How your Aviation Career is like Going to Graduate School

Posted by Matthew Bila on

Published by Beth Seiler on Fri, Apr 12, 2013

The cost of flight training is expensive, especially at programs that have advanced technologies in their trainers and simulation equipment. And the starting salaries for pilots entering the aviation industry as first officers are criminally low. So what would make some wide-eyed youngster even enter this field? Their passion and their perspective, the idea that they could not imagine themselves doing anything other than flying, should be the answer, but often times the answer is for the money, or for the travel benefits. This industry will self-regulate those that are in it for the love and perspective it brings, and those that are in it for the money and travel because the money and travel don’t come early or easy. But even those that are in it, for what I would call the right reasons, can lose their perspective and find their passion diminished when the harsh reality of this industry hits.

They are coming into the repayment of large amounts of loans by getting a position where they will work more and get paid less than what they may have been doing while in college. For some, they may have made more money as flight instructors than they will their first year as a first officer of a regional carrier. Making it difficult to repay their loans and have enough left to live. Causing people to rethink their career choice, rethink if they have made a mistake in following their passion and rethink how they look at their career choice. Here, is where I would propose a perspective shift.

The regional carriers are not merely your first job in to the aviation industry the regional carriers are your graduate school degree.

Everyone knows that on the job training is some of the most valuable education that anyone can receive. How you handle yourself professionally and personally during everything from in-flight emergencies to your relationship with your company will mold you in to a better and better pilot as you move through the industry. This additional, and wildly valuable, education is like graduate school.

Where other students plan from the start that they will get a bachelor’s degree in business and then move on to graduate school to complete an MBA, flight students have a tendency to look at their bachelor’s degree as their terminal degree. And technically speaking they are right, most don’t get a masters or PhD, it’s not needed – instead they strive for things like ATP, and total hours flown to get advancement in their careers.

But if flight students looked at their regional job as graduate school, their perspective would be one of continuing education and getting minimally paid to do it, rather than the somewhat large let down felt by getting that first job and realizing you can’t get a new car with that first paycheck.

An article in 2012 in Forbes magazine1 looked at the question of whether grad school was still worth the money. It said that the average total tuition for a top 20 business school in 2011-2012 was $102,355 for an MBA. But a full cost analysis must also take in to consideration the lost wages of a student that goes back to school full time instead of being in the work force, which equates to approximately $44,442 per year. MBA programs (going full time) are typically two year programs so lost wages are $88,884. Added to the tuition for the degree it costs $191,239 for a student to get their MBA. On the flip side the article sites that people holding MBA’s typically make between $5 and $8 million over the course of a 40 year working career. Meaning they have spent about 4% of their lifetime wages on the investment of educating themselves.

Using this same logic for pilots, tuition and fees at WMU are $105,500 the lifetime earning potential of a pilot is approximately $4.5 million (assuming movement every 7 years or so from FO to Capt, and on to the major airlines). Meaning they will have spent about 2% of their lifetime wages on the investment of educating themselves.

In this context, comparing the first airline job to graduate school isn’t that difficult, and a better return on investment. If students would have the mindset that their bachelor’s degree is not their terminal degree, and look at that first airline job as the investment in the education of themselves at a graduate level, they may be able to maintain their passion for flying and perspective on the industry. 

 

O’Connor, S. (2012). Grad school: Still worth the money? Forbes. Retrieved at: www.forbes.com/sites/shawnoconnor/2012/04/05/grad-school-still-worth-the-money/print/