Welcome back, boys and girls. 🙂

Last time, we talked about the Myth of the Direct Career Path. Today, we’re going to zero in on one part of that myth and explore it in depth: the part dealing with higher education, and specifically the highest parts of higher education that most of us call graduate school.

Full disclosure before we get started: I’ve been to grad school. I have a Master’s degree in Arts Management, which I typically abbreviate “MAM.” And while I have worked in arts management since finishing that degree, as a grant writer for a city opera company, I currently don’t work for any arts organization(s) but rather am self-employed as an editor, writer, presentations coach, and professional giver of feedback.

Why are my individual circumstances important here? Well, aside from establishing my credentials to write about grad school, they also highlight the main question of this article. I did get a job because I went to grad school. But I’m not in that job now, nor another one like it. So was my grad school experience worth it?

For me, I can definitely say that it was, and I’ll tell the story of why in a bit here. But before I do that, I want to emphasize the change I just made to that question from the title. I didn’t ask “was grad school worth it?” this time. I asked instead “was MY grad school experience worth it?” And that’s one of the main points I want to stress here. Grad school is even less one-size-fits-all than college is--and if you think college is one-size-fits-all, please go and read my Myth of the Direct Career Path article before continuing here. It’s okay, we’ll wait for you. 🙂

All caught up? Awesome. Now let’s tackle whether or not grad school might be worth it FOR YOU. Like anything else, grad school has points of interest that will carry different weights for different people, each of which carry pros and cons. Here are several that you might consider:

1. Grad school is the new college

As the great Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a-changin’. Fifty years ago, few enough people went to college that just getting a college degree was a big deal. Now, hundreds of thousands of people graduate from college every year, but only a relative fraction of those people go to grad school.

Pros:

- With fewer people attending grad school as a whole, you may have the opportunity to attend a much more prestigious school or much stronger program than you did for undergrad.

- As such, grad school may afford you skills, experiences, internships, and/or contacts you would not have found or developed without it.

- Ergo, grad school can put your resume several levels above the resumes of people with only a BA.

Cons:

- By taking the extra two (or four, or six, or more) years for additional education, you may lose out on immediate job opportunities in favor of college grads who can start work right away, especially if you go right from college to grad school.

- College may have been expensive; grad school will likely be comparably pricey, if not more so. Even if you can scrape together some grants and scholarships, you will almost certainly come out of grad school with a hefty amount of student loan debt.

2. College is general, grad school is specific

Whatever you studied in college, grad school will be a lot more specific and focused. If you majored in computer science in undergrad, you’ll go to grad school for something like robotics or project development. If you majored in history or literature, you’ll get a master’s in a specific period or type of that topic. If you studied something artistic in college, you’ll hyperfocus on your art in grad school to the exclusion of all else. Even if you intensely focused on one thing in undergrad, grad school will intensify that focus even further.

Pros:

- In the immortal words of Ron Swanson: don’t half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. Higher education will make you an expert in your field of study because you won’t be scattering your fire over lots of studies at once.

- Many careers require this kind of specific focus. Law, medicine, musical performance, and many other career paths consider a master’s degree mandatory just to get started.

Cons:

- Countering one cliche with another: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Choosing a grad program that hyperfocuses you may make it harder to be versatile going forward.

- Carrying that to an extreme, if you do a hyperfocused grad program and the career you want from it doesn’t work out, you may feel like it was not a worthwhile use of your time.

3. Grad school is a challenge

Okay, that’s an understatement. Grad school is not “a challenge.” Grad school is EFFING HARD. You will work your hindquarters off every day, likely working harder than you believed possible, and when you’re done working you will work some more. Sleep will be a luxury, laundry and grocery shopping will happen...sporadically, let’s say, and if you want the kind of active social life you had in college, good luck.

Pros:

- Trial by fire. If you survive this level of hard work, you’ll be like a well-tempered blade that will never break or lose its edge. Iron will turn brittle and shatter, bronze will bend and dull, even steel will rust, but not you. Shoot you down, but you won’t fall: you are titanium. 🙂

- There’s nothing like working really really really really REALLY hard at something to truly master it and learn to love it, whatever that thing may be for you.

Cons:

- Survival of the fittest. I don’t want to discourage anyone here, but not everyone is cut out to do the level of work you have to do in grad school. Some people have medical issues, family issues, mental issues, social issues, self-management issues, etc., and working that hard for two, four, six years will create exactly the kind of stress and strain that can seriously aggravate those issues. Those situations can be worked through, but it will not be easy, and not everyone will be able to do it.

- Timing. If you are going from college right to graduate school, you may burn out from so much constant education. If you have been out in the work world and are returning to full-time school, you may be unprepared for that level of academic work after your time away. If you are trying to do grad school WHILE working full-time or even part-time, you may simply be insane, or possibly a glutton for punishment. (Kidding! I actually admire people who can do that very much, largely because I am not one of them.)

4. No guarantees

This is perhaps the most important point to consider, because it has no pros. Let me repeat that: this point is purely negative. It has no good side.

There is no guarantee that going to grad school will change anything for you. It can improve your hireability, develop your skill set, build your network, and make you a stronger candidate for your career path of choice, but even after doing all of those things for you, there is no guarantee that going to grad school will get you a job, more income, a promotion, a successful career, or anything else you’re going there to get. (And even if going to grad school does get you some of those things in the short run, it will be up to you, not your master’s degree, to keep them in the long run.) At the end of the day, about the only thing that grad school will guarantee to get you is debt, and lots of it.

This is actually where my own story comes back in. I was fortunate enough to get a supposedly “good” job within a month of finishing grad school, the opera grant writing job I mentioned above. Several of my arts management classmates were similarly fortunate, quickly taking jobs at arts consulting firms, museums, symphonies, theatres and so forth. But others among my classmates have struggled to find work. Some took part-time positions, or moved to new cities for better potential prospects, or took second jobs when their arts jobs couldn’t fully support them. Some of them took months to find any job. Some still haven’t found one. Each of these people, all of whom are quite skilled and talented in arts management, will probably answer the question of whether the degree was worth it differently.

As for me, after nine months in the opera job, I was fired. The great fit both the opera company and I thought would be there had just never materialized, they realized they wanted someone vastly more experienced than me, and I realized I wasn’t happy as a full-time arts manager. I haven’t worked in arts administration since.

Now at this point you’re probably wondering why, after relating that experience, I would possibly say that the two years and $60,000 in student loan debt that got me the arts management degree in the first place was worth it for me. But believe it or not, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Here’s why:

Firstly, I didn’t only go to grad school for a degree, I went for an experience. I was there for the journey as much as the destination. This outlook, I think, enabled me to detach the ultimate professional result of going to grad school from the time, energy, and hard work I invested in it. Moreover, it enabled me to appreciate the other things besides a job that grad school had given me: namely, some amazing friends, some great memories, two years of personal growth, time living in a fantastic new city, and a much stronger sense of my own life’s purpose and direction.

And secondly, one of the activities I participated in during grad school (coaching speakers for a TEDx event), while it was only tangentially related to my degree, actually sparked in me the desire to do what I’m doing now--being self-employed, location independent, confident and comfortable with my life’s uncertainty, and devoted to my own personal development. None of that would have happened without this TEDx work; and therefore none of that would have happened had I not gone to graduate school.

So is grad school worth it? I hope by now you get how oversimplified that question is. Ask, rather, if grad school seems right for you in your current situation. Consider the time, the cost, the available programs, the workload, your goals, your dreams, your alternatives, your backup plan if grad school doesn’t work for you. For many of you, the potential professional result of grad school may be way more important than the holistic experience; by all means, take that into account as well. And if all those considerations tell you that grad school seems likely to be worth it, then go for it. If they seem to warn you away, listen to them and consider other options instead.

And if they’re deadlocked or inconclusive, consider one more thing: the fact that you may not really be able to answer that question for yourself until you've actually gone to grad school. And to be fair, that uncertainty might be a deterrent unto itself. But if you’re willing to go with the goal of finding out if it will be worth it, and willing to keep an open mind about what that worth might look like, then I’d be willing to bet grad school will be worth it for you.

Want more? Feel free to come visit my website HeldForRanson.com

James Ranson is the founder and chief communications officer of Held For Ranson Professional Communications, a location-independent business and blog providing content writing, grant writing, editing, presentation coaching, professional feedback, and career services to entrepreneurs, bloggers, travelers, coaches, nonprofits, and more. After many years of feeling life was holding him for ransom, James decided that enough was enough: it was time to wake up and start holding life for Ranson, hence the company name. James has written grants for three opera companies, coached speakers for three (going on four) TEDx events, managed three professional box offices, sung in Carnegie Hall, and at one point could swim a mile in under 20 minutes.

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