Is Grad School a Good Investment?

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Ugh. You’re in a work lull.

A rut. And you think the best way to get out of said rut is to go back to school. Sounds familiar, right?

Here’s my take.

Deciding to go back to school is not the right decision if it stems from a place of avoidance, as in avoiding any life and career problems you’re having. Of all of the business decisions you’ll have to make in your life as the CEO of you, the one about whether or not to invest in going back to school is one of the biggies. That’s because it can be one of the biggest time sucks and money drains.

“But, Lapin, I need an advanced degree to get ahead,” you might be thinking. Yes, it might be tempting if you are going through a pause in your career to go back to school, but do you need it? Maybe . . . but likely not. Really ask yourself what career benefits you’ll get out of it and if those are worth the time and money.

I’m a numbers girl, so let’s crunch a few.

It’s been said that by getting an advanced degree, you can make $800K more over your lifetime versus a counterpart who doesn’t have your wicked graduate-degree brain. With the average cost of your extra schooling at around $100K, the $800K return sounds tempting and maybe even too good to be true. That’s because, most of the time, it is.

If you are interested in this additional schooling purely from a money making perspective, then I have an even better option for you.

Let’s say, instead of going back to school, you take that $100K and invest it over the next fifty years at 5% (which isn’t even an aggressive assumption; in the investment world, that’ll make you 8% over time). You will end up with around $1,150,000. That’s a full $350K more than you would be making with that fancy-ass degree. And let’s be honest, that $800K figure is pretty optimistic in today’s economy, where there is much less of a job premium for people who have their MS versus their BS. And those little letters basically sum up how I feel about the “it’s an investment” argument for grad school . . . it’s BS.

More important than the money you will spend is the time it takes to earn a degree.

A year or more of your life. Is that worth it? Depending on what you want to study and where you want to go with that degree, the answer could be yes (for example, getting your masters in engineering in today’s tech world is a pretty solid investment, especially if you’re a woman). And, sure, specific industries require advanced degrees: it’s pretty difficult to sit for the bar exam and become a lawyer without going to law school, and you’re probably not going to get a job as a surgeon without a medical degree (at least I hope not). All I’m asking is that before you pony up the time and tons of paper for, well, another piece of paper, make sure you can really justify the debt monkey you are putting on your back. If you can, then great. But really, really try to prove it to yourself—not just with anecdotes, but with numbers.

You don’t need a classroom to get an education. In fact, investing in yourself in alternative ways might just provide better real-world learning than you would ever get at grad school, anyway. Get the degree of life, instead. That’s what employers really care about. As an employer myself, I can say that what I look for in the job candidates I meet is experience, not the letters after their name. I don’t care if you got your education at an Ivy League school or instead by busting your ass as a gopher for someone cool. In fact, I prefer the scrappy nature of the latter myself.

My father’s favorite quote on this subject was one from Mark Twain: “Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education.” One of mine is from the movie Good Will Hunting: “You dropped one hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.” I say: moxie and street smarts are the most killer M-S combination out there.

xo,

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💬 I showed you mine, now you show me yours. Are you thinking about grad school? Did you get a graduate degree? Was it worth it? Tell me in the comments below!