Parent of a college kid who is going to school for Environmental Science

My daughter is about to graduate with her AA in Environmental Science. Her plan is to continue on to get a Bachelors in the same thing. I'll go back and say her first semester, she was originally going for Environmental Engineering but engineering 101 kicked her ass and she decided to go for science instead.

Her goal as far as life after school is to get a job surveying sites before they build, as she "I want to work in the field and not sit in an office".

We are kind of butting heads right now because the school she wants to go to for her bachelor's it looks like most of the bio classes she would need seem to be schedule in the middle of the day which would mess up her work schedule for the job she has (not related to the field). We live in york county which is in PA right above MD and the college she wants to go to isn't like a top-rated Environmental Science college school.

I was doing some research and saw that SNHU offers online classes and Environmental Science degrees. Has anyone ever taken classes there for Environmental Science?

With her just having an AA, can she get a job of any sort in the field with just the AA? She claims she can't because all the jobs require a BS. Also, with what she wants to do as far as surveying land goes, how feasible of a job does that sound? How is the market for that? I don't even know what those positions would be called. I'm out of touch in this field and she claims she has done the research, but my fear is she's going to get out of school with a ton of debt and not be making a lot of money or having a hard time to find a job.

Just looking for insight to get a better understanding of people who might have went to school for this and what to expect.

Update: Because I didn't give all the information and everyone assumes all kinds of things:
-She was going to school part time and working part time and is about to get her AA. Our thought process was to try to use the AA to get a full-time job or even part time at a job in the field (even if it's not doing the work she wants to do, ie. a receptionist or something) to get a foot in the door while she continues schooling and who knows maybe the job would help out with paying for schooling. I understand that a lot of you say that an AA in this field doesn't get you anywhere, but an AA in other fields can open doors so I wasn't sure if it was the same.

-She currently lives at home, is 21, and the school that she just got accepted to is 27k a year for tuition. The school is known for their nursing and education programs, so it's not like going to school there for ES gives her any advantage over any other school. She only primarily chose that school because it was the closest school being 20 mins away and the Community college she is about to graduate from, has 3 campus's that she commutes to with 2 of them being 50 mins away and she didn't like the drive. Other options for schools are all in the 50min+ range of driving which she doesn't want to do. In reality she didn't look into any other schools beside the one 20 mins away because again the convenience. I asked her what if you wouldn't have gotten accepted, what was the runner up and she didn't have one. She didn't even know what the cost of tuition was at the school she is planning to go to. She has no intention of living on campus at any of these schools because she doesn't want to add the additional debt to herself plus she doesn't want to be on her own yet. That is why I was inquiring about online schools as well since SNHU is half the cost vs the school she got accepted to and what were the pros/cons of going online.

-By no means am I telling her what to do. Some of her friends who have finished with school and now work (not in the same field), have had hard times getting jobs in their fields as well as the amount of loans that they have now to pay off. Again, I know this isn't apples to apples since these friends of her went to school for different things, but it also worries me so that's why I asked the question here. None of them can afford to move out and because of this is what my worry is for her. And I understand that some of you are ok with your kids getting the college experience and living their best life and racking up enormous amounts of debt and that's fine, but with the rise of the cost of living I just worry with taking on huge debt that could maybe be lessen by going to a cheaper school if possible would be a possibly a better move for the long term.

-She also hates school, has no desire to go any farther than getting a BS. In fact, her first semester how I stated engineering kicked her ass, by that I mean she failed it, along with a D in another class. Instead of withdrawing from the class before getting the E, she got the E and since changed her major, so the E and the D stayed on her GPA giving her a low 2.0 GPA. She has worked hard going forward and has raised her GPA to about a 3.0. The sucky part about that is because of being below a 3.0 GPA, she wasn't able to apply for any scholarships at the community college because they all required at least a 3.0. Hopefully going forward she can apply which will help.

Posted Feb 26, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

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