Seven reasons why graduate school is outdated
It used to be that the smart kids went to graduate school. But today, the workplace is different, and it might be that only the desperate kids go to graduate school. Today there are new rules, and new standards for success. And for most people, graduate school is the path to nowhere. Here are seven reasons why:
1. Graduate school is an extreme investment for a fluid workplace. If you are graduating from college today, you will change careers about five times over the course of your life. So going to graduate school for four years—investing maybe $80,000—is probably over-investing in one of those careers. If you stayed in one career for your whole life, the idea is more reasonable. But we don’t do that anymore, so graduate school needs to change before it is reasonable again.
2. Graduate school is no longer a ticket to play. It used to be that you couldn’t go into business without an MBA. But recently, the only reason you need an MBA is to climb a corporate ladder. And, as Paul Graham says, “corporate ladders are obsolete.” That’s because if you try to climb one, you are likely to lose your footing due to downsizing, layoffs, de-equitization, or lack of respect for your personal life. So imagine where you want to go, and notice all the people who got there already without having an MBA. Because you can do that, too, in a wide range of fields, including finance.
3. Graduate school requires you to know what will make you happy before you try it. But we are notoriously bad at knowing what will make us happy. The positive psychology movement has shown us that our brains are actually fine-tuned to trick us into thinking we know about our own happiness. And then we make mistakes. So the best route to happiness is one of trial and error. Otherwise, you could over-commit to a terrible path. For example, today most lawyers do not like being lawyers: more than 55% of members of the American Bar Association say they would not recommend getting a law degree today.
4. Graduate degrees shut doors rather than open them. You better be really certain you know what you’re going to do with that degree because you’re going to need to earn a lot of money to pay it back. Law school opens doors only to careers that pay enough to repay your loans. Likewise, your loan payments from an MBA program mean that you cannot have a scrappy start-up without starving. Medical school opens doors to careers with such bad work-life balance that the most popular specialty right now is ophthalmology because it has good hours.
5. If you don’t actually use your graduate degree, you look unemployable. Let’s say you spend years in graduate school (and maybe boatloads of money), but then you don’t work in that field. Instead, you start applying for jobs that are, at best, only tangentially related. What it looks like is that you are asking people to give you a job even though you didn’t really want to be doing that job. You wanted another job but you couldn’t get it. No employer likes to hire from the reject pile, and no employer wants to be second choice.
6. Graduate school is an extension of childhood. Thomas Benton, columnist at the Chronicle of Higher Education, says that some students are addicted to the immediate feedback and constant praise teachers give, but the work world doesn’t provide that. Also, kids know how to do what teachers assign. But they have little idea of how to create their own assignments—which is what adult life is, really. So Benton says students go back to school more for comfort than because they have a clear idea of what they want to do with their life.
7. Early adult life is best if you are lost. It used to be that you graduated from college and got on a path. The smart kids got themselves on a safe path fast. Today there are no more safe paths, there is only emerging adulthood, where you have to figure out who you are and where you fit, and the quarter-life crisis, which is a premature midlife crisis that comes when people try to skip over the being lost part of early adult life. Being lost is a great path for today’s graduates. And for most people, graduate school undermines that process with very little reward at the end.
Dan Ariely, economist at MIT, found that when people have a complicated choice to make—and there is a default choice—they pick the default nearly every time. So if your parents or friends went to graduate school, you are likely to do the same, not because it’s good for you personally, but because choosing the alternatives seem more difficult. But making exactly that kind of difficult choice is what your early adult life is all about. So don’t skip it.
Graduate
school makes sense and even essential if you are working in certain disciplines
i.e. Engineer, doctor lawyer etc However it makes no sense for many other
professions that should not require a degree in the first place let alone anything
else. The only reason they ask for a degree is because too many people have them.
What I find hilarious but at the same time disturbing is those that wish to
further themselves in the field of finance by going back to school to do an
MBA! apparently these days ibanks which are huge business failures themselves
like graduate degrees to enter low level positions, yet the work itself could
be done by a reasonable bright 18 year old without any degree. A-levels would
more than suffice. The world has truly gone mad and these graduate degrees in
business are more of a scam then ever. I constantly receive spam emails from Stanford
university and many others about the benefits of gaining a masters degree from
there institution. People will eventually wake up to this I’m sure, but for god
sake if you are thinking of embarking on one of these unnecessarily expensive
and ultimately worthless degree (particularly if its business related one)
think long and hard about you motivations and ask why am I doing this? In the
business world academic qualifications are and should only be of secondary
importance to your actual experience. The
real key is if you prove you can save
money and/or make money for a company well your qualifications are irrelevant.
Of course a bit of networking wouldn't go a miss, but paying $100k to be in
touch with the alumini at these so called prestigious business schools is a
very expensive way to build a network. If
you are good at what you do you will develop a powerful network at little or no
cost and actually earn money whilst doing so. I have hired and fired business
graduates over the years and whilst I don't wish to upset anybody currently
studying for an MBA or some MSc in finance please see the wood through the
trees before getting into debt or paying out all that money from you hard
earned savings. I graduated with Maters in Mathematics and honestly it was not
worth anymore then my Undergraduate degree but cost me next to nothing because
back I am talking about 25 years ago. I
learnt business by working in business and no degree has taught me how to sell,
negotiate, build relationships, close business etc.
Success
in business is about hard work and plenty of common sense which I find most
graduates lack along with a good dose of lateral thinking not text book thinking.
I have read all the business books I care to read and now know what is taught
at some of the main business schools here in London and the US. I was intrigued
to find out what my fresh hires had learnt and why they thought they could
demand higher entry salaried then someone with just a undergraduate degree. Do
you own research and make you mind up and see if you feel the content of what
you learn justifies the cost.
This
is based on my broad experience as a MD of a well known financial firm based in
London.
Many
younger graduates who I've asked why they chose to follow a particular path
both academically and commercially often seemed to have been blinded by perceived
prestige. It is very concerning that intelligent young and even experienced people
end up getting into debt to get a piece of paper that seems prestigious. It
should also be noted that many of the financial institution are well connected
to business schools and as such effectively saying you need to go and pay a lot
of money to get that qualification so that we would offer you a position as a
low level employee of our bank. Why would anyone want to do that? Well they are
sold on the fact the bank is prestigious and hence they need to obtain a
prestigious degree from a prestigious University. It is all very silly but this
is the way things have gone and more so explains a lot about the state of the
world we live in today. I am so glad I be retiring in a few years. Here is a
quote from Paul Graham.
"Prestige
is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people
waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige.
"The
reason the young care so much about prestige is that the people they want to
impress are not very discerning"
I would like the author to talk with Prof. Amy Chua. I believe that a recording of their conversation would be most entertaining.
Groovy stuff. But there is still considerable payoff for certain degrees from elite schools. The problem is that most of the middle class are not smart enough or rich enough to get into these schools. That’s how the elite stays elite.
But I would aqree that the MBA and other degrees that were once fashionable years ago have lost their luster-mainly because their content was so thin and repetitive. Not mention out-of-date economic theories.
George DeMarse
The Sage of Wake Forest
Haha, you can easily convince me not to try and work so hard for graduate school. Even job positions that say required you might be able to get someway with a lower degree. From stories, anyways.
This article is plain over simplified hogwash.
Did you want to pander to non-graduate degree holders or were you just trying to shock people into reading your blog? Either way this reeks of desperation.
I disagree with the author. I am finishing a dual degree after having completed a masters degree last year. It has been very compelling, interesting and opened up my mind in ways that would not have been possible, without the education.
Sounds like sour grapes to me.
I hear that going to grad school does you wonders. Heres an article about why gra school is beneficial. check it out: http://www.parentsandcolleges.com/blog/?Tag=masters+degree
This is a well framed and timely relevant article. This article speaks about the reluctance towards the graduate schooling. But one must think about the relevance of doing the graduation in the present world context.
This post is so bad that I’m happy to comment five year later: Thank You Life Coaches for encouraging a Dumber, Lazier America. Your efforts are unappreciated by all.
Apart from the declining value of the graduate degree in employability, the amount of valuable and remembered learning for all that time and money is, for many if not most people, much outweighed by the opportunity cost: what you could otherwise have been doing with the time and money: learning on the job, individually selected webinars and tutoring selected on a just-in-time basis, etc.
This is the real world folks. I know a few people who refuse to leave school because they are afraid to get a job/career and start working, for money.
One thing that hasn’t really been talked about here is professional degrees. The education you are getting is for a career end goal i.e., engineer, educator, lawyer, doctor, pharmacist, dentist, accountant, etc. This, to me, is the best of all scenarios – great university education + career/profession.
Let’s be clear, graduate students are not smarter than anyone else. Many are just lost, scared. I’ve worked with people doing their doctorates who were very poor writers for example.
In conclusion, a graduate degree does not make you smart, make you happy, give you a good career. It often is escapism in disguise – a way to feel superior, when deep down inside what you really feel is inferior.
“…some students are addicted to the immediate feedback and constant praise teachers give, but the work world doesn’t provide that. Also, kids know how to do what teachers assign. But they have little idea of how to create their own assignments…”
Nearly fell of my chair reading this one.
I’m having a hard time figuring how the author thinks that 6-7 years spent on your own, designing and executing a large project, with little or no reward or encouragement until the end (if you make it) can be carried out by anyone who is ‘addicted to praise’ and ‘not creative.’
I will agree that some students enter graduate school thinking that they will put off the ‘real world’, but I assure you that those students are weeded out very early and either drop back to a MS or drop out completely. It actually would not surprise me to find out that the author is among them.
It really is a tough decision. Indeed, the amount of valuable, retained learning in graduate programs for the time and money expended is usually terrible, even if you aim toward the professoriate and especially if you don’t. Yet employers, terrified of using subjective selection criteria (for example, in fear of being deemed racist or sexist) use “objective” criteria such as the possession of a graduate degree as a screening tool in hiring. If someone is a true self-starter and willing to work at getting more competent in the real world and documents that in their applications, avoiding grad school may be wise. But if you’re one of those relatively passive people who need the structure of school to keep you productive, you may be stuck with having to go to grad school to enhance your employability in this very tough job market.
This article is so spot on.
The blueprint that our society pushes is so outdated and not even remotely relevant for kids today. There are so many more options, especially through entrepreneurship and being a lean tech. start up.
I went to grad school in Europe and I was blown away at how old and irrelevant the material was that my program was teaching. I am happy I got a scholarship so I wasnt out of pocket, but kids today are making these decisions because they dont know what else to do.
Thanks for calling out this escapism. It is a trap leading to a life long pal – unforgivable loan – that is that there for the duration.
Cheers
Turner