Having said that, I think you may need to partially separate the idea of going to college from the idea of a job. There are many jobs where you can make decent (not necessarily great) money without a college degree. On the other hand, a college degree (in anything) can open up a lot of opportunities. Also, you do not have to have get a job only in the field that you studied in college. Most college degreed people are probably in a field that is either entirely different or just related to the field they studied in college.

You say that you are going back to college, so I presume you want to build on some of the credits previously earned? If you were studying social work before and you’re still into ‘helping people’, could you maybe just go ahead and finish your social work degree or a related field? You may not want to be a social worker now, but maybe you can find a related job with some public or non-profit agency that does a lot of human services work or even teaching or giving community education training (my local Red Cross has community educators who teach people emergency preparedeness, for example).

After getting your degree and once you get your foot in door, maybe you can do professional development or CEU training on computers and information technology, so that you can later move to a position closer to that area that makes more money. You could probably even move on to be an IT person in a human services agency or educational institution, so you get the best of both of your worlds. I am with a large local public agency in the Midwest and we have had people in our IT staff with degrees in English, History, and other non-technical or non-computer related fields.

To sum up, I advise you to get your degree in the most efficient and least costly manner possible. The degree, regardless of the field, would then make you more marketable (and even your husband should realize the value of a college degree as a passport to economic opportunity – almost equivalent to getting a high school diploma 40 years ago). Then, you can move on to beefing up your IT background on your career path through continuing education/professional development type coursework and training, as opposed to studying IT to get a university degree which would seem to be a much more costly endeavor for you given your background.

I agree that a teachers pay is not great, but you have the opportunity of advancement in that field. You can start as an elementary teacher and work up to high school and eventually become a college professor.

Since you want to help people why not look into School Councelor, see what credentials you need for that and what it’s paying. The educational field is such a wide field there are so many different opportunities. You could be a Financial Aid Councelor at a college.

When you return to college just take a look at everyone you can and what their jobs are and ask yourself it’s the job for you. Then you can ask them what the job is like and if they think the pay is fair, etc. Ask the professors, the councelors, the admissions advisors…

Good Luck!