an investment in your future. Some employers won’t consider individuals who didn’t at least pursue some form of higher education. Many employers in the professional fields consider any degree from a university as a requirement for an interview. Even if your degree doesn’t match what you might choose as your first interest in employment, it at least shows initiative and a “can do” attitude, and many times, this is a great way to open doors.

In technical and specialize fields such as medicine, engineering, architecture, law and the sciences, the type of education you get is of key importance. It’s a required “punch” on your “ticket.” You’ll want to make the most of your time in school to extract as much knowledge and experience as you can when it’s absolutely required to get started in your chosen field of endeavor. In many cases, it’s not just the degree, but it’s also where you obtained the degree that matters. In any event, choose carefully and study well . Only you can make your time in school pay off as a good investment instead of just something that needs to be slogged through.

4. Take classes that provide broad and long range return on investment.

Many of us have a particular focus in our studies. This focus often requires that we take an assortment of classes to help fill in what’s necessary for our degree. Choose classes wisely so you have complementary skills to go with your formal, technical and specialized education and training. Communication skills are some of the first general skills that come to my mind when I think of broad and long range return on investment. If you can communicate, you can present, you can persuade and you can sell. This quite often means that you can also lead others. The ability to do all of these communication oriented tasks means that you’re much more likely to become the supervisor, manager, senior manager or principal of an enterprise, and that means your income earning potential is all the greater.

Don’t overlook classes in writing, speaking, acting and interpersonal skills as fluff. Some of the highest paid individuals in America use those very skills on a daily basis to earn obscene amounts of money and gain fame as well as great fortunes. I’m not pointing towards any particular career path, but merely suggesting that being able to communicate well is often an overlooked talent that can help take you from the entry level to the executive level. Good return on investment is often found in technical results and the ability to effectively communicate those results to the non-technical among us.

It’s easy to give advice for success in school once you’re on the other side looking back, but sometimes that’s the only

way the value of such advice can be clearly appreciated. The proof is much more convincing when it can be seen in the results obtained rather than simply anticipated. Financing an education shouldn’t require getting deep in debt at the

start of your career. Graduates should leave school with more than simply a diploma – they should have practical experience and references as a competitive edge. And, the serious investment you make in education should pay dividends well into your working life. You can help provide assurance of this by having a central focus and complementing this with broader skills and knowledge that you know will be necessary to support upward mobility in the workplace.

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