JamesNoBrakes

The most successful people I know are the ones that did this. They got engineering degrees while doing piloting, other degrees, and in the end, they are able to pursue flying on their own terms, be test pilots, flight engineers, have enough money to buy their own plane, etc. The job prospects are usually much brighter, and so on. Their success is due to hard work though. It wasn't easy for me to do a master's degree while I was working full time, but I did it, and it has paid off in spades IMO.

Here's a very important piece of information: many of us were drawn to piloting because we think we can get paid 150K-200K to "just fly", and we'll have a significant period of time off! How cool is that? That sounds like not a lot of work for a big payoff, right? That's not how the world works though. Nothing is free, and you have to pay one way or another. The way you pay with that is the fact that in 10 years, virtually no one has made it to major airlines. A few have, but now that regionals actually do more flights and flying, it's not possible that all those pilots can "move on". So you hope that one day, when you are 40 or 50, you might finally get a shot at the "major airline", maybe by 55 or 60 you move into a "heavy". Those people that make it as lawyers making the big bucks paid their dues by the costs of college and law school, those that did the same becoming doctors did so with their school costs, interning and becoming a resident, those that did becoming business execs did so by going to business school, sometimes having resources to start their own business, or working up for a long time within a specific business. There is no "free lunch" or magic career that will pay off with minimal effort. You put in the hard work now, and you'll never regret it.