I’m tempted to subtitle this “And you thought undergrad was expensive!”
Our plan has always been that we’d put DS though undergrad and grad school is up to him. That is basically still the plan (he graduated undergrad last year) but out of curiosity I looked up some MBA programs near where he lives now and holy cow! My BIL attended a top MBA program and I knew that was out-of-this-world expensive but I had no idea that even “middle of the road” programs could come in near 100K!
DH and I paid for grad school on our own (combination of paying ourselves, military paying with resulting obligation for service, GI Bill and scholarships) but I wonder how others did it? Did your company pay for any of it? If so, did you have an obligation to that company afterwards? Are you planning on/are you helping your children pay for grad school?
Also, how do/did you decide that grad school was worth the investment? DH had to get a masters to get to the level of promotion he desired in the military and I switched careers making a new degree basically mandatory but how do you know if you need a, for example, MBA?
MBA is a professional school. It is usually the case that such a school charges you an arm for that (especially its full fare.) There is usually not much true financial aid either.
My understanding is that such professional schools are either for someone who can afford it, or for someone for whom their company pay for it. Therefore, in recent years, there are more and more international students (from a well-off family in their country of origin) who attend such schools. (They tend to belong to the elite class there and it is likely that they get the degree and then go back to their country to continue to be the elite class there.)
One of my previous coworkers attended an elite MBA program (for some reason, it is a weekend program but it has the “brand name” of that MBA program.) What is interesting is that he lives in Texas and flies to Chicago every Friday afternoon. That is, he commuted to school by air just like some CEOs at a large company would do, but he was only a junior engineer (who was actually about to lose his job and his manager did not care that he took most of Friday afternoon off every week.) I am wondering where he gets the money for this? (He was an Indian. I think he would become either a CEO or at least a VP after 10 or 20 years, not necessarily for a true US company though. I have seen several cases like this in the past 30 years: Work for a large company with a great benefits for his first 10 years and get a degree like this on the side, and then work for a midsized or small company later.
I should clarify that DH has a doctorate in a biological science and I have my masters in education. My BIL and FIL both have MBA"s but they were both active duty military first whereas my son has gone straight from college into the business world. In other words, we don’t have a lot of family “know how” on how to guide our business minded son in regards to MBAs. I really appreciate any information we can glean on that world.
Good point about grad school types. MBA students most often are expected to work at least two years I have heard- that’s logical since business experience for a business degree would be helpful. Those people either will have saved money for the degree or their corporation may fund it. Or they have rich parents.
PhD programs seem to be different. Many will get funded positions if they are accepted by a grad program.
Getting more education (“M-ore S…” , “P-iled h-igher and D-eeper”- don’t know of a wording for MBA) depends on one’s goals. I suspect too many pay for profit degree mills for somewhat worthless MBA’s- you’ve seen the ads.
We would have expected our son to go to a program that funded his pursuit of a PhD in a STEM field. He decided not to go, now he’d have his own funds if he wanted a masters CS program once he feels a need for it- after he is not as intellectually satisfied and doing his own learning. When I think about it I believe that he should be responsible for post bachelor’s funding. Either he’s good enough to get funded or earns his own money to do it. Kid has huge potential intellectually but needs to be responsible for turning that into an asset either by earning his own money or getting a department to sponsor him.
We parents give our kids tool with their undergrad education. Beyond that they need to be in charge.
My MPH program was about 60k in-state and over 100k out of state.
Needless to say, I was one of the very few low income students in the program (and it was apparent when my fellow public health students talked about “people on welfare”).
For a PhD, imo, one should never, ever take an unfunded PhD.
Re: MBA. Lots of people on CC suggest trying to get your employer to pay for them. In talking with current MBA students here at UMich though, that seems to have gone the way of the Dodo bird.
It should be pretty easy to figure out when you need/want an MBA. It’s when (a) the jobs you want have that as a requirement or a preference, and (b) the extra compensation you would get for those jobs and the ones they lead to would more than cover the financing for your degree. Or when you have made a ton of money at your investment banking/management consulting/proprietary trading job, but you are burned out and you desperately want to do something else, but you need a graceful way to pivot out of your current job without burning bridges. The kids I know in the latter position aren’t worried about how they will finance their MBAs; they worry about rate of return on their MBA vs. their other investments.
One of my kids got a professional master’s degrees that was 80% employer paid. The employer was very well heeled and very traditional. The tuition benefit for job-related courses was part of its compensation package, and essentially part of the job design for the particular position she had, but the employer would not have paid for something as lucrative as an MBA. She was able to complete an 18-month program in 24 months while working full time. It meant she had no life for a couple of years.
The other kid paid for a one-year academic master’s degree himself, with the help of pretty significant discounting by the university. He calculated that the degree would qualify him for jobs that would pay enough to cover the cost of the degree comfortably, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened. The pre-tax annual salary bump he got was almost equal to the (discounted) tuition for the program, and he had been able to earn most of his living expenses with part-time work while he was getting the degree. He didn’t get the exact jobs he most wanted – lots of interviews, but no offers – but the job he got was one where the credential and skill set he had were exactly what they were looking for, and the contacts he had from the program gave him lots of ins.
First, our plan was opposite, D. attended UG on full tuition Merit award and in appreciation for her hard work and wise decision in regard to her college choice, we choose to pay for her Medical School. More so, we told her not to choose her medical school based on price and she proceed to choose the most expensive of her 4 choices, simply because it matched her personal criteria the best. Going forward, this approach has worked as D. mentioned that while UG name/ranking was irrelevant in gaining acceptance to medical school, a higher ranked medical school made a difference when she applied to residencies in very selective specialty.
Anyway, in regard to MBA specifically. Both my H. and I have MBA, and frankly, we did not need it at all. Why do we have it? Our companies paid for MBA and we went back to school simply because of “Why not?”. Many companies are still paying, despite of all this talk that they are not. My current employer is paying for the MBA and several of my co-workers are in school (Why not?). My friend’s S. is even at Harvard’s MBA on the employer’s dime and they even allowed him to take time off to complete his MBA. He was a pretty new college graduate (went to in-state public on Merit scholarship).
MBA does not make much sense without business experience anyway. Since you already paid for UG, you cannot go back in time and change this fact. The only option I see here for your kid is to start working and eventually find an employer which pays tuition and obtain an MBA on the employer(s) dime - yes, in my case, since I was jumping from one place to another, few employers paid for my MBA, not just one.
The big advantage in your kid’s case in comparison to mine is that he can work full time while taking MBA classes, while medical students cannot afford working at all, they study sometime for 14 hours / day or/and on crazy rotation schedules.
When I think of my reasons for getting an MBA and those of my classmates, they usually boiled down to:
Employers effectively required them to advance to higher levels in their firm (e.g., top tier consulting firms)
Students wanted to change business career track and saw little way to make the jump they wanted without:
a) acquiring some specific knowledge base for a particular career and/or
b) getting into the right schools where specific companies or types of employers tended to hire (e.g.,top tier strategy consulting firms, investment banks, etc.)
Students had little educational background or experience in typical business (e.g., worked as a teacher, Peace Corps, etc.) and wanted to gain knowledge to enter a business career track
I’m generalizing and there would clearly be exceptions to the above. Arguments can be made over whether the MBA was necessary or not…but generally I think the MBA got most of the students to a place they wanted. Maybe not their dream job/career but usually better than they had.
I was #2 and getting an MBA did what I wanted it to do.
One thing to note is that beyond the education, the alumni network one became a part of by getting an MBA at certain schools was a very important part of the value proposition. That is something that I observe didn’t always extend to those who get their MBA at night or through weekend programs.
I had small loans for grad school- under $20,000. My field requires a graduate degree.
My D is currently applying to grad programs. She was accepted to one and is waiting to hear back from two more. The cost will range from $20,000 ( in state public) to $70,000 ( in-state private- " cheaper" than I thought it would be, although certainly not inexpensive). She has money left in her 529 which will allow her to attend the public ( hope she gets in) with money left over to give to her sister. If she attends one of the privates she will have a very small loan. She needs a masters in her field.
Before even applying, your son should have at least 3-4 years of work experience. It’s rare to get into any top MBA program without work experience. The average age of most MBA students is 27-29.
There’s an MBA Formum on CC. You might want to take a look at it.
Grad school, PhD program in Immunology was well funded, full tuition plus modest stipend that I supplemented by working part time. I knew people doing PhD programs in the liberal arts areas and they had no stipend and were paying at least some level of tuition, though they would be paid for classes they taught.
My wife did her MBA part time with an employer paying for it, but she had the advantage of working at a University Hospital where those kinds of programs, though not as common as they once were, are more common than other settings.
Eventually went to law school, did do part time and at a lower tier school, so had a half-tuition scholarship and didn’t take loans for living expenses since I was working full time. Ended up with about $40,000 in loans, plus a few thousand from the original $10K borrowed for UG.
At work I see young lawyers coming out now with $100-150K of debt easily now. My lower debt load gave me much greater flexibility in career choices, while the high debt amounts I see now really limit people to higher paying, more stressful positions unless they have some sort of a loan forgiveness option available.
Once I matriculated in grad school (both degrees) I received at least tuition waiver and numerous semesters also received TA or RA stipends. I would not have gone if I had to pay.
S is applying to grad schools, but he knows he has to get into a funded program in order to go. His problem isn’t money so much as the extreme selectivity of the programs he is interested in.
Niece paid through the nose for her ivy league nursing master’s.
I’m a humanities PhD student. I have full tuition + stipend + insurance guaranteed for 5 years (they will fund beyond that but most get external funding). No PhD student should enter a PhD program that isn’t funded.
I would agree with you Romani–especially for a doctorate in liberal arts or sciences where the primary path after completion of the degree is academia. My son-in-law is a PhD student (he’s in liberal arts) and has the same situation as you: stipend (30K, insurance for himself and my D, and full tuition). His department won’t accept PhD students who they aren’t willing to fund, even if these students want to pay. I don’t know if that’s common.
D1 probably won’t go on to grad school; if she did, it would be for an MFA and she’s well aware of the cost and lack of better job prospects associated with graduation from such programs. D2 will probably apply to grad school in economics and would attempt to get a funded position. I went to law school in the 1980s, and my parents paid for it. It was my state’s public university law school and so the tuition wasn’t horrendous. I’m very grateful to my parents for giving me the gift of college and a professional degree.
Engineers sometimes choose an MBA to become part of management eventually. Excellent background- knowing the engineering aspects of the workplace plus management skills.
Professional schools are always going to be different. Those students typically lack skills to teach even undergrads in their field and time is better spent learning the material for themselves. I’m glad to hear that others always view PhD tracks as generally meaning be funded. Also to hear others tell how work experience is a prerequisite for programs.
^ Many of us who did professional masters programs taught in departments where our undergrad experiences were useful. I taught in the Slavic Studies department and many of my MPH friends taught in Psychology and English.