Should I go to graduate school?


The question of attending graduate school follows the same decision-making process as the decision to get an undergraduate degree.

What is the purpose of graduate school?

Graduate school tends to focus on career preparation in a specific career path. Several careers including law, medicine, and counseling require a graduate degree. In the liberal arts, graduate degrees have primarily served as the entry point for becoming a professor.

Students in graduate school have usually found their identity and their calling. The graduate school experience focuses on exploring a field in more detail. At the doctoral level and in some master’s programs, research and the writing of a thesis plays a central role.
Graduate students fall into two primary categories. Students in professional programs spend 2-3 years on campus before graduation. Students in doctoral programs spend 6-10 years on campus before graduation. For the students learning a profession, the focus is on course work. For the doctoral students, there are courses, but more time will be spent in a combination of teaching and research. Large research universities rely on a pool of graduate assistants to work on research and teach undergraduate courses.

Traditionally graduate school like undergraduate education was campus-based. Graduate students generally moved to or near campus and school was the primary occupation. This started to change with programs such as executive MBAs that were designed to meet the needs of working adults who could not quit their day job to go to grad school. These programs offered intensive courses on weekends as an alternative. Over the last 20 years, though, online learning has created more opportunities for students to study while keeping their job and not having to relocate to campus.
Some programs, especially doctoral programs, that require extensive physical laboratories do not translate to an online environment. Other programs such as the traditional MBA on more prestigious campuses persist in part because large companies and consulting firms continue to recruit from campuses. Other programs, such as law, are limited to campus-based delivery due to accreditation requirements. Research universities still offer on-campus doctoral programs in part because they need the labor of doctoral students to support teaching and research.
For someone looking for the traditional college experience, graduate school can offer this experience. However, most graduate students are looking for career advancement over the college experience.
What are the prerequisites for graduate school?
All graduate programs require that students have a bachelor’s degree. Beyond that basic requirement, there is a great deal of variation. For some universities, the degree must be from a regionally accredited college or university.

Some programs are competitive. In these cases, you will often need to take an entrance exam. The GRE is used by many programs, but law school has the LSAT, business the GMAT, and medical school the MCAT. In competitive programs, you will often need letters of recommendations frequently from former professors. You will likely have to write essays as well. In competitive admissions, the status of where you did your undergraduate studies will matter. In some professional fields, whether you earned an undergraduate degree from an accredited program in that field may make a difference.
In addition, some programs may require specific undergraduate courses. If these were not part of your undergraduate studies, you may need to take them prior to applying to admission or in some cases after you have been admitted to the program. In many cases, federal financial aid cannot be used for these courses because the courses are not part of a degree program.

Many master’s degree programs do not have special requirements and start multiple times a year. Others may start only once or twice a year, and in these cases, paying attention to deadlines is very important.

How do I become a professor?

One of the common reasons for going to grad school is the desire to become a professor. I have written a book on this topic already, and if you are interested, you should check out “How to Become a Professor?” on Amazon. I will repeat some of the core advice from that book here.
The first general rule is that you should have a degree higher than the students you are teaching, so to teach undergraduates you should have at least a master’s degree and to teach graduate students, a doctorate. In some areas, there is no doctorate degree, so whatever the terminal (highest level) degree is appropriate.
The second general rule is that you need 18 graduate credits in the area you are teaching. For example, if you want to teach accounting, you need a master’s degree plus 18 graduate credits in accounting. The master’s could be in anything, but usually it will be in accounting. If you have an MBA, you may or may not qualify depending on how many accounting classes you had at the graduate level, and not all colleges and universities will count work experience. Sometimes a professional designation might be enough. In accounting, a CPA even without a master’s degree should be credentialed to teach undergraduate accounting.

A frequent issue that I have seen are people who pursue a graduate degree in education. The logic is that since they want to teach, they should get a degree in education. Unfortunately, higher education and K12 education are not the same systems and have different requirements. Very few master’s or even doctorates in education have 18 graduate credits in anything other than education. Most colleges of education primarily teach people who want to be K12 teachers, so they hire professors with that kind of experience.
If you want to become a professor, you should pursue a graduate degree in the subject you want to teach. Ideally you also have professional experience in this field. In most cases you will need a doctorate. Even if you have all these things, the academic job market is very competitive, and it is difficult to find a part-time job let alone a full-time one.

Should I get a Master of Business Administration (MBA)?

The MBA is one of the most popular graduate degrees. Since it is a professional degree in business, on the surface it appears to be a path to advance or start a career in business. Since most undergraduates do not have an education in business, the MBA appears to be the next step for anyone not interested in healthcare or technology careers.
In the beginning the MBA was designed for exactly this reason. Students would graduate with their undergraduate degree, work in business for five years, and then if they could afford it and did not have family obligations, they could go back to school for a residential MBA program that was an additional two years of study. At graduation, consulting firms, financial services companies, and other major companies would be waiting to hire the graduates, at least at the high-status schools. At these schools, MBA tuition was (and is expensive). The two-year program was generally more than the cost of a four-year undergraduate program.

In time, the high-status business schools started offering an executive MBA option for individuals who could not leave their jobs for two years. This option was even more expensive, but usually employers paid the tuition to develop high potential employees. The executive MBA was offered on weekends and in short sessions so that students could continue to work full-time.

Less prestigious universities also started offering MBA programs for non-traditional students. With the development of online education, these programs expanded even further. They offered the flexibility of allowing students to work and study but at a much lower tuition than executive MBA programs.

These three different MBA programs served very different audiences. The traditional MBA was for students who could study on campus for two years with the intention of landing a high-paying job after graduation with a large company. The executive MBA served the needs of executives who had companies willing to pay tuition. The other programs served everyone else.
Over the last few years, some of the traditional MBA programs have closed. This reflects a decline in the number of traditional students overall. Instead these institutions are focusing on both existing executive MBA programs and offering their own online MBA programs to non-traditional learners.
The decision to pursue an MBA should be based on your purpose in earning the degree. If your goal is to work in consulting or finance, and you can both be accepted into a traditional program and afford it, you should be good to go. If you have an employer willing to pay for executive education program, then this can be a great option. The networking with other students alone is valuable, especially when you need a job in the future.

If you are working in a business and your ability to advance or change companies would be enhanced by having an MBA, the degree makes sense. If you are looking to move into managing people, an MBA will provide you with a broad understanding of business and management that will support your career.
An MBA alone without business experience, though, will be of less value. A more specialized degree might be better at creating new career opportunities.

Is a master’s degree the new bachelor’s degree?

For employers having a bachelor’s degree is often the requirement for some positions or is used as a differentiator between two candidates. Since many more people have bachelor’s degrees today compared to the past, a question is whether having a master’s degree is the new minimum requirement for careers. The professional term for this is “degree inflation.” The answer is that it depends. In some fields, like occupational therapy, positions required a bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy. Today the master’s in occupational therapy is the minimum, and some advocate for a doctoral degree as the standard. In that type of case, then yes, the master’s is the new bachelors. More generally, though, this is not the case.

The value of a bachelor’s degree is only partially in the content of what is studied. The value comes from the ability to meet the requirements of an undergraduate degree. Even in professional fields, most employers recognize the need for on the job training for new graduates. The programs that do not expect to have to train new graduates are those like nursing where clinical experiences and internships during the degree provide the same function as on the job training.
The master’s degree lacks this type of general value. The master’s degree focuses on a single subject, and the value depends on how important that subject views graduate study. In some cases, earning a master’s degree in a subject where you are already working may increase your opportunities for advancement. This depends on the company and industry.
Can a master’s degree be used to change careers?
Some master’s degrees are designed to help you change careers. The Master of Arts in Teaching, for example, is designed to take someone with an undergraduate degree and prepare them to be a K12 teacher. Other master’s degrees in technical fields and healthcare can be an entry into a career in that field. The Master of Arts in Counseling is the entry level degree to become a counselor.

In other cases, the master’s degree is only of value to people with work experience in that field. Usually this is clear from the admission’s requirements to a program, but it is worth verifying that the degree you are considering will offer the career benefits you hope it will before you invest time and money.
When using a master’s degree to change careers, it is important to investigate what career services are provided by the university for graduates from the program. Having the degree is of little value if you cannot find jobs to apply for or have difficulty in getting interviews.
Often a career change can be accomplished without an additional degree. Other educational opportunities might be enough to develop skills. Your existing employer may be willing to let you work on projects with other departments or create a path for you to transition to a new area within the company.

Rarely but sometimes you need to go back for a second bachelor’s degree. I have a friend who was an elementary school teacher who went back to school to become a nurse. That required a second undergraduate degree.

Key Questions

If you are considering graduate school, you have four questions to consider:

  • What purpose would a graduate degree serve for you?
  • Would an alternative to a master’s degree achieve the same result for less time and money?
  • What and where to study?
  • How will you find the time for graduate study?
A key aspect of undergraduate education is the experience outside of the classroom. Graduate education is more centered on professional education. You should be able to validate that the promotion or career change you hope to make will be enabled by a master’s degree and what specific degree will achieve that goal.

Related to this, a variety of alternatives to traditional education exist. These include online programs, certificates, and bootcamps that provide skills training that can reduce the need of a graduate degree. While many jobs require an undergraduate degree, few require a graduate degree.

Once you know that a master’s degree is needed for your goal, you can research what major and school. The major should align to your purpose. If you are going to attend a traditional, face-to-face program you will be limited to locations within a reasonable commute. If you can relocate to attend a residential program, you have more options. Online education offers more options but can be limited in available programs.

An online search for specific programs will provide a list of options that can be reviewed for the curriculum and price. For some programs, program accreditation is a key consideration. This is mostly true for programs that require professional licensure. These requirements vary by state, and it is important to review the requirements for the state where the student intends to work after graduation.

Graduate study can be on-campus but is increasingly online. In either case, it takes time. Before starting grad school, think about where the time for school will come from. Traditional undergraduates have school as their first priority. Adults who go to graduate school have work, families, and friends.