Grad school is not for everyone
By Penelope Trunk, Globe Correspondent, 4/03/05
John McCoy knows a bit about the limited powers of graduate school. He spent years at Boston University racking up a master's in art history, a master's in English with a focus on creative writing, and a significant school loan debt. Now he is the administrative and collections specialist at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art.
McCoy admits to using grad school to "tread water." He says, "The value of grad school is hard to gauge. I am at a job I really like, but grad school might not have been where I needed to go to find out what I wanted to do."
Whether you're thinking of a top-tier MBA or a PhD in anthropology, there is a right way and a wrong way to approach graduate school. You need to
understand your desires and what is required to achieve them. Also, you need to understand the marketplace and what it values.
If you dream of climbing ladders in the Fortune 500, John Challenger, chief executive of the placement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, advises you to get an MBA.
"In today's environment, a graduate degree is as important as a college degree a generation ago." And get it in your 20s when the degree can get you a better starting job. "Where you start is very important for where you end up," he says.
Think hard about the school you choose.
"Top business schools have a premium value," Challenger says. "If you attend the third tier, do it at night because the financial loss and career stagnation while you're in school do not outweigh the benefit of the degree."
For some people, though, graduate school is not so much a way to fulfill a dream as a way to put off finding one. Thomas Benton, a pseudonym for an
assistant professor who writes a column for the Chronicle of Higher Education, blames much of the flight to graduate school on grade inflation and fragile egos:
"Many recent grads return to school when they discover that not everyone thinks they are as great as their humanities teachers did. Humanities don't have the objective standards of business. Going back to grad school allows people to reestablish their ego. But it is short-lived because they have to face the same market when they get out."
Chris Ball is conscious of this problem. He has a good-paying job operating a high-profile website, but is considering going to graduate school for film. He says, "Part of the attraction of going back to school is that I'm good at my job, but not stellar. I'm stellar at school. Maybe its not so much the degree I need as two years of breathing time."
But breathing time in grad school only delays future feelings of suffocation. For example, MFA programs do not make you more creative, they make you more qualified to teach. And the academic job market is a nightmare. Take English literature. Only one out of five people who enter PhD programs will get a job in the field. The rest will find themselves back at square one, waiting tables, albeit with improved literary banter, and looking for a career.
Lost humanities students with an eye for cash and stability often enter law school because other professional schools require too much math or science. Yet the Land of Lost Lawyers is full, too, which confirms that if you don't have a passion for what you are going to learn in graduate school, you shouldn't go.
Joan Sommer, interim director of the career development office at Smith College, has heard all the bad reasons for going to graduate school and has some advice:
- Try other jobs first. The people who do best in graduate school are those
who find decent alternatives first, and still want to go back to school.
- Determine whether an advanced degree is necessary. "Talk to people who
are where you want to be in 10 years. Ask them if they needed a diploma to get
where they are. If they say, 'I didn't get a diploma, these are the steps I took,'
you can do those steps, too."
- Don't bother using graduate school to wait out a bad economy. The one
you're in right now is not particularly bad for job hunters.
For some grad school applicants, no amount of practical advice could assuage the impractical feeling of being late for one's own greatness.
"The stability I have now is tremendous," Ball says. "But I'm not on a path to being a millionaire by age 30. I want big risk and big reward, but I don't want to do anything that makes me look like a loser. At least in graduate school it's acceptable to not have money."
Later he wonders aloud, "Will graduate school merely delay my life a little more? It's a very expensive way to delay my future."
McCoy, who works at the BC art museum, says, "If you want to write a novel, direct a movie, or run a publishing company, then go do it. A degree won't
help because you're judged solely on your work. Use the grad school money to fund your work."
If you must go to grad school, McCoy's seasoned advice is: "Find a cheap program."
Penelope Trunk can be reached at penelope@penelopetrunk.com
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