That is by personal choice. If you want to, I am sure you could easily hold 737 captain, if not higher. $140,$150k pretty easily.

Even if you were at an airline like US Air where you could be there for 17 years and not hold captain, you would still be making more money than any regional captain. And irregardless of money, you have a much better schedule, much better QOL, and much better stability at a major versus a regional airline.

I agree that since a major airline will not hire you without a college degree, your career will likely end at a regional making 90k without a degree. If you go to a major airline for all those years, you will top out much higher making much more money at a major (need a college degree for that). Even if you top out at less than 200k, that money still adds up over 30 years!!!!

I went to college for 3 years on the east coast, dropped out and now am instructing on the west coast and have mixed feelings. I instructed and went to school at the same time and that was terrible. Having an "active" social life with work such as CFI'ing and it's hard. Case in point, Thirsty Thursady and your friday appointments, what do you do? Not show up and not make any money or progress? Not go out and have fun with your buddies? YEAH RIGHT! I'd like to see anyone make that choice, not possible.
Working a "professional" (not bashing cfi'ing, very much so a professional job, but my company was a joke) job and cfi'ing sucked. Doable, but sucked. Also don't get a degree in Aviation, it's a joke, wish I listened and gotten a business degree. Ohh well, so now i"m looking at finishing everything online and staying out on the west coast with my sugar moma(great thing to have). But by all means don't do what I did, go to school, get your degree, learn alot, have fun, and yeah the 'let's go flying' thing works amazing in college on girls, awesome what a 30 min flight over your college will do to your percentage of filling her tank with your fuel hose!

I don't know why some of you clowns say to not get a "aviation" degree - there is plenty to fall back on with an aviation degree which would at least leave you in an interesting field as opposed to what? a generic "business" degreee? What's that gonna get you? a job in a cubicle somewhere? working for initech? I'd rather fall back into somthing like aircraft sales, FBO management, airport management, airport planning, aerospace, etc...
Aircaft sales is where it's at if you want to make some coin.

Go to college. A degree is a degree. It is just a sheet of paper saying you were responsibale enough to get up, go to class, and pass test. I graduated with an aviation degree and had to take a lot of business classes, some are set up where you take science classes, so there will be plenty to fall back on.