Getting a college education is a great and valuable thing to do for your life, but it’s not always the right choice, especially when you’re young and coming right out of high school. More and more people are choosing to put off college in order to better identify and decide on what their passions are and what they want their career to be before spending ample time and money.

One of the best careers to get into that you don’t necessarily need a college degree for is being a court reporter. Court reporting services are used every day in this country to support things in the judicial system to ensure credibility and reliability of the proceedings.

Here are three reasons to consider becoming a court reporter over jumping right into college.

1. Cost: As previously mentioned, the cost of higher education has grown to exorbitant amounts in recent years. Even traditionally cheaper state schools are starting to catch up to private school tuition in many states. The court reporting education program and certification process takes an average of 33.3 months, but is significantly less expensive then enrolling and graduating with a college degree. It also takes much less time.
2. Interested but Unsure: For people who are interested in areas like law, politics, and governmental occupations being a court reporter can give you great insight and experience in similar settings. Becoming a court reporter even for just a couple years can go a long way in helping you decide if investing the time and money into something like law school would be a good idea.
3. Develop Valuable Skills: In addition to the fast-typing, recording, and accuracy skills national court reporting will teach you, there are plenty of other valuable skills it can help you develop. More than 70% of the nation?s 50,000+ court reporters work outside of the court doing various tasks such as videoconferencing depositions and video recording in-person ones. These digital, multimedia type skills are valuable today and will only become more so in the future in the digital era we live in.

Court reporting is increasing in popularity for these and other reasons. In fact, employment of court reporters is projected to grow by about 10% from 2012 to 2022.