The military lifestyle imposes unique challenges for military spouses in regards to their education and careers. To help alleviate these challenges, military spouses are encouraged to pursue portable career paths. This causes one to question whether spouses desire these portable careers and what influences spouses place on pursuing specific educational and career paths. This exploratory study seeks to address these questions by investigating the careers, academic majors, and educational degrees that current military spouse students pursue. Further, the factors that influence military spouses to pursue their career and academic majors are investigated. The results of this study demonstrate that military spouses desire advanced, graduate level degrees that are primarily in the healthcare, business, mental health, and educational fields. Further, genuine interest was the greatest influence on military spouse career and educational paths and the military lifestyle provided the least influence.
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