Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Discuss working and making a living overseas, starting a business, or studying abroad.
MrMan
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Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by MrMan »

Let's discuss what college majors or advanced degrees are good for working abroad.

The obvious route to working abroad is teaching. Degrees in ESL can get you an easy-to-find relatively low-paying job in many countries. Degrees that get you teacher certification might help you get a job at an international school that pays better.

In the field of education, PhD's in certain fields, like business, engineering, and technology fields might land you a job at a decent-paying Asian university. Oil rich countries in the middle east pay well. There are some universities in China that pay well. You may be able to get an almost-market salary in Kazakhstan in certain fields. M.D.'s may be able to teach in medical schools as well. I'm not to sure about the details of that. I'd imagine US JD's would have a hard time finding jobs teaching law abroad since they learn US law, though I've known JD's who've had management roles in education.

There may be some specific fields you could get into where you could get a job overseas rather easily. I'd imagine petrochemical degrees could get a job in the oil industry. Many years ago, someone in the oil industry told me they are always looking for a good mud tech. Those guys keep the oil from spurting up in the ground with the 'mud' they put in the wells.

If you can learn how to do import-export, you could set up and work overseas. I'd imagine a business degree would be good for that. But if you get a bachelors of business or an MBA, you probably won't be able to get a job overseas just for having a degree. If you had some work experience before you got an MBA that made you valuable, you might be able to get a job. I've seen a low-paying college job online for US MBAs overseas that pay about like English teacher jobs-- a waste of an expensive masters degree if you ask me.

To work abroad in some business or tech field, you have to work for an international company where you learn the ropes, become valuable to the company, and then apply for a job overseas. Outside of education, there are few degrees where you can just graduate and get a job overseas.

Business is a good degree if you want to do any kind of business overseas.

Even without a degree, if you get some special skills, you may be able to work abroad. I met an Englishman at the airport in Guanzhou once. He said he consulted for shoe factories in China. He lived in Hong Kong, officially, and kept his money there, but he had a place in Guanzhou, too if I recall correctly. Since he was just consulting, he was allowed to fly in and out on a business visit visa. And since he worked abroad, the UK did not charge him income taxes. If I understand correctly, neither Hong Kong nor China taxed his income. He had a lot of experience in shoe factories, though. I don't know what his education or training was.
CannedHam
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by CannedHam »

Another good option is IT - lots of 100% remote positions out there (maybe you need to go into the office once or twice a year). Some software development gigs are also 100% remote.

The benefit to this is that you will be paid a US salary and will be working for a company governed by US business laws (this is huge). Downsides are potentially strange working hours.
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Contrarian Expatriate
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by Contrarian Expatriate »

For those of you who are not at all interested in STEM or IT fields, you should major in a foreign language, and minor in another. Both languages should be major languages that are rarely spoken by Westerners such as Russian, Mandarin, or Turkish (which is usable in Azerbaijan and the several Central Asian countries.)

Never waste your time with Spanish, French, German or the other common languages widely-spoken in America and the West because you are not distinguishing yourself as a rare commodity and will likely never beat out the legions of Westerners who speak these languages better than you.

For graduate studies, concentrate on fields that allow you to do development work, grant work, and or journalism.

Business and other skills can be learned via internships and on the job training. Language is THE primary bar to overseas employment.
Last edited by Contrarian Expatriate on August 24th, 2017, 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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E Irizarry R&B Singer
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by E Irizarry R&B Singer »

Contrarian Expatriate wrote:You should major in a foreign language, and minor in another. Both languages should be major languages that are rarely spoken by Westerners such as Russian, Mandarin, or Turkish (which is usable in Azerbaijan and the several Central Asian countries.)

Never waste your time with Spanish, French, German or the other common languages commonly spoken widely-spoken in America and the West because your are not distinguishing yourself as a rarity and will likely never beat out the legions of Westerners who speak it better than you.

For graduate studies, concentrate on fields that allow you to do development work, grant work, and or journalism.

Business and other skills can be learned via internships and on the job training. Language is THE primary bar to overseas employment.
You have it somewhat correct; learn a facet of Big (or Fast Data or Big Data 2.0 i.e. Data Analytics/IoT (Internet of Things [To Be At One Time or Another]) makes a lovely arsenal to your Foreign Language ideology.
Big Data has such a colossal shortage that it's not even funny yet it pays out the wahzoo. Start off with an online university based out of India (e.g. Edureka!),
then get an internship or get an entry-level job doing Hadoop (on-premise data ingestion & wrangling) and AWS or Azure HD Insight (off-premise cloud PaaS ran by Amazon, the latter by Microsoft). The Big Data industry is segueing itself from batch data processing to streaming via Tez/Hive, Kafka concurrent threading ingestor (runs 1M% times faster than RabbitMQ at 4M MESSAGES PER FCKING SECOND & Spark (both Apache foundation registered) for lightening fast data ingestion, mapping, and wrangling. That speed is needed because we are transcending upon petabytes and exabytes of data nowadays. Within a decade, zetabytes will be common in the IoT/Fast Data world.

Sorry; I got really geeked out but here's to my 'hood side, "it is....what it is." hahahahaa
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E Irizarry R&B Singer
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by E Irizarry R&B Singer »

oh and if and when one gets into Big Data, please please learn Java because it's a complete object-oriented language (it increases productivity, execution times, and avoids redundancy of its objects/data structures, etc.) and learn at least one interpretation language such as HiveQL or Python (more the latter really) and then do the rest of what I told you to do.
zaalim_g
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by zaalim_g »

Hey E Irizarry,

Could you please explain more about your hadoop post.

Im a 24 year old with a shit bio degree.

Thanks for your edureka recommendation, I might take their Hadoop masters program which provided knowledge in a bunch of courses.
Any recommendation on how to find that entry level job or internship? Checking job postings, everyone wants 5 years of experience. Its always the hardest going from knowledge to actually getting a placement.

Also in general does this career path require a lot of typing... aka. future joint pain, bad health and carpel tunnel??

If this goes through I will owe you my life haha.
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E Irizarry R&B Singer
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by E Irizarry R&B Singer »

zaalim_g wrote:Hey E Irizarry,

Could you please explain more about your hadoop post.

Im a 24 year old with a shit bio degree.

Thanks for your edureka recommendation, I might take their Hadoop masters program which provided knowledge in a bunch of courses.
Any recommendation on how to find that entry level job or internship? Checking job postings, everyone wants 5 years of experience. Its always the hardest going from knowledge to actually getting a placement.

Also in general does this career path require a lot of typing... aka. future joint pain, bad health and carpel tunnel??

If this goes through I will owe you my life haha.
Nah you won't owe me your life; you will own yourself your own life. Anything else would be a DISService. lol hahaa
If you have a Biology degree, then you have the discipline (maybe not the aptitude) to get an online BA/BS/PhD degree and/or Cloudera and/or AWS Architect certifications.
It WILL REQUIRE a lot of typing, but the cool thing is that you don't have to type super-fast. However, you might want to learn your homerow keys:
ASDF JKL;
As a straight non-Caucasian man, on a good day I may type 95-100 words per minute corrected speed mind you.
Just saying.

If you don't learn them, no worries.

I have carpel tunnel and just recalibrate my wrists tens to hundred times a day making the snap-crackle-pop muscle thread sound. I just live with it.

Big Data can lead to bad health if you eat up the GMO office snacks and don't hit the gym at least every other night for two hours. Swimming and biking are hands down the
best two non-frictional-para-joint exercises on planet Earth. Water provides up to 25x's more resistance than air does so swimming is EXTREMELY good for you.
If you have to eat office snacks (we're human; we're supposed to become hungry), then chew up unsalted cashews, unsalted almonds. They are good phyto-estrogen proteins and healthy fats.
Stay away from "healthy"/"energy" bars and that bullshit; they are laden with too much simple carbs. You would have to have a good metabolism by default in order for "health" bars to benefit you.

I can bet money that edureka! can get you a job. Just look into it, and don't brag about what advice they'll give you. Don't post it on this website!
There are Hadoop jobs out the wahzoo (Source: Indeed.com):
https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=hadoop&l=boston%2C+ma

SF Bay Area, Portland, Boston, NYC, ATL, CHI, ATX (Austin Texas), Charlotte, RTP, and Seattle metro area are the Big Data epicenters of the U.S. of Gay (USA)
Last edited by E Irizarry R&B Singer on September 23rd, 2017, 8:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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E Irizarry R&B Singer
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

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Last edited by E Irizarry R&B Singer on September 22nd, 2017, 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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E Irizarry R&B Singer
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

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MrMan
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by MrMan »

I saw the suggestion about getting an online BA, advanced degree or PhD.

There are some legit online degrees. I think I saw an MBA from a state university in Montana or Nebraska. Oregon State has an online bachelor's of business. There are community colleges with online courses, too. If you have an accredited degree, you could probably transfer most of the first two years.

But there are also some lousy online schools. I hear negative things about University of Phoenix. I don't think their 'doctor' degrees are worth anything really for most people. If you get a bachelors form there, your resume will likely be on the bottom of the stack with the people with no college degree. It's not highly respected, from what I hear. I talked to an elementary school teacher who got an online degree from another school, a doctorate, who lamented that he couldn't get a job teaching at a community college with an online degree. A friend of mine who got a real conventional PhD at a state university and continued to work at a high school complained that the people with the two-year online doctorates got the same bump up in salary he got with his real PhD. I told him he might have a chance of teaching at a university if he wanted, and they didn't. He'd probably have to publish to get a decent job, though.

Be careful of online doctorates. If you get a government job that bumps up your salary if you get any doctorate, whether it is a lousy one or a good one, maybe the lousy online degree makes sense. But that's about all the degree is good for, that and initials after your name. I don't see why the ego boost would be worth the time, effort, and two years of your life, especially if you know its kind of a lousy degree.

There are legit schools offering online degrees, too. For me personally, I wouldn't want to take an online degree. Some of these online degrees eat up a ridiculous amont of the students time. They can put two courses worth of material in one course for an undergrad. For the time used, I prefer a lecture, where the lecturer brings out the important parts and tests you on those parts. If you have one of those online lecturers who assigns 2 hours YouTube videos, his own lecture, and lots of projects and materials, it can be rough. Then they may just fail you if two many of combinations of five words happen to show up on the billion plus web pages on the Internet. Those things can be appealed, but it is easier to deal with such problems when you know a lecturer face to face.

If it is an actual PhD, at least in the American system, I don't see how you can do that whole thing online. Once you get your seminars in, you could do some of your research off-site. I suppose you could Skype your chair and return to defend. Maybe some of those content and methods seminars could be done online. But if you are going to get a PhD, the first two years are kind of time-consuming, and you really have to be dedicated. It makes sense not to be working another job besides the graduate assistant role where you do research that helps your career, or something you can do a few hours a week like tweak a website or other business that's on quasi-autopilot.

I definitely prefer the face-to-face interaction. And teaching courses with an online component can be really restrictive. It's good to have the option to use online but not be required, or to use it for a communication tool to send course materials.
MrMan
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by MrMan »

I saw the suggestion about getting an online BA, advanced degree or PhD.

There are some legit online degrees. I think I saw an MBA from a state university in Montana or Nebraska. Oregon State has an online bachelor's of business. There are community colleges with online courses, too. If you have an accredited degree, you could probably transfer most of the first two years.

But there are also some lousy online schools. I hear negative things about University of Phoenix. I don't think their 'doctor' degrees are worth anything really for most people. If you get a bachelors form there, your resume will likely be on the bottom of the stack with the people with no college degree. It's not highly respected, from what I hear. I talked to an elementary school teacher who got an online degree from another school, a doctorate, who lamented that he couldn't get a job teaching at a community college with an online degree. A friend of mine who got a real conventional PhD at a state university and continued to work at a high school complained that the people with the two-year online doctorates got the same bump up in salary he got with his real PhD. I told him he might have a chance of teaching at a university if he wanted, and they didn't. He'd probably have to publish to get a decent job, though.

Be careful of online doctorates. If you get a government job that bumps up your salary if you get any doctorate, whether it is a lousy one or a good one, maybe the lousy online degree makes sense. But that's about all the degree is good for, that and initials after your name. I don't see why the ego boost would be worth the time, effort, and two years of your life, especially if you know its kind of a lousy degree.

There are legit schools offering online degrees, too. For me personally, I wouldn't want to take an online degree. Some of these online degrees eat up a ridiculous amont of the students time. They can put two courses worth of material in one course for an undergrad. For the time used, I prefer a lecture, where the lecturer brings out the important parts and tests you on those parts. If you have one of those online lecturers who assigns 2 hours YouTube videos, his own lecture, and lots of projects and materials, it can be rough. Then they may just fail you if two many of combinations of five words happen to show up on the billion plus web pages on the Internet. Those things can be appealed, but it is easier to deal with such problems when you know a lecturer face to face.

If it is an actual PhD, at least in the American system, I don't see how you can do that whole thing online. Once you get your seminars in, you could do some of your research off-site. I suppose you could Skype your chair and return to defend. Maybe some of those content and methods seminars could be done online. But if you are going to get a PhD, the first two years are kind of time-consuming, and you really have to be dedicated. It makes sense not to be working another job besides the graduate assistant role where you do research that helps your career, or something you can do a few hours a week like tweak a website or other business that's on quasi-autopilot.

I definitely prefer the face-to-face interaction. And teaching courses with an online component can be really restrictive. It's good to have the option to use online but not be required, or to use it for a communication tool to send course materials.
MrMan
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by MrMan »

I saw the suggestion about getting an online BA, advanced degree or PhD.

There are some legit online degrees. I think I saw an MBA from a state university in Montana or Nebraska. Oregon State has an online bachelor's of business. There are community colleges with online courses, too. If you have an accredited degree, you could probably transfer most of the first two years.

But there are also some lousy online schools. I hear negative things about University of Phoenix. I don't think their 'doctor' degrees are worth anything really for most people. If you get a bachelors form there, your resume will likely be on the bottom of the stack with the people with no college degree. It's not highly respected, from what I hear. I talked to an elementary school teacher who got an online degree from another school, a doctorate, who lamented that he couldn't get a job teaching at a community college with an online degree. A friend of mine who got a real conventional PhD at a state university and continued to work at a high school complained that the people with the two-year online doctorates got the same bump up in salary he got with his real PhD. I told him he might have a chance of teaching at a university if he wanted, and they didn't. He'd probably have to publish to get a decent job, though.

Be careful of online doctorates. If you get a government job that bumps up your salary if you get any doctorate, whether it is a lousy one or a good one, maybe the lousy online degree makes sense. But that's about all the degree is good for, that and initials after your name. I don't see why the ego boost would be worth the time, effort, and two years of your life, especially if you know its kind of a lousy degree.

There are legit schools offering online degrees, too. For me personally, I wouldn't want to take an online degree. Some of these online degrees eat up a ridiculous amont of the students time. They can put two courses worth of material in one course for an undergrad. For the time used, I prefer a lecture, where the lecturer brings out the important parts and tests you on those parts. If you have one of those online lecturers who assigns 2 hours YouTube videos, his own lecture, and lots of projects and materials, it can be rough. Then they may just fail you if two many of combinations of five words happen to show up on the billion plus web pages on the Internet. Those things can be appealed, but it is easier to deal with such problems when you know a lecturer face to face.

If it is an actual PhD, at least in the American system, I don't see how you can do that whole thing online. Once you get your seminars in, you could do some of your research off-site. I suppose you could Skype your chair and return to defend. Maybe some of those content and methods seminars could be done online. But if you are going to get a PhD, the first two years are kind of time-consuming, and you really have to be dedicated. It makes sense not to be working another job besides the graduate assistant role where you do research that helps your career, or something you can do a few hours a week like tweak a website or other business that's on quasi-autopilot.

I definitely prefer the face-to-face interaction. And teaching courses with an online component can be really restrictive. It's good to have the option to use online but not be required, or to use it for a communication tool to send course materials.
MrMan
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by MrMan »

I saw the suggestion about getting an online BA, advanced degree or PhD.

There are some legit online degrees. I think I saw an MBA from a state university in Montana or Nebraska. Oregon State has an online bachelor's of business. There are community colleges with online courses, too. If you have an accredited degree, you could probably transfer most of the first two years.

But there are also some lousy online schools. I hear negative things about University of Phoenix. I don't think their 'doctor' degrees are worth anything really for most people. If you get a bachelors form there, your resume will likely be on the bottom of the stack with the people with no college degree. It's not highly respected, from what I hear. I talked to an elementary school teacher who got an online degree from another school, a doctorate, who lamented that he couldn't get a job teaching at a community college with an online degree. A friend of mine who got a real conventional PhD at a state university and continued to work at a high school complained that the people with the two-year online doctorates got the same bump up in salary he got with his real PhD. I told him he might have a chance of teaching at a university if he wanted, and they didn't. He'd probably have to publish to get a decent job, though.

Be careful of online doctorates. If you get a government job that bumps up your salary if you get any doctorate, whether it is a lousy one or a good one, maybe the lousy online degree makes sense. But that's about all the degree is good for, that and initials after your name. I don't see why the ego boost would be worth the time, effort, and two years of your life, especially if you know its kind of a lousy degree.

There are legit schools offering online degrees, too. For me personally, I wouldn't want to take an online degree. Some of these online degrees eat up a ridiculous amont of the students time. They can put two courses worth of material in one course for an undergrad. For the time used, I prefer a lecture, where the lecturer brings out the important parts and tests you on those parts. If you have one of those online lecturers who assigns 2 hours YouTube videos, his own lecture, and lots of projects and materials, it can be rough. Then they may just fail you if two many of combinations of five words happen to show up on the billion plus web pages on the Internet. Those things can be appealed, but it is easier to deal with such problems when you know a lecturer face to face.

If it is an actual PhD, at least in the American system, I don't see how you can do that whole thing online. Once you get your seminars in, you could do some of your research off-site. I suppose you could Skype your chair and return to defend. Maybe some of those content and methods seminars could be done online. But if you are going to get a PhD, the first two years are kind of time-consuming, and you really have to be dedicated. It makes sense not to be working another job besides the graduate assistant role where you do research that helps your career, or something you can do a few hours a week like tweak a website or other business that's on quasi-autopilot.

I definitely prefer the face-to-face interaction. And teaching courses with an online component can be really restrictive. It's good to have the option to use online but not be required, or to use it for a communication tool to send course materials.
MrMan
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by MrMan »

I think you could probably still get a job teaching English in China or Korea if you just have a bachelors in anything, even biology. It's not the highest paying job in the world, but it's okay for a single man. It might help to take some kind of course if you want to know what you are doing. If you get certified as a school science teacher, international school jobs overseas pay well. They are full-time jobs, where you could put in 50 hours a week or so.
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E Irizarry R&B Singer
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Re: Good College Majors for Working Abroad

Post by E Irizarry R&B Singer »

MrMan wrote:I saw the suggestion about getting an online BA, advanced degree or PhD.

There are some legit online degrees. I think I saw an MBA from a state university in Montana or Nebraska. Oregon State has an online bachelor's of business. There are community colleges with online courses, too. If you have an accredited degree, you could probably transfer most of the first two years.

But there are also some lousy online schools. I hear negative things about University of Phoenix. I don't think their 'doctor' degrees are worth anything really for most people. If you get a bachelors form there, your resume will likely be on the bottom of the stack with the people with no college degree. It's not highly respected, from what I hear. I talked to an elementary school teacher who got an online degree from another school, a doctorate, who lamented that he couldn't get a job teaching at a community college with an online degree. A friend of mine who got a real conventional PhD at a state university and continued to work at a high school complained that the people with the two-year online doctorates got the same bump up in salary he got with his real PhD. I told him he might have a chance of teaching at a university if he wanted, and they didn't. He'd probably have to publish to get a decent job, though.

Be careful of online doctorates. If you get a government job that bumps up your salary if you get any doctorate, whether it is a lousy one or a good one, maybe the lousy online degree makes sense. But that's about all the degree is good for, that and initials after your name. I don't see why the ego boost would be worth the time, effort, and two years of your life, especially if you know its kind of a lousy degree.

There are legit schools offering online degrees, too. For me personally, I wouldn't want to take an online degree. Some of these online degrees eat up a ridiculous amont of the students time. They can put two courses worth of material in one course for an undergrad. For the time used, I prefer a lecture, where the lecturer brings out the important parts and tests you on those parts. If you have one of those online lecturers who assigns 2 hours YouTube videos, his own lecture, and lots of projects and materials, it can be rough. Then they may just fail you if two many of combinations of five words happen to show up on the billion plus web pages on the Internet. Those things can be appealed, but it is easier to deal with such problems when you know a lecturer face to face.

If it is an actual PhD, at least in the American system, I don't see how you can do that whole thing online. Once you get your seminars in, you could do some of your research off-site. I suppose you could Skype your chair and return to defend. Maybe some of those content and methods seminars could be done online. But if you are going to get a PhD, the first two years are kind of time-consuming, and you really have to be dedicated. It makes sense not to be working another job besides the graduate assistant role where you do research that helps your career, or something you can do a few hours a week like tweak a website or other business that's on quasi-autopilot.

I definitely prefer the face-to-face interaction. And teaching courses with an online component can be really restrictive. It's good to have the option to use online but not be required, or to use it for a communication tool to send course materials.
Look, man. I will go easy on you because you have been having a rough time with my good ol' bud Contrarian Expatriate as of late, but I have to say this: research the online program. Some of them have rockstar curricula..especially if they are of the I.T. realm. Don't knock many of the online programs especially if they are of I.T.
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