If you are struggling to find a job with the skills you currently have, or can only find work that is less interesting or well paid than you want, then adding skills to your resume is the best way out of the career mire. However, the most obvious way to do this – going to university – is expensive, and with so much concern around student debt, may actually cause you financial hardship for far longer than the time it takes to get a degree or masters.

Online Courses

One way you can get all kinds of qualifications for less is to study online. Many great colleges like Arizona State University offer things like business programs online, and so for far less than the cost of going to a private college you could get an online business administration degree and start life as an executive. If an online bachelors in business administration doesn't suit you there are countless other degrees and masters programs you can do from home, and there are also courses for other qualifications, some of which are even free.

Community College

You may think you need to go to a high end university for employers to take your qualifications seriously, but that just isn't the case. In studies, only 9% of businesses have been shown to care at all where you chose to study, so going to a nearby community college can be a cost effective way to get the skills you want if you want to study something practical that is hard to do online.

Learn by Doing

For some very marketable skills, people want evidence of what you can do rather than a qualification, so for things like programming, design and writing, you may actually be just as well off teaching yourself and doing some projects of your own you can use as a portfolio to give examples of your skills. Having some past work, even if you were not paid to do it and just did it as a learning exercise, can show an employer that you have skills you picked up outside of formal school or college, and this can make you a very interesting person to consider hiring, showing that you are self motivated and interested in bettering yourself even without a professor to help or encourage you. You can learn lots of skills from books and the web, and then all you need is some examples of what you can do to show off.

Whether you want to get a degree or boost your skillset in other, even more affordable ways, there are ways to do it that don't require you to spend a fortune on going to a private college and relocating to another part of the country for the duration of a degree course. Look into the ones that appeal to you and start strategizing to improve your skills today!