Why go to grad school?

The Tensor has written an interesting post about his experiences of returning to grad school. Your host concurs heartily with his conclusions, and wants to pick out a few points that he wishes desperately had been driven into his head sometime around the start of his senior year in college.

He writes: "I wouldn't recommend going directly from a Bachelor's degree into grad school". Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! SC went directly from his undergrad program into a Ph.D. program, which turned out to be one of the two most ill-advised moves of his life (the other one, oddly enough, was not quitting his job when he returned to grad school). Fortunately, he received an opportunity to leave for the commercial world near the end of the first year, and spent a pleasant year out of academia altogether, which both helped get priorities set straight, and provided an opportunity to go to a different academic program.

This was a good idea for all the reasons that The Tensor sets forward: 1) it does put the academic workload into persepctive, 2) it does help develop the requisite work ethic, and 3) earning money is a good thing for keeping your balance sheet from being debt-laden. However, SC would add one caveat that his advisors at the original Ph.D. program turned out to be right about: when you're ready to return to academia, even if your long-term goals aren't academic, commit to it 100%. There is absolutely no question in SC's mind that trying to maintain a professional and academic life simultaneously can only result in disaster. Even with the enthusiastic and generous cooperation of both faculty and supervisors, you can't do two jobs at once without the results of both being half-baked.

Comments

[Dana]

I don't really disagree with any of this, but the other side of the argument is that there are some people who will never go back to school once they are in a position where they are actually making money. Sure, you might then argue that this means they shouldn't be in grad school in the first place, but there are some people who need a higher degree to do what they really want to do, and now are trapped by indecision in the world of income. Some professions just require higher degrees. If you don't go ahead and get them, there's a chance you never will.

[Semantic Compositions]

I guess it depends on what your goals actually are. If you want to be a professor of linguistics, then you really can't do it without a Ph.D. I wanted the degree in order to be better credentialed as a researcher in the commercial world; sometimes, I still think I should've gone all the way for one, but a master's seems to be OK as well. Actually working in the field helped me understand that I didn't need to dive back into a Ph.D. program in order to do what I wanted. So in that sense, it was valuable to spend the time away from school.

If I had wanted to be a professor, though -- or a medical researcher, or a policy planner in an Executive Branch department of the government -- not going for a Ph.D. would simply delay the start of my "real" career. I suppose knowing yourself matters here more than any specific advice about going to a job first, taking X years off, etc. If you don't know for a fact that you can walk away from a job after a year or so, then you probably should just go straight to school.

[Christopher Culver]

I'd love to take some time off between receiving my B.A. and entering a graduate program, but if I spent any time outside of academia, I must begin repaying my ~$50 000 worth of student loans. And since I'm not employable within my field without a graduate degree, and little qualified for anything decently-paying in the real world, that would be a terrible fate. So, though it isn't the ideal thing to do, I will try my best to keep my academic career flowing right along without pause.

[Semantic Compositions]

You might be more qualified for "real-world" jobs than you think. SC's brother-in-law recently wrapped up a 2 year stint at Goldman Sachs to go to law school. He was hired as a legal researcher for the mergers and acquisitions department, and made more in his first year than I'm doing in my fifth -- with only an undergraduate history degree.

Loan repayment is a difficult subject, but I'm not quite convinced that it gets better post-graduate than it is if you stop to work. Starting salaries for tenure-track faculty can still be as low as $30-40k/year, which makes paying off a big loan difficult. I agree that your earnings potential is probably better with a Ph.D. than not, but I think you're selling the possibilities of real world employment a bit short.