As someone who walked your path, forget about changing your career path. There is no merits at all in regard to further studies unless you are keen to continue or change in occupation. Your career is basically a leap of faith into a bottomless pit. I swear that whatever I've written down is based on experience only and the truth I've seen.

One thing good for you is that your goal are money. There is no such thing as passion or whatever in this career, it is the cold hard truth that you will realize as your career continues. There will be no truth in anything said to you and you'll only find meaning in yourself. Just throw away all the flowery words use for ads.

As you earn more, you are expected to "perform" better despite your background with others. And when I said "perform", it is not as simple as just work hard. It involved politics or for worse terms, sucking up and boot licking, and you'll be surprise that it is a survival skill. Do be reminded that help will not come as readily as you would expect. Most of the time it is just solo work on you also be ready to be a scapegoat just for convenience.

If you have hope that change will come, sadly, I guarantee it will never come at least in your generation. I've seen a lot who held hopes for the better and retired in disappointment; please don't look forward to the future, focus on now.

If you started to regret, please don't. Like I've said, it is a bottomless pit. No matter how, your promotion is ensured as the requirements implicate your superior also. Also, should you decided to break off the contract, you'll be treated as NSmen with no unit despite how much you have completed till you reached age of 40, 45 for officers, in other words, you've work hard for more money, and end up paying back even more than those NSFs supposed to (10 yrs cycle) if you served more than 2 years. Else, you are only liable to pay back the monetary award for signing on which will definitely be credited in as salary and liable for income tax when it is credited and bonuses if any and hope that you are in a unit when you ORDed.

Scholarship may seem tempting to you but it is performance based so unless you did what I mentioned above, you are unlikely to get it because you need a strong support from your superiors and interviewed, officers have strong core, so it is easier for them. Also, it is applicable only for specific military related local courses, all other courses will not be accepted.

Finally, by inflation, your starting salary should be around $3K (3SG) and you can expect a pay raise of around $100 per promotion. When you reached WO, you will earn extra based on appointment alike the officers. If you are a officer, expect around $3.5K and a pay raise of around $200 per promotion roughly. Note that you are required to achieve at least a DEGREE for further up ranking at certain stages for monetary reason.

Hope this help and I hold no responsibility for any distribution of this message.