Also, look at the big picture. Only 27% of the US population have a bachelor's or higher. That means nearly 3/4s of the workforce don't have a bachelor's degree. Only 9% percent of the US population have a master's or higher, so make sure you really need a graduate degree, lest you become overqualified. The trend is towards a smaller percentage of people going for and receiving college educations in the future.
Part of that, perhaps a large part, is due to a decreased need for college graduates as computers fill in a lot of occupations (lawyers, accountants, high level professional assistants) where people had to man such jobs before. Before computers, the accountant I used to go to had his BS in accounting and had two bachelor's degreed assistants in the office. Now the town, same size, has just one accountant with a computer handling the same load as before. Thanks to computers, our small town's only accounting firm lost two people and now it's a person working from home doing the town's taxes. This trend happens on similar and larger scales all over the country as computers replace more jobs than it makes.
And as robotics grows, more jobs will be replaced and we will be a nation of 350 million people with too few jobs to go around.
And then there is off-shoring of US, Japanese, and Western European jobs to one poor countries that have meteoric rises in their populations' attainment of college degrees.
We are entering a whole new dynamic, especially in America, where a degree will inherently lose it's once powerful value. Keeping current skills up as you enter and stay in the workforce will be key after you get that BS degree and land a career. Professional certifications are often what many a BS computer science worker use to move up in the high tech field.
If you want a professional graduate degree, and go for the most money according to most salary surveys, there are eight fields, the first one of which may most closely be related to you, and they are:
MBA with a concentration in info systems, telecommunications, IT
MD
DO
DVM
PharmD
PsyD
DDS
JD/LL.B/LL.M
These degrees differ from academic graduate degrees like the MA, MS, and PhD which may be harder to attain and usually pay less and are perceived to have less value in the corporate world than a professional graduate degree. As you know, you can probably further your sociology studies and get an MA or even PhD and work your butt off with a thesis and a dissertation and still never end up getting paid well for all your efforts.
Having been in two of the above mentioned "professional" programs, they are not intellectual in the least and are more job related training in the classroom. The MA, MS, and PhD are academic and truly intellectual and reward original research and innovation and are designed to expand you more than they are designed to custom fit to a career.
