It wasn’t until a Hussman Career Services counselor entered my journalism class and shared that the time to consider my future was now, that graduate education even crossed my mind. Previous uncomfortable conversations with peers and advisers resurfaced. My fear that I was destined for more debt and schooling for any shot at professional success became more real. However, these pressures are often unfounded, and for many undergraduates, don’t hold water.
As some approach the long-awaited corporate maze arranged by their fathers, others return home or to entry-level jobs. But with such a tidal wave of change comes an urgency in students to steady their fears by succumbing to the education system for a final time: enrolling into graduate school. In fall 2021, approximately 3.2 million graduate students were enrolled at degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States, most coming directly from undergraduate programs.
It seems simple enough. You want to be successful and a stronger contender for well-paid positions by becoming increasingly well-educated. For some, this is mandatory for their professional field. For others, the concern is not advancing one’s schooling under the impression it will be of an extensive benefit to their career. Rather, it is using graduate education as a crutch or reflex to the uncomfortable assimilation into reality.
Face it: “I’m going to graduate school” is a palatable response to the gnawing fear that we aren’t ready to do anything else.
It’s compelling. Two additional years to dedicate to the comfortable privilege of strictly learning at a pace that is well-received by the public. Because in many ways, post-grad life removes the safety net of learning. Exiting the education system is a vulnerable and conditional transition into another hierarchy of accomplishments to fail and maneuver among.
Graduate school is a way to salvage that net and elongate the transition, which is easy to do with the niche programs that flood modern educational institutions. If you have a taste for any area of study, a master’s program likely awaits you.
Beside the prestige of those secondary degrees or the ease of delaying looming adulthood, some students just love learning. If you have such an inclination to continue to learn and pursue graduate school that isn’t vital to your career path, you have to acknowledge that it is a privilege.
Ultimately, that is my biggest bone to pick with graduate school and the growing culture that condemns embracing entry-level jobs. It’s expensive and does not yield large margins of success that could not be similarly obtained by navigating lower-level employment to develop something invaluable: work experience.
The median earnings of those who have completed a master’s or higher degree, in 2022, was 20 percent higher than the median earnings of those who have completed only a bachelor’s degree. Graduate school can be a vessel to higher-paying occupations, but at rates that aren’t substantial. A 20 percent increase of income is underwhelming when understood as the product of sacrificing additional years of work-experience and tuition.
