It’s pretty well established that non-science degrees are not necessary for a job. In fact, the degrees cost you too much money, require too long of a commitment, and do not teach you the real-life skills they promise.
Yet, I do tons of radio call-in shows where I say that graduate degrees in the humanities are so useless that they actually set you back in your career in many cases. And then 400 callers dial-in and start screaming at me about how great a graduate degree is.
Here are the six most common arguments they make. And why they are wrong.
1. My parents are paying.
Get them to buy you a company instead. Because what are you going to do when you graduate? You’re right back at square one, looking for a job and not knowing what to do. But if you spent the next three years running a company, even if it failed, you would be more employable than you are now, and you’d have a good sense of where your skill set fits in the workplace. (This is especially true for people thinking about business school.)
2. It’s free.
But you’re spending your time. You will show (on your resume) that you went to grad school. Someone will say, “Why did you go to grad school?” Will you explain that it was free? After all, it’s free to go home every night after work and read on a single topic as well. So in fact, what you are doing is taking an unpaid internship in a company that guarantees that the skills you built in the internship will be useless. (Here’s how to get a great internship.)
3. It’s a time to grow and get to know myself better.
If you’re looking for a life changing, spiritually moving experience, how about therapy? It’s a more honest way of self-examination—no papers and tests. And it’s cheaper. Insurance covers therapy because it’s a proven way to effectively change your personal disposition. There’s a reason insurance doesn’t cover grad school.
4. The degree makes me stand out in my field.
Yes, if you want to stand out as someone who couldn’t get a job. Given the choice between getting paid to learn the ropes on the job and paying for someone to teach you, you look like an underachiever to pick the latter. If nothing else, you get much better coaching in life if you are good enough and smart enough to get mentorship without paying for it.
There are very very few jobs that require a non-science degree in order to get the job. (And really, forget about law school if that’s what you’re thinking.) So if you don’t need the degree in order to get the job, the only possible reason a smart employer would think you got the degree instead of getting a job was because you were too scared to have to apply or you applied and got nothing. Either way, you’re a bad bet going forward.
5. I’m planning on teaching.
Forget it. There are no teaching jobs. In an interview last week, the head of University of Washington’s career center even admitted to a prospective student that getting a degree in humanities in order to get a teaching job—even in a community college—is a long-shot at best. And, the University of Washington career coach confirmed that there is enormous unemployment among people who are qualified to teach college courses but cannot get jobs doing it. This is not just a Washington thing. It’s a welcome-to-reality thing.
6. A degree makes job hunting easier.
It makes it harder. Forget the fact that you don’t need a graduate degree in the humanities to get any job in the business world. The biggest problem is that the degree makes you look unemployable. You look like you didn’t know what to do about having to enter the adult world, so you decided to prolong childhood by continuing to earn grades rather than money even though you were not actually helping yourself to earn money.
Also, you also look like you don’t really aspire to any of the jobs you are applying for. People assume you get a graduate degree because you want to work in that field. People don’t want to hire you in corporate America when it’s clear you didn’t invest all those years in grad school in order to do something like that.
7. I love being in graduate school! Everything in life is not about careers!
Sure, when you’re a kid, everything is not about careers. But when you grow up, everything is about earning enough money for food and shelter. So you need to figure out how to do that in order to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. This is why millionaires have stopped leaving their money to their kids—it undermines their transition to adulthood. But instead of making the transition, you are still in school, pretending things are fine. The problem is that what you do in school is not what you will do in a career. So if you love school, you’ll probably hate the career it’s preparing you for, since your career is not going to school.
When I met the farmer, one of the first things he told me was that he went to school for genetic biology. But in graduate school his research was in ultrasound technology for pigs. But he missed being with the pigs, which is what he wanted to do for his job. So he left school.
And every time I see the pigs on our farm I think about how he took a risk by dumping a graduate program in order to tend to pigs. I love that.
Subscribe — free! 
Don't do what you love
Blueprint for a Woman's life
Living up to your potential is BS
Choose sex over money
5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss (1013 comments)
I hate David Dellifield. The one from Ada, Ohio. (552 comments)
You can’t manage your work life if you can’t talk about it (764 comments)
@PenelopeTrunk 
The Farmer
Melissa
Penelope
CNN just posted some statistics on this issue on a segment called The Education Effect. It’s on right now. Interesting juxtaposition.
Posted by Steve C on September 4, 2011 at 2:46 pm | permalink |
Even the more modestly-read business professionals know that hiring is the voodoo of commerce, the most demanding of all forms of gambling. From the biographies of old man Firestone forward, the illusive art of hiring and the frustrations encountered are legend. Roll in the clown show of affirmative action and phrenology-based “diversity” and its a wonder any of our major institutions function given the superior culture of duplicity and disingenuousness that has taken over our modern institutions. The literature is full of histories involving Mass Psychogenic Illness and Collective Psychoses in institutional workplace settings. Many recoil at the murderous history of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot, but they should contemplate that ordinary employees executed their policies, as soldier and as workers, and most of what they did was required by policy and institutionally considered to be a normal, necessary and rational act.
Though mortocracies provide extreme examples, what was the human cost of Aimee trashing resumes that were never read?
Hiring carries the slipperiest of trustee duty. Even the personal interview is an unstable filter and no reliable guarantor of eventual outcome. The resumes themselves are virtually worthless.
The job is the only filter. And it too is subject to fatal irony. The better the candidate and the more important the potential benefit from hiring the candidate, the greater the corruption and misuse of authority to deny the assets and talents of that person to the employing entity.
Those educated in Darwin know the issue was never evolution but instead natural selection. The surviving rubric of hiring institutions are themselves being selected-for by how they hire and fire.
In upper executive circles, the initials “H. R.” are satirically noted as standing for “Human Racketeering”. The racket is preserving the mediocrity and security that pleases the established middle dominate the work culture, while creating pretensions of policy and procedure that create evidence (however hollow) that an earnest effort is being made to identify and hire the next wave of organizational thoroughbreds and transformationally talented personalities.
And what is diversity, really. Is it ten phrenologically-filtered and Hegelian adjudged Black, Brown, Mulatto, Yellow and White paired equally in male and female derivative form? Or, is diversity ten people from Gas City, Pueblo, Hawthorne, Hoxie, Guyman, Mina, Brooklyn, Alameda and Gu-inn?
Diversity should be about the optimal distribution of talent that prospers the hiring organization and cause the workplace to also serve as a positively transformative life experience for those who work there.
Hiring is expermentalism in its most demanding form. It is not something to be left to the cowardly, the provincial or the ignorant. How interesting that the bigger the corporation (for profit or not) the less this is the case.
Something is being selected-for. In human history, democidal government and mortacracy is the norm. Our Constitution is the exception.
Those hiring should sit with their team and re-read the DoI and discuss it before ramping up the next round of candidate reviews. There is a constitutionally-protected life embodied in each of those submissions. Mutual decency requires no less of them, and they and their organization will be the better for it.
Posted by willem on September 4, 2011 at 3:56 pm | permalink |
The attitude of this article toward education is very worrisome to this constitutional conservative. Counseling on the practicalities of life is one thing, but to attack and ridicule liberal education is quite another. This is especially the case since there is no mutual exclusivity inherent in this improperly alleged dichotomy. On the level of philosophic propriety, what appears to be the grand assumption here is that self government in this great country of ours can continue with a citizenry whose education is tethered exclusively to its "marketability" for the work place. If we take this view seriously, an education for liberty, nay the greatest things said and done, must rise and fall by how effectively such things allow one to "fit into" the career market. That is, fit in as a productive cog in the great machine. The author's flippancy aside, we are commanded to "Know thine place" in a distributive system that spews products to fulfill a commodious life of pleasantries the purpose of which we know not what. This, ladies and gentleman, is "value" defined economically. Why not commit the great books of the western literary tradition to the fire in favor of the latest version of Ipad 2.0 for dummies. What fun!! What you may not do, what is a violation of the employee tested practice and reason, is any advanced study in non-technical PhDs. Such temerity will lead to a life short nasty and brutish. Dare not, they say, slip the sully bonds of earth and chance to touch the face of God, when landing the "district supervisor" position is so much more reasonable. Deep study of the "good, wise and the just" are not favored on resumes, a mark of lassitude don't you know. Agnosticism regarding abiding issues is encouraged, no no no, rather celebrated by this author. You too, with practice, can mute your natural strivings for distant worlds; the quixotic experience of transcendence that takes hold when exposed by great books that are at once beguiling as they are maddening. The comfortable life of Hobbsian commodious living is the stuff of a life well lived.
Regarding the relevancy of a nontechnical education, the horizons of our liberal social order must be defended not by the laughingly naïve practicalities of current marketable skill sets advanced by this author. The very capitalist system under whose sway the author pens her gibberish must be justified as a genuine moral order when questioned. Such defense requires a fashioning of arguments from philosophic suppositions that inspire and define. Our enemies state that deviance from theocratic cannons warrants death!!! What conservatism, as a proxy for the west, needs more than anything in this day and age is its supporters to undertake an emersion into and renewal of western traditions. After all, by what touchstones do we guide national, state and local policy? What principles inform law? What is justice? You'll not find these answers in "career" manuals. Such dribble, along with the author's silly bromides, assumes the most important issues of "life" are settled. They are not, to wit: Why national health care is wrong is not something addressed in the moral vacuum of that withered space deemed, "the intersection between work and life" – Plato's cave in 12 easy steps.
The author's opinions go too far in the direction of know-nothing barbarism. Self evident principles on the realities of satisfying the practical necessities of life must never be expanded to obscure life's purpose. She has struck a profound imbalance and distortion in the suggested approach to a life well lived. Socrates was said to be penniless, yet the happiest man on earth. And, I may add, my savior came to me in rags. As a purveyor of the empty philosophy of lemmings, please teach me: What is worth dying for? Our enemies know, what does your penchant for resume building offer? Will a PhD in engineering, physics, nanotechnology provide the answer? Of what possible relevance are admonitions in favor of careerism offer to a man who believes it is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle, than for a rich man to go to heaven? What is it that you believe being conservative is? What is your criterion of relevance?
We may thank God that the founders of this great country understood the value of liberal education even if its immediate utilization and value is not measured by the impression it makes on a prospective employer. Let's be clear, it is not to empirical science, or wondrous technologies, that these men turned to justify the constitutional order. It was to the teaching and admonitions of history, philosophy, poetry and yes even law.
Posted by edward Rueda on September 4, 2011 at 4:43 pm | permalink |
What an excellent thread.
At the root of this issue lies the failed and parasitic bureaucracy of accreditation. The entire paradigm of university accreditation is a raging farce. It is not a quality system. It seems to be little better than a protection racket to monopolize and balance competitive pressures between the respective universities.
We need to liberate students and faculty from the entire false economy of “diploma” and focus instead on classwork and a socratic professorate. Diplomas do not in themselves demonstrate competency, much less mastery. But today, students may have to purchase and endure 20 credit hours of rote fluff to get 8 hours of what they are most anxious to learn.
If they ever knew, most have forgotten our “higher ed” culture is mostly the product Peabody Coal’s desire for obedient workers to replace those damn Americans that didn’t know their place. He leveraged a virtual buy-out of the Prussian education system and had the pedagogy and many of its technicians transported from the Prussian Empire to the east coast of the United States in the latter 19th Century.
The superior culture of today’s higher ed institutions remain shamefully obsolete, largely because of these imported and now cardinal paradigms. The administrations continue to this day to practice derivatives of discredited Hegelian supremacism with all its utopian affects and condescension.
Why should this matter? The fatal conceit of the Hegelian and Victorian era are the intellectual birthplace of eugenics, phrenology, mass sterilization policy, “the one drop” rule and the segregationist constructs of racial purity, racial impurity, human breeding experiments and the Jim Crow legislation championed by British interests who controlled the monopoly on cotton exports from the southern plantations many of which themselves were bankrolled into consolidation by same British financiers that facilitated underwriting the formation of Confederacy that resulted in the Civil War.
This entire notion of “the master race” was a normal and broadly accepted Hegelian belief; it’s highest mission; a dominating principle truth anchoring early 20th Century European thought. Thus, it was also thought championed by the majority of the university intellectuals of the era.
This was the same utopian movement that spoke of “progressive man perfected under socialism” — compulsory improvement by scientific means operated by experts for the greater good. In this original context “socialism” was a term that meant “scientific government”. It’s counterpart was “phrenology” which was the scientific prioritization of human intelligence, ability and breeding so mankind could be scientifically governed in the most efficient manner possible.
Laugh as you must, but this lofty idiocy comprises the philosophical rooting of today’s American Higher Ed. A kinder and gentler version of these same cardinal operating premise dominates the superior culture of the American K-12 public education system today. How ironic that after the victories of the American Civil Rights movement, the operating premises of phrenology would rise from the dead and provide the ‘academically blessed’ framework of affirmative action and the intellectual premise of “diversity” studies.
For more on this look to Karl Popper and the work of the Mont Pelerin Society formed in the late 1940s, by scholars alarmed with the rise and acceptance of “scientism” which was displacing the scientific method, intellectual rigor and classical scholarship with the false memes of dialectics and reductionism — the underlying methodology used in part by @Aimee to segregate the employment applications in what they presumed was a responsible, scientific and logical way.
I know. OT. Mostly. But damn, people. It’s time to shake-off the europhile academic non-sense and re-develop some “honesty competency” and champion more tolerance for free and faithful critical expression.
If there’s one new academic discipline I would like to see some free thinking university champion, it’s “Institutional Pathology.”
If we can’t better learn to heal our institutions, our society will certainly perish in the sepsis. Is this not the greater problem that confronts our economic interests today?
Posted by willem on September 4, 2011 at 5:02 pm | permalink |
@Reueda
You need to realize that Hegel constructed the apologia, repudiation and rationalization for NOT adopting the values and system of governance put in place by our nations founders.
The problem is not “liberal education” but the emergent absence of classical liberalism in the modern American university and the student product.
E Pluribus Unum has been hijacked by rogue narcissism fueled by the hubris of Hegel Uber Alles.
We are a nation founded in mutualism, not pluralism; a hysteresis of mutualism where your rights end where mine begin and vice versa, preserved in continuum by equal protection under the law.
Amidst the magnificent accomplishments of technology and the classical sciences, we ironically live in an administrative era of bureaucratic scientism and selective enforcement — the opposite of equal protection under the law.
Yet more evidence of the Hegelian corruption predicted by Karl Popper and his scholarly cohorts.
Lose the conservative/liberal dichotomy. It’s a false meme.
Either each individual enjoys primacy in a hysteresis of mutualism preserved by equal protection under the law, or its just the same old authoritarian tyranny.
Posted by willem on September 4, 2011 at 5:34 pm | permalink |
#4–The bit about very few jobs available to non-science degrees is not entirely correct. Most jobs in accounting (a gigantic field with many jobs) beyond the most basic introductory positions requires a degree in usually either accounting or finance. People with a Masters in Taxation are always in high demand.
Still, your broader point is absolutely true–useful college degrees are mostly in difficult subjects.
Posted by Matt on September 4, 2011 at 6:04 pm | permalink |
It’s cheaper to buy a field and go stand in it — and about as useful.
Posted by McGehee on September 4, 2011 at 6:28 pm | permalink |
This would be true at the undergraduate level as well, were it not for Griggs vs Duke Power. The Marine Corps put poor, smart but undermotivated me into IT, without a degree. It’s led to a career of full employment for the past 35 years. I did finish my degree when the company I worked for was acquired by another which emphasized degrees beyond all reason. The government paid, it only cost me some time.
My youngest is pursuing her (fully funded) PhD in a scientific field. She wants to do research in the industry, and the degree is teaching her her craft, and getting her contacts in the industry. I’m fairly optimistic, her peers are still getting hired at very decent salaries.
Posted by MarkD on September 4, 2011 at 6:44 pm | permalink |
5. I'm planning on teaching. Forget it. There are no teaching jobs.
Unless you have a science degree. My daughter got a teaching job (in Seattle!) with no teaching degree or even a single teaching course in college. She has a degree in biology. It is private school (public schools require teaching credentials – whatever those are) that specializes in teaching the kids the public schools have cast out because they are “unteachable”. Sharp kid. No experience. Tough job. The gave her a raise and a promotion after one year because she can do what apparently grad school teachers can’t. I guess I make your point.
Posted by Boyd on September 4, 2011 at 6:44 pm | permalink |
I am a recent graduate. Got a BA in Government and International Politics in George Mason University this spring.
I am thinking about Graduate school. And I’d love to get an MA in Political Science.
But I’m not. I’m looking for a job, so I can have something solid for the next few years as I attempt and re-attempt the Foreign Service Exam.
If there are anything my college professors have told me, these professors didn’t get their MA’s right after getting their Bachelors. They worked in their respective fields for years before Uncle Sam told em that to advance further, they need MAs, and they’ll get some extra money to help achieve that.
One of them was my old ROTC Instructor. He went to college and got his bars there, worked his way up to Major, and now he’s got practical real world experience he applies to his classes when attempting his MA in Political Science.
As I’ve told my family and friends. “I’d rather have years of experience under my belt, so when I get an MA, I have the real world creds to back it up when I go back to job hunting.”
Posted by Jusuchin (Military Otaku) on September 4, 2011 at 7:10 pm | permalink |
Re: “So, for those of us who agree with your points but realized them too late, how do you go about *fixing* your career after getting a master’s in the humanities?”
Indeed, that is a very good question. Adults, teachers and everyone else you can name in my teenaged past insisted that college was the path to a successful life, sterling career, etc. Then, once I was there – more folks told me that graduate school was the path to the top. Now that I have two graduate degrees, they tell me that its all been for nothing, and that a graduate degree makes you less employable! Well, that’s just peachy keen folks… any other surprises? I wish I’d joined the Marines instead…and that ain’t no lie.
Sarcasm aside, the problem is that colleges, universities and similar programs have been allowed to assume a gatekeeper function for many careers – you can’t get from here to there without first passing through the local diploma mill. Want to change careers? Do not pass go, back through the diploma mill again; sorry old chum, but you don’t have the requisite pieces of paper attesting to your qualifications.
Many in higher education justify the enormous costs of post-secondary education by noting that college is to “learn how to live,” not train for a career. That excuse might have held water when a college education could be had for a modest amount of money (thirty or more years ago), but not now.
Posted by Georgiaboy61 on September 5, 2011 at 12:06 am | permalink |
I know the writer specifically excluded science degrees from analysis, but since my graduate degree has an s in it (MSEE) its the only point of reference i have.
an MS has more challenge and more meat to it than a BS. You learn more. some people like to learn things and the world needs people to learn and do new things. no matter how smae old same old my job is it is still a little bit different each time i do it.
Posted by john on September 5, 2011 at 12:29 am | permalink |
I found my MSEE classes much easier than my BSEE classes. For my undergrad classes I had to take a wide variety of classes in all aspects of Electrical Engineering. For my masters classes, I took the classes that interested me and were in my sub-specialty.
Posted by on September 5, 2011 at 6:31 pm | permalink |
I found my MSEE classes much easier than my BSEE classes. For my undergrad classes I had to take a wide variety of classes in all aspects of Electrical Engineering. For my masters classes, I took the classes that interested me and were in my sub-specialty.
Posted by on September 5, 2011 at 6:31 pm | permalink |
Love our blog and there are certainly some though provoking topics.
Just one point. I think it is very simplistic to say we are all entrepreneurs. Some people may do well with their own business and others may not! Some people may actually be in careers where you do need a masters… whether in the humanities or not. For instance in International Development, for most people to even get a foot in the door you do need some sort of post-grad degree. And if you want to realistically get into the UN, the majority of people need a masters. Yes a few can work out a way through without putting in the graduate work, but not many.
In fact in all fields, it is people who are the exception who are able to get by without a formal education. For those people, grad school may be a waist. For others, who may enjoy school or who may have simply done the cost/benefit analysis, Grad school is a viable and wonderful option. I am actually in awe of people who can balance continuing education and work.
Leslie
Posted by Leslie on September 5, 2011 at 1:36 am | permalink |
I guess those are all true – but in my line of work, Molecular Biology, you will never, ever, ever go above a certain level without a Ph.D. Isn’t going to happen, no way, no how.
Posted by Hugo Schmidt on September 5, 2011 at 3:32 am | permalink |
I love the pigs:-)
Posted by Mutimba Mazwi on September 5, 2011 at 4:12 am | permalink |
Worst of all, the things that these people learn in graduate school are largely untrue.
The humanities have been destroyed by Marxists who succeeded in overrunning and corrupting these fields a generation ago. A graduate degree in one of these fields actually makes a person less knowledgeable than if they had never attended school in the first place. They actually know and understand less than when they got there because so much of what they have learned is untrue. Worse yet, these untruths are not random in nature, but part of a programmed attack on liberal democracy itself. To pursue a degree in these fields is to make oneself a tool of Marxist radicals. There are worse paths in life to choose, but most of them involve sticking needles in your arm, being incarcerated in prison, or committed to an institution.
I personally know intelligent people whose indoctrination by leftist radicals posing as university professors has made the net value of their life a negative number.
If someone were to show up looking for a job with a graduate degree in gender studies, or one of the other imaginary disciplines that have been invented in recent years to give the patina of legitimacy to malignant nonsense, I would not hire them because you can’t trust a crazy person.
Posted by Lee Reynolds on September 5, 2011 at 4:50 am | permalink |
They should replace humanities college course listings with “useless course – won’t mean much more than warm spit in the real world.”
If you want to function in today’s society, you have to do three things: know how to create something the world needs, or will be better off from; more than a passing knowledge and usage of computers, and work towards expunging liberals from positions of power and influence EVERYWHERE. That’s the real definition of a USEFUL adult.
Oh: one more thing … learn how to VOTE PROPERLY, and find out WHO it is you’re voting for, for cripes’ sake! If enough idiots vote for a Barack Obama again, then we’re all truly screwed (again).
Posted by on September 6, 2011 at 11:11 am | permalink |
Everything you said was completely up to “…expunging liberals from positions of ….et all” was agreeable, but then I started laughing.
Posted by Pat McCrotch on September 30, 2011 at 4:19 pm | permalink |
all of #7 is valid. I met far too many people in college with that mantra and then no explanation as to how they were going to pay back the massive debt working at that fulfilling job as a social worker or “green activist”. Totally out of touch with reality. I went through college and have a degree in Biology but couldn’t find a job and have driven a truck for the last 20 yrs. I make about $60K. Not rich but a decent living and I didn’t need college to do it.
Posted by JonP on September 5, 2011 at 6:32 am | permalink |
and by the way, I had 3 companies cold-call me this week offering me a job driving for them. Not bad in this economy.
Posted by JonP on September 5, 2011 at 6:34 am | permalink |
Most of this I agree with. The only reason to get a phd in the humanities is to try to get a job teaching in the humanities. that is the only reason whatsoever to do it. if one wants self improvement or knowledge for the sake of knowledge, that’s what great book’s programs as a second major are for. I do take issue with #5, however. Teaching jobs aren’t impossible, there are just very few, and some disciplines are worse than others. It all depends on where one’s degree came from. so if you get into a good graduate school, you have a chance, otherwise, you will spend yourl ife adjuncting if you’re lucky.
Posted by Lacrymae on September 6, 2011 at 12:55 am | permalink |
Most of this I agree with. The only reason to get a phd in the humanities is to try to get a job teaching in the humanities. that is the only reason whatsoever to do it. if one wants self improvement or knowledge for the sake of knowledge, that’s what great book’s programs as a second major are for. I do take issue with #5, however. Teaching jobs aren’t impossible, there are just very few, and some disciplines are worse than others. It all depends on where one’s degree came from. so if you get into a good graduate school, you have a chance, otherwise, you will spend yourl ife adjuncting if you’re lucky.
Posted by Lacrymae on September 6, 2011 at 12:55 am | permalink |
What if you attend grad school while you work? I agree with you on several of these issues, but I disagree at the direction with which you took the argument. A grad school degree is VERY useful and I still look for them when hiring. As my father once (very logically) said “you go to college to get an education, you go to grad school to get a job”. Grad school is designed to help focus attention, gain insight in a more minute area that can help you think logically and decisively about things.
Much of what we learn in the business world has little to do with business, and more to do with conforming to the current trends and thoughts in our industry or company. Firms today care less about good or new ideas and more about “who is on board?” I know – I’ve lived through this time and again. “It’s not just good enough to have everyone on the bus – they all have to agree with the direction the driver is going!” is the mantra.
I’m sorry – but that is wrong. While we should all work to achieve the GOAL the driver is trying to achieve, there is usually more than one way to reach that goal and it’s important to find as many ways there as possible. People who have grown up in corporate America are poorly prepared for this. ANY dissent is a sign of insubordination, or worse! Few companies value the “outside the box” thinker (though many say they seek them – they don’t really).
I’ve attended one of the most LEFTIST schools in the nation, and I did it for one reason. I figured if I could go in there, learn from them (who I disagree with fundamentally on almost every issue) and succeed – then I would be even better at what I do. I believe I am right – I was the fly in the ointment to many of these professors. But I got the grades and learned a boatload about how to think differently and achieve things in a manner others never will. Sadly, these talents are not widely respected in the US.
Why? It has alot to do with some of the ideas you posted here. Many people who start a company foolishly believe that the ideas that started the company are the ones that will help it grow. Or they think it’s all about them. Or they think it’s about “the one thing” that made them successful. Or something like that. So they discount everything else. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve been on and spoken to younger people with terribly closed minds. Those minds may have successfully started companies, but they have developed closed systems within those companies – and when you look at the failure rate of startups – I can point to one reason why many of them failed. Lack of proper preparation for the rigors of the market. Lack of openness to different approaches to running a business.
These are things you CAN get in grad school, but not so much in the business world. I’d argue your point is more about the student and what they seek to achieve by attending grad school, and less about JUST ATTENDING grad school. I make this point to my son (who is preparing to head to college) daily. What school he goes to is unimportant. What IS important is what he is going for, what he hopes to achieve while he is there, and how he prepares himself for the day he leaves.
In business….all most companies do is seek to make others in the image of management. Conform or die. And people wonder why so many companies are having problems?
Posted by Ronihan on September 6, 2011 at 1:47 pm | permalink |
Many great points . . . I had to chime in with a rant of mine over here (and yes, I linked to you). http://donotextthehiringmanager.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-waiting-it-out.html
Posted by Shimrit Paley on September 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm | permalink |
For me, graduate school and furthering my career weren’t mutually exclusive: I just went to school full time and continued to work full time, after contemplating graduate school for a few years post-college and working in the meantime. It’s important to research your field and what degrees will train you to excel in it – I consulted about half a dozen leaders in the industry vie informational interviews before applying and they all recommended a specific degree and a short list of schools. Now that I’m relocating to a new state for a higher quality of life, my graduate degree helped me rise to the top of the stack career-wise, making my transition to an extremely insular community and field a breeze. To each her own.
Posted by Themis Speaks on September 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm | permalink |
For me, graduate school and furthering my career weren’t mutually exclusive: I just went to school full time and continued to work full time, after contemplating graduate school for a few years post-college and working in the meantime. It’s important to research your field and what degrees will train you to excel in it – I consulted about half a dozen leaders in the industry vie informational interviews before applying and they all recommended a specific degree and a short list of schools. Now that I’m relocating to a new state for a higher quality of life, my graduate degree helped me rise to the top of the stack career-wise, making my transition to an extremely insular community and field a breeze. To each her own.
Posted by Themis Speaks on September 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm | permalink |
For me, graduate school and furthering my career weren’t mutually exclusive: I just went to school full time and continued to work full time, after contemplating graduate school for a few years post-college and working in the meantime. It’s important to research your field and what degrees will train you to excel in it – I consulted about half a dozen leaders in the industry vie informational interviews before applying and they all recommended a specific degree and a short list of schools. Now that I’m relocating to a new state for a higher quality of life, my graduate degree helped me rise to the top of the stack career-wise, making my transition to an extremely insular community and field a breeze. To each her own.
Posted by Themis Speaks on September 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm | permalink |
Bold and courageous in your truth telling you are! I’m all for education, but I’m for self-education along the lines of one’s interests, purpose and service to others. I believe that you can get paid quite well and be of service to others by pursuing your passions-instead of pursuing what THEY say you should learn.
Posted by Chris on September 11, 2011 at 5:26 pm | permalink |
I started a business while earning my MBA, and I found it an extremely helpful combination. I was able to take what I learned in school — it was an evening program for working professionals, for what it’s worth — and apply it to my business the next day if I wanted. I found it an extremely worthwhile combination, especially since I had no background in accounting and finance.
That being said, I agree with you that full-time MBA program is essentially a giant waste of money.
Posted by Gerald Hodges on September 13, 2011 at 3:54 pm | permalink |
The teaching comment is totally false. There are plenty of adjunct teaching positions out there, as well as a plethora of K-12 teaching positions in the South - except for maybe GA and SC. Also, there a myriad of staff and administrative positives at colleges and universities across the country.
Graduate school isn’t for everyone and should be undertaken without a real understanding of what they want to do and how that degree will impact their career goals. That said, I will not tell people who have decided to go to graduate school not to. Just as I won’t knock the personal choices you’ve made. We all have our own journeys to travel. And I don’t find it liberating or fulfilling to criticize the journey’s of others.
Posted by Deyamport Will on September 14, 2011 at 3:59 pm | permalink |
You forgot to mention why I went to grad school:
To live in another country.
Sure I could have just moved to another country, but I was 23 and had just graduated from a no-name state school. I had a perfect GPA and becuase of that, I got into a great graduate program at a top 25 university. This enabled me to live in the UK for one year as a student and then be given, just for graduating, a two year working visa. That enabled me to get a job, a really great job actually. Then I lived in the UK for three more years, traveling and working great jobs. I made amazing contacts and pushed myself to try out all sorts new things that are not available in the states becasue it is so spread out here. When I returned to America 6 months ago, yes I struggled to find a job, just like everyone else, but thanks to my resume, contacts, and references, I ended up with a fantastic job with a great CAREER path.
I loved grad school in Scotland. My classes themselves helped me to refine my work, but it was the experience of living in another country with people from all over the world coming together that taught me how to work with a wide group of people and how to be comfortable in really random situations. It taught me to advocate for myself and gave me the chances to take huge risks. And I also learned that I can bike 35 miles around a Loch in the rain. I don’t regret spending $20,000 for that experience and I would happily do it again. And again. And again.
Posted by Danielle on September 14, 2011 at 5:45 pm | permalink |
OMG!!! Those are the cutest pigs ever. And they’re beautiful at the same time. One reason I don’t eat pork anymore (apologies to the Farmer).
Mercy, you certainly have brought the boyz out of the woodwork with this post. Will comment when I’m more awake.
Posted by LongTimeRez on September 15, 2011 at 3:27 am | permalink |
You should mention Thorstein Veblen in here somewhere. Graduate school is a form of conspicuous consumption, like a large yacht or big house (with lots of wood siding that has to be repainted every few years). It signals that you have lots of resources to waste. In that sense, the pointlessness of it is not a problem, but an essential feature.
Posted by David Cramer on September 20, 2011 at 1:07 pm | permalink |
HiI want to elevate my site www.medikalurunler.org original content that article I want to climb in and help, but I do not know exactlywhat to do olabilirmisiniz.thanks
Posted by on September 26, 2011 at 11:10 pm | permalink |
HiI want to elevate my site www.medikalurunler.org original content that article I want to climb in and help, but I do not know exactlywhat to do olabilirmisiniz.thanks
Posted by on September 26, 2011 at 11:10 pm | permalink |
So maybe it is the cynic in me, but it seems like the author was rejected by several graduate programs and rather than strike it out on her own, she resorted to that antiquated and distinctly American “pull yourself up by the boots straps” mentality, which most middle-class parents tattoo on the foreheads of their children, settling for writing scathing reviews of the institution that rejected her. Don’t get me wrong, Ragged Dick was a great period piece chronicling the greed and avarice of Industrial America and what one had to endure to scratch out a meager existence much to the chagrin of the robber barons, but in a post-Industrial society you shouldn’t have to grovel before your employer to make a fair, living wage and be treated decently. But hey what do I know……..I am in Graduate school……………….
Posted by Guest on September 28, 2011 at 7:04 pm | permalink |
As someone who just graduated with an MA, I can attest to the truth about a lot of this. I am trying to switch careers and every interviewer so far assumes that I only went because I couldn’t cope with reality. So, working a job that pays less than before I went to college and trying to market myself wherever possible.
For anyone reading this and sceptical, feel free to drop me an email.
Posted by Michael on September 28, 2011 at 7:17 pm | permalink |