Choosing a school can cost millions. And it can make millions, too.

When choosing a secondary school or university, the main question is often: “What do you enjoy?” But education is not just about choosing what subjects to study for the next few years. It is a decision about time, money, connections, and opportunities—one that can shape decades of your working life.

Looking at education from a financial perspective does not mean choosing the field with the highest salary. It means asking a more practical question: Where do I want to go, what doors will this school open for me, and what will this path cost—not only in tuition or living expenses, but also in income I give up along the way?

1. School does not prepare you for just one career. It should open up multiple paths

Technological progress is changing the labour market faster than curricula can keep up. New professions and specialisations are emerging, while others are changing or seeing parts of their work taken over by technology. When choosing a school, your overall direction, the skills you develop, and your ability to keep learning therefore matter more than preparation for a single specific profession.

That is why choosing a school solely based on the name of a particular job is risky. What matters more is the direction: what skills you will gain, who you will meet, how quickly you can learn, and how many alternatives you will have if the market changes.

Eurostat data show that in 2024, 68.1% of young people with tertiary education reported a high or very high match between their field of study and their job, compared with 46.1% of those with upper secondary education.¹

2. A salary difference can add up to millions over a career

According to ISPV, in the first half of 2025, the median gross monthly salary in the Czech wage sector was:

CZK 64,699 for university graduates,

CZK 43,669 for people with upper secondary education with a school-leaving examination,

CZK 36,972 for people with upper secondary education without a school-leaving examination.²

The difference between the first two groups is CZK 21,030 per month, or roughly CZK 252,000 per year. Purely mathematically, if that difference remained unchanged over a 40-year career, it would amount to more than CZK 10 million in gross income.

This is not a forecast for any particular individual. It simply illustrates how even a difference of “a few thousand a month” can have a major financial impact when multiplied over several decades.

3. Studying is not free, even when there is no tuition

The biggest cost of studying is often not tuition, but time and living expenses. If a secondary-school graduate could start working for CZK 35,000 gross per month but instead spent five years studying without earning an income, the potential gross income forgone would be CZK 2.1 million:

35,000 × 12 months × 5 years = CZK 2,100,000

This is an extreme scenario. Many students work, complete internships, or run businesses while studying, reducing their forgone income while gaining experience and building valuable connections.

Parents often bear another part of the cost. For a student living away from home, consider, for illustration, financial support of CZK 10,000 per month for ten months of the year. Over five years, that amounts to CZK 500,000. At CZK 15,000 per month, it rises to CZK 750,000.

This is not a universal student budget. It is a simple model illustrating the scale of the costs a family may need to prepare for.

If a graduate earned CZK 15,000 gross per month more after completing university, the modelled CZK 2.1 million in forgone income would correspond to almost 12 years of that salary difference. Education is therefore an investment—with costs, risks, and potential returns.

4. University also buys you time and connections

The first source of value is your network. Classmates, lecturers, internships, and projects can later open doors to both career and business opportunities.

The second is time to find your direction. University gives students room to try different jobs, internships, studying abroad, or starting their own projects—provided they actually make use of that time.

5. Five questions to ask before applying

Instead of asking, “Which school is the best?”, it makes more sense to consider five specific points:

Direction: What problems and areas interest me, and where would I like to be in a few years?

Career opportunities: How many different professions and industries will this school or field of study open up to me?

Economics: What is the realistic earning potential, and how might it develop over 5, 10, or 20 years?

Costs: How much will housing, transport, food, and family support cost—and how much income am I likely to postpone while studying?

Added value: What connections, practical experience, internships, international opportunities, or room for my own projects will the school provide?

6. What this means for parents: education is a financial goal

If parents expect to support their child through university, it makes sense to treat education like any other major financial goal. A modelled CZK 500,000–750,000 over five years is no longer an ordinary household expense. It is an amount worth preparing for in advance.

For example, accumulating CZK 600,000 over ten years would require saving an average of CZK 5,000 per month, excluding any investment returns. Over a 15-year period, it would be CZK 3,333 per month. The earlier a family starts thinking about this, the less financial pressure there will be when the child actually starts university.

Conclusion: Don’t choose a school. Choose your future options.

Education is a financial decision, but not because schools can simply be ranked according to their graduates’ salaries. Its true value lies in the combination of four things: future income, costs and forgone earnings, acquired skills and connections, and the number of paths that remain open to you.

Before making a decision, try writing down four numbers: how much the education will cost your family, how much the student can earn while studying, what a realistic income after graduation might be, and how long it could take for the investment to pay off.

Then add one question: How many future opportunities will this path open up for me?

Sources and notes

¹ Eurostat, Young people on the labour market (2024 data): match between field of education and job requirements among young people aged 15–34.

² ISPV, results for the first half of 2025, Czech wage sector. Salary data are statistical; education alone does not determine a specific level of income. Outcomes are influenced by field of study, profession, experience, skills, region, employer, and type of employment.

The model calculations used in the text (CZK 35,000 salary, CZK 10,000–15,000 in monthly support, and a CZK 15,000 salary difference) are illustrative scenarios, not estimates of the costs or income of any specific household.