It’s your fourth (or fifth) February of your undergraduate degree. The days get longer and the snow turns to streams disappearing down College Hill and, like every February, you feel winter subsiding.
But 2012 is different.
You’re going to graduate soon and this summer doesn’t mean a four-month hiatus from essays and assignments while you wait for class to begin again in September. Or does it?
It’s a choice we’re all faced with: graduate school. To go or not to go? There are arguments for and against. The cost, the work – does it pay off? Is it just putting off “real” life for another year? But if you don’t go, what will you do?
For Courtney Hill, a graduate student at Dalhousie University, it wasn’t an option.
“I have an undergrad in biology and there’s nothing you can do with that, so I had to further my education by going to grad school so I can get a job,” she said.
She’s doing her master’s of science in occupational therapy.
“So far I feel like it’s useful but…I have a lot of bullshit courses that I don’t find valuable. I think they just throw them into the program to make it a full two years.”
Hill pays $15,000 a year for tuition. Even with the debt, she says she would still do it again.
Grad school, no matter where you go, isn’t cheap – especially not after paying in the ballpark of $20,000 for your liberal arts degree.
A master’s of business administration, a 15-month course, at the University of British Columbia costs $41,352 this year. A master’s of environmental design studies at Dalhousie costs $7,473 a year. Typically, master’s of arts are cheaper than science or engineering degrees.
Still, it’s a steep price, and the question remains: does it pay off?
In today’s economy and equally bad job market, will it only dig us deeper in debt for another certificate on the wall?
Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz wrote that since 1980, the “increase in the relative earnings of college graduates and those with advanced degrees has been particularly large.”
According to a report by Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, those with a master’s degree earn $2.7 million over their lifetime, about $400,000 more, on average, than those with just a bachelor’s degree.
Typically, more education means more money, but that doesn’t mean all degrees pay off all the time.
Degrees in business, finance and administration tend to pay back big time. But why is the world going to reward you for your mastering of some arcane social science? And with so many people going to grad school, when does the job market reach the saturation point? Is the master’s simply the new BA?
Christina Cail, an academic advisor at St. Thomas University, did her master’s in human rights at the London School of Economics.
“Originally I planned on going to law school, but realized that I really wanted to study human rights–one of my majors at STU–at a more advanced, focused level. It also became apparent while looking at the types of careers I want to pursue –working for the United Nations and for the Canadian Foreign Service as a diplomat–that having a masters would be necessary,” she said in an email.
Cail, who received her master’s in the fall of 2011, said it has already paid off – she has a job – but she said grad school’s not for everyone. She recommends having an honours or, at least, a high GPA before applying.
My brother John is finishing his law degree at the University of New Brunswick this spring. Despite seven years of university and corresponding debt, he still plans to start a master’s of environmental law this fall in the UK.
“It gives you an opportunity to understand how other countries are looking at environmental law and be able to have a more in-depth and theoretical understanding, not just of what the law is, but what it could be.”
He told me he read an article recently that said there is no such thing as a career path anymore but a career-pave-your-own-way.
“If I want to work in environmental law, the onus is on me get the training and to make myself marketable.”
If you want my “Bird’s Eye View” opinion, do what you want.
If you want to get a master’s – whether it’s because you want the MA behind your name, or a new experience, or you just want to avoid the “real” world (I’m with John Mayer on this one, there is no such thing), or because you really want more education – then go.
Yes, debt sucks, but if education is what you want, then it’s worth it.
And let’s face it: education is never a bad investment – unless you flunk out.
