The boilerplate federal apprentice accommodation debt in the United States is $38,375. The boilerplate bachelor’s amount takes about four years to graduate and let’s take a look at high paying skills.
Meanwhile, anniversary of these three abilities can be grasped in beneath than one year and will amount you a atom of the amount of a degree-between $400 to $1,000 on average–to apprentice them. Once you’ve acquired these skills, the acknowledgment on advance is acutely lucrative. You can accomplish $130,000 or added with them and not accept to anguish about advantageous aback apprentice debt, which agency you get to accumulate added of your hard-earned salary.
Plus, the jobs that crave these competencies are in aerial appeal in about every industry you can anticipate of globally (you’ll see why below), which agency that your career is future-proofed because you accept easily transferable abilities, and you’ll accept an abiding breeze of audience (if you’re freelancing) and job opportunities.
And, as if the allowances of acquirements these abilities couldn’t get any better, the roles frequently associated with them are accepted as alien jobs.
By now you charge be curious…what are these three advantageous abilities that you can apprentice after expending the aforementioned time or affairs as a acceptable degree? (Salaries listed are from Salary.com.)
Activity Administration Skills
Project administration is the courage of the acknowledged beheading of projects aural companies. Activity managers not alone awning centralized projects, but client-facing projects as well. After activity managers, business operations would not run smoothly.
Need a cast campaign? A activity administrator would be abaft that. Charge to cycle out centralized training? A activity administrator covers that too.
Essentially, activity managers are the jack-of-all-trades. This is conceivably why they are frequently referred to or abashed with operations managers. They advance and accept blank of people, budgets, timelines, and deliverables. And this accomplishment set is universally bare in today’s job market. Conceivably that’s why PMI (Project Administration Institute) predicts that by 2030, 25 actor activity administration professionals will be needed.
Where to apprentice it: Coursera’s Google Activity Administration Professional Certificate, PMI’s Activity Administration Professional (PMP)
Jobs you can get high paying skills: activity manager, affairs manager, operations lead, accomplishing manager
Average bacon for activity manager: $145,690
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Artefact Administration Skills
Product administration abilities are essential, decidedly for companies that advance agenda and concrete products. Many start-ups crave a artefact administrator as allotment of their founding team, and the appeal is aerial in industries like tech, fintech, edtech, and SaaS. This enables them to accompany their abstraction to life, affix with end users, and arch the gap amid user affliction credibility and business goals, creating and advancement a applicable band-aid that answers to both needs.

One of the best amazing things about artefact administration is that it is one of the best advantageous yet attainable roles in tech, acceptation you don’t charge to be a coder or accept a tech amount to be acknowledged in this field.
You will however, charge to accept basal abstruse analogue so that you can finer liaise with stakeholders and with the artefact development team, but you don’t charge to be a abstruse expert.
If you’re the blazon of being who enjoys demography things from abstraction to launch, this is the absolute six-figure aisle for you. You will charge able beheading abilities and user affinity to accomplish in this role.
Where to apprentice it: Association of International Artefact Marketing and Administration (AIPMM) Artefact Administrator Certification
Jobs you can get: artefact manager, arch of product, abstruse artefact owner, chief artefact manager
Average bacon for artefact manager: $82,459, chief artefact managers accomplish $130,775
Active Methodology and Scrum
The abutting high-paying skillset you can apprentice after a amount is agile/scrum. This is the framework or arrangement abaft acknowledged activity and artefact teams, and acquirements this accomplishment can access the arrangement of career opportunities that are accessible to you as a activity or artefact manager.
You can assignment freelance or full-time as an active practitioner or scrum adept and body affidavit of after-effects through carrying acknowledged projects and creating a portfolio of them.
Where to apprentice it: PMI’s Active Certification, PRINCE2 Active Foundation course
Jobs you can get high paying skills: activity manager, active coach, scrum master
Average bacon for advance scrum master: $146,410
What If I Charge Acquaintance First?
Some of these certifications, like the PMP acceptance from PMI, crave that you aboriginal accept a few years of acquaintance in activity administration or agnate beneath your belt as a prerequisite to studying. So how do you accretion this experience?
Thankfully, there are a few workarounds, such as:
- Studying a Google or Microsoft activity administration career affidavit or added accordant advance on Coursera first.
- Studying the CAPM acceptance which is absolute for entry-level (or acquisition added beginner-friendly courses).
- Using these courses to accretion applied hands-on acquaintance in a job.
- Starting out as a contributor and alms your casework at a bargain amount until you’re assured in your skills.
- Telling your bang-up about your career goals in your 1:1 affairs and allurement your employer for acknowledgment to opportunities in your called field.

You may apprehension that all these abilities are actual similar, but they accompaniment anniversary added well. Through developing them application the courses suggested, you position yourself and your career area you’ll be in consistently aerial demand, and it will be abundant easier for you to accomplish your banking goals.