David Houde
David Houde feels like he's made it — and he thinks it wouldn't have been possible without his college degree. But it's been a long, winding road to this point.
"If you knew me in my 20s you wouldn't think I would have been successful," the 48-year-old, who's based in Michigan, told Business Insider via email.
After graduating from high school in the mid-1990s, Houde enrolled in a four-year college but said he dropped out before his second semester after struggling in his classes.
For the next five years, Houde worked various "dead-end jobs," including door-to-door salesman, gas station clerk, fast food worker, landscape laborer, and delivery driver. He said his favorite of these jobs involved making glasses in an optical lab, but he saw no path for advancing or increasing his pay.
Around 1999, at roughly the age of 23, he decided to go back to school. By 2006, he'd earned an associate degree in computer information systems and a bachelor's degree in computer science.
A degree didn't immediately solve all of his problems: He struggled to find a job and pay off his student debt — and even had to withdraw from a 401(k) from a past job. But ultimately, the journey was worth it.
Houde is making nearly $150,000 annually as a software engineer, according to documents viewed by Business Insider. He said this income has allowed him to pay off roughly $45,000 in student debt in about eight years, travel regularly with his wife, and for the first time in his life, buy a new car before his old one breaks down.
"For me, going back to college was the best thing that I ever did," he said.
Houde is among the many Americans who have grappled with the same fork-in-the-road life choice: Should I go to college? In recent years, the cost of a four-year education and job opportunities for workers without degrees have led many people to decide that college isn't worth it. A Pew Research survey of over 5,000 US adults conducted late last year found that 76% of Americans thought a college degree wasn't worth the cost if the student has to take on debt — this sentiment has also shown up in declining enrollment figures over the past decade. What's more, paying for college doesn't guarantee employment — graduates can be subject to the whims of the job market.
However, for many people, going to college can be a great financial decision. The typical graduate has a considerably higher income and is less likely to be unemployed than people without degrees. Some areas of study tend to be more lucrative than others and student debt burdens can offset some of the benefits of a higher income, but in the long run, getting a degree has paid off for many Americans, including Houde.
Houde shared how he went from dropping out of college to earning a six-figure income — and why he feels like he got lucky.
When he first enrolled in college, Houde didn't have any idea what he would major in. But after he dropped out, he said he realized he was good at working with computers.
He'd taken some basic computer courses in the past, but he said his eureka moment came one night when he helped a friend with their college programming course.
"I was able to fix her code," he said. "That was pretty much the moment I figured out what I should be doing and that I needed to return to college."
Houde enrolled in a local community college and in 2002, he received his associate's degree in computer information systems.
But he wasn't sold on the benefits of a degree quite yet because he struggled to find a job.
In Houde's estimation, the early 2000s were the "second worst time" to be looking for a software industry role in the last 25 years — he attributed this to the software industry hiring slowdown after "Y2K" and the temporary impacts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the broader job market.
So he decided to go back to school again, pursuing his bachelor's degree part-time. By the age of 31, he'd graduated with a degree in computer science.
This time, Houde graduated into what he called the single worst job market for software industry workers of the last quarter-century — the Great Recession was beginning to take hold.
Houde eventually found a job that paid $32,500 a year, but he struggled to get by financially, in part because he had student debt and mortgage payments to grapple with. He said he was eventually forced to cash out $16,000 from a 401(k) he'd accumulated from a previous job.
"There were so many times that I felt like I was just digging myself a bigger and bigger hole financially," he said.
But over time, things steadily improved as his income rose to the six-figure level it's at today. About eight years after receiving his bachelor's degree, he paid off his student debt.
In hindsight, Houde said going to college and taking on the debt was necessary to put himself in the position he is now.
"Somehow I persisted and now live a very different life and have an amazing salary," he said, adding, "I'm entirely grateful that things worked out the way they did for me. I know not everyone is as lucky."
However, Houde continues to be somewhat uncertain about the value of pursuing additional education. In 2016, about a decade after he graduated with his bachelor's degree, he decided to pursue an MBA. But he said he's not sure it was worth it because it hasn't helped him advance in his career or boost his pay.
"I'm 50-50 on success going back to school," he said. "My bachelor's did wonders for my career. My MBA, not so much."
Have you gone back to college later in life? Have you found financial success without a college degree? Reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.
