Analysis of Salary Scales and Higher Education Attainment in the Republic of Ireland

The purpose of this report was to research how beneficial higher levels of education are when you want to pursue a higher salary. As a student myself, I was curious as to how much of an increase of salary I could expect if I decided to pursue a master’s degree after this degree. The report shows how I went about creating an interactive map of the Republic of Ireland, including the technologies used and an examination of the data. After building the map and interacting with the data, I found that you tend to lose from your salary by moving from an Advanced Certificate to a Higher Certificate. Unsurprisingly, Dublin tends to pay the most for each level of degree that you have, up until you obtain a Ph.D, where the highest median income is actually in Laois. I also looked at the breakdown of degrees between men and women, and women tended to have a larger percentage of obtaining degrees in each county up until the level of a Ph.D, where men overtake women in nearly all counties. From the data collected, I can see that for, personally, pursuing a postgraduate degree should bring roughly a 19% increase in salary if I decided to pursue it, since I am based in Kildare. The question then is if I feel that the time spent is worth that 20%, to which, at the moment, I think I’ll take a break and enjoy being finished with college