<p>This Bloomberg article by Janet Lorin serves as a warning that, for some students, graduate degrees can lead to higher debt rather than higher earnings: Trapped</a> by $50,000 Degree in Low-Paying Job - Bloomberg</p>
<p>I stopped reading the moment I saw that the person got a Master’s Degree in Humanities and Social Thought with no intention of pursuing doctoral study. Some degrees serve specific purposes. A master’s degree in the humanities is often used as a steppingstone to enter a PhD program. I am not surprised with her outcome (Administrative Assistant).</p>
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<p>I confess that I almost did, too, but then I kept reading and found a law school grad who was struggling with debt as well.</p>
<p>No, her problem is in the very first paragraph - she didn’t know what she wanted to do, so she just went to graduate school.</p>
<p>Graduate school should never be used as “just the next step” when you can’t figure out what you want to do. She could’ve gotten a job as an administrative assistant and worked a 9-5 right out of undergrad, and taken 2-3 years to decide whether she needed an MA or whether she could go places she wanted to go with her BA. That goes for professional schools too - there are lots of junior humanities majors who panic when thinking about the next year and apply to law school just to have something to do, even if they aren’t sure they want to be lawyers.</p>
<p>I think the problem lies with the lack of career education. There’s a persistent myth that you can’t get a job with a humanities or social science major, when the truth is there are many jobs that are just open as far as major goes. In addition to that, people often have idyllic ideas about certain careers - too much Law & Order for lawyers, for example.</p>
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<p>This is a huge problem. Many students don’t analyze what a full day on a job (day after day after month after month after year after year) really entails. The media glorifies jobs to a fantasy level. They have to…otherwise their shows would fail. </p>
<p>Take for example the “legal” shows. The reality is that most lawyers spend their time behind a desk reading document after document after document, not performing theatrics in a courtroom. But the shows would have you believe otherwise.</p>
<p>Medical shows do the same thing.</p>
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It does make you wonder about advising at these colleges. My own undergrad mentors would’ve put the kibosh on such a degree; an unfunded MA in such a vague field is often useless. I am hoping she simply ignored advice rather than not receiving any.</p>
<p>A graduate degree in the liberal arts is almost always a losing proposition in terms of whether or not its going to increase your employability. You should never, ever go to graduate school without funding, unless a graduate degree is a prerequisite for a good paying job that you are looking to be in, and the debt service will be relatively low compared to your expected income upon graduation. If you follow both of these rules, then most graduate degrees in the liberal arts (including PhDs) are not worthwhile. The only reason a PhD is not the worst thing that you could do with 5 years, is that they are typically funded which allows you to avoid the debt slavery that would otherwise be incurred.</p>
<p>A PhD is a free degree, so even if you are unemployed after getting a PhD, you would only be wasting time and the only cost would be the opportunity cost.</p>
<p>Where do you get the idea that a PhD is a free degree. My daughter is currently applying to PhD programs in the humanities. I can assure you that not all of the programs she has looked at are free by any means.</p>
<p>If you’re in pretty much any of the STEM degree programs (plus stuff like econ) the general rule is to only attend graduate school if you can get someone else to pay for it. Most programs will provide funding for all of their students either through a research or teaching assistantship.</p>
<p>hudsonvalley,</p>
<p>If your daughter does not get into a program that offers her full funding (that is, pays both her tuition and a stipend) she probably should not attend. All good PhD programs offer funding to at least some of their students (and the top programs provide funding to all their students) - if she’s applying to places that don’t, she should reconsider whether they are worth applying to. It’s just very hard to justify going into debt to pay for a PhD in the humanities, given that it does not substantially (if at all) improve your expected earning power. And I’m sure you don’t want to be paying for her education for the next 6-8 years.</p>
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Agreed. It is very rare these days for publics in particular to fund everyone in a humanities program; Wisconsin is perhaps the most infamous for making far more offers than it has the funding to support. Even some private universities have been hard hit; a few like Chicago offer stipends to some students but not others. Two years ago, my department at Hopkins could only offer 80% tuition remission and no stipend to its admitted students, though I’ve heard they’ve since gone back to regular funding.</p>
<p>I do agree with svalbardlutefisk – if you don’t get funding in the humanities, don’t go. Sometimes it is possible to secure funding after one’s first year, and some people choose to accept that gamble, but it is not a sure thing.</p>
<p>Among the other things I can assure you is that I will not be paying for graduate school for one year let alone 6-8 years.</p>
<p>My daughter is a strong candidate for the programs she is applying to, including those that offer what appear to be very good stipends in addition to tuition remission and health insurance. On the other hand there are a few programs where the financial situation is murkier. Wisconsin is one of those. My sister is a Wisconsin PhD in English (and yes, she was a fully tenured professor-turned-college dean), and while she had a good financial package I can understand how things might have turned south in recent years.</p>
<p>For Law School, the information about loan burden to job prospects has been out there for a long time. That was a risk he decided to take. Only the very top of the very top schools make the big bucks. The rest make average, at least at first, making $160,000 too steep.</p>
<p>As for the Admin, we just can’t know if she applied herself to the job search. Or if she took a job with career prospects even if the starting salary and
position were not ideal.</p>
<p>There is another part to this story. What about students that could be making money instead of going to grad school? Mine is a 3rd year at Wisconsin, no debt, (STEM) but is giving up very significant income as a 3rd yr grad student. Most of her department undergrad class went right into top paying jobs at top companies.</p>