How to Pay for Your Degree in Business & Related Fields: 2002-2004

Are you planning to get an undergraduate or graduate degree in business, economics, finance, or a
related field? Congratulations. You have made a wise decision. Not only will you find these careers personally
and intellectually challenging, you will also find them financially rewarding. In the National Association
of Colleges and Employers’ latest annual survey, the average beginning salary for business
school graduates was well over $50,000. And, according to the Barron’s Guide to Graduate Business
Schools, it is “not unusual” for business school graduates “to receive salaries over $100,000 a year,
plus signing-on bonuses that could be in the $10,000 to $25,000 range.”
Getting your degree in business or related fields, however, is expensive. It can cost $100,000 or more
just to complete a bachelor’s degree, and that amount or more for a master’s and doctoral degree.
That’s more than most students can afford to pay on their own.
Fortunately, hundreds of financial aid programs, representing billions of dollars, are available to help
undergraduate and graduate students prepare for a career in business or a related field. How can students
find out about this funding? In the past, general financial aid directories haven’t offered much
assistance. Scholarships, Fellowships, and Loans (published by Gale Group) and Chronicle Financial
Aid Guide (published by Chronicle Guidance) are representative; each just scratches the surface, identifying
only a few dozen of the hundreds of available funding opportunities. Similarly, the handful of publications
that have focused specifically on financial aid for students in business-related fields tend to be
either out of date or limited in scope; for example, neither Dollars for College: The Quick Guide to Financial
Aid for Business and Related Fields nor Financial Aid for Minorities in Business and Law (both published
by Ferguson) have been updated in the past five years. As a result, many students working on
an undergraduate or graduate degree in a business-related field (along with the counselors and librarians
trying to serve them) have been unaware of the hundreds of scholarships, fellowships, loans, forgivable
loans, grants, and awards available specifically to them.
Now, with the first edition of How to Pay for Your Degree in Business & Related Fields, that has all
changed. Here, in one place, you can find out about the wide array of funding opportunities set aside
specifically to support study and research for undergraduate and graduate students working on a
degree in a business-related field. All appropriate areas are covered, including accounting, actuarial science,
agricultural economics, banking, business administration, economics, finance, management,
marketing and sales, and personnel administration.