Anyone that has seriously considered the pursuit of graduate studies over the last decade has heard about the abysmal job market and the terror of grad school. Statistics on the probability of attaining tenure track work are written about exhaustively, as are pieces about the terrible experiences many people have in graduate school.
Depression among graduate students is a real and growing problem. This is due to structural problems in how graduate studies are undertaken. Nothing substantial has changed in the approach to educating graduate students on a comprehensive level in the United States. Many will claim that change has happened, and I’m sure it has in many programs. Overall, though, universities seem unwilling to change the way that grad school works. Many students labor tirelessly under tyrannical advisors while working alongside mean-spirited cohorts.
Graduate school is challenging, to be sure. Less jobs means more competition in school. Students work extremely hard to show their advisors (their primary writer for letters of recommendation) that they can cut it and break into academic work. Graduate stipends aren’t good money outside of a small collection of programs. Dropping everything and moving across the country (and then doing it again in a few short years) is highly disruptive and stressful. Many graduate students are lonely, stressed, and unhealthy. The last leg of my PhD when I was finishing my dissertation and flying out to job interviews was the hardest part of my life to date. I was very close to leaving academia myself.
I won’t delve into many of own thoughts about the problems of graduate education in this text, mostly because they don’t matter much to students that are thinking of pursuing a graduate education. The problems in graduate education certainly didn’t stop me from applying to programs, and I don’t expect that they will deter many readers of this text. That’s fine. I do want to cover some reasons for pursuing graduate studies in a systematic way so that students can make an informed decision.
It’s becoming very hard to avoid negative discourse about graduate school, partly because many students do have negative experiences in graduate school. This also due to trends in the press. So-called “quit lit” (stories about people leaving graduate school) are popular and appearing a growing number of publications. Many websites are covering higher education more closely, and stories about depressed scientists seem to get clicks, most likely because so few people have gone to graduate school, but many think of doing so at some point. There’s a kind of popular fascination with the inner workings of academia that’s leading to more writing on the whole experience. Finally, people rarely take to the internet to share their positive or otherwise wholesome experiences in academia. In all likelihood, if they did manage to secure academic employment, they are too focused on their own future to write articles about how great graduate school was.
Despite all of this (and I know there is a lot of negativity), graduate school can be a fun, rewarding experience. I moved across the country for my MA degree, leaving almost everything in my home town behind for a new experience. I learned more in the two years during my MA than I had in all my schooling up to that point in my life. I met a ton of new, awesome people, many of whom have become lifelong friends. I met mentors that I still highly respect. I still solicit advice from these figures 10 years after my degree. I was reading 1000 pages of fiction a week in addition to a smattering of secondary sources. I was forced to annotate and take notes to organize what I was learning. Through observing the thinking of my professors, I learned new ways to approach intellectual problems. Through the process of writing my thesis, I learned how to manage a huge writing project. In my writing center tutoring, I learned how to interact with writers on a one-to-one basis. As a TA, I got my first teaching experience. To cram all of that into two years seems impossible to me now, but a good graduate program will provide a rigorous structure for study that’s bound to improve you in many ways.
I did all this without debt. I attended a regional state school that was by no means a famous English department, but I received a fair funding package. I lived in a dump of a house and paid 1/4 of my monthly stipend on rent. I spent a lot of time on campus talking to my fellow students and running into my professors. I went to department events. I volunteered to help with an undergraduate conference. I was enculturated into academia- that is, I learned some small but important lessons about how academic work operates by virtue of hanging around a department for 40 hours a week.
This wasn’t a bad way to spend two years of my life as a young adult. After graduating with a BA in English, I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do, and several of my professors recommended graduate school. I decided to attend and see how it worked. If I hated the program, I could always leave (especially since I wasn’t paying for it).
Done right, with enough careful planning and research, graduate study can be a fantastic option. Done poorly, without careful planning and research, it can be a colossal error, one that saps students mentally, emotionally, and financially. For many, a poor choice in graduate school can set them back decades, effectively blocking home ownership or comfortably raising a family. While many students are in graduate school, others are earning promotions, raises, getting married, having kids, and moving into their first home.
It’s important to know what you are getting into as a potential graduate student and to know why you are getting into it. There are several compelling reasons to pursue graduate studies despite all its problems.
Adrift After Graduation
If you find yourself adrift after graduation then you are absolutely normal. Most disciplines do not focus on career preparation. This is not in some malicious attempt to de-fraud and confuse students. Most professors are not trained career counselors. In addition, many successful academics have likely only had one job in their adult lives: professor. That’s precisely the experience set we want for college teaching, but not the experience set for discovering a career after school. This leaves most departments at something of an impasse. How should a career academic train students to enter a workplace? That’s a question that higher education is trying to solve now, but the lack of an answer leaves students in an uncomfortable situation.
Many students feel torn between two different worlds after graduation. After 4-6 years of studying some really important ideas and scholarship, they are faced with what appears to be meaningless work in some corporate office or freelancing. After being exposed to the “world of ideas,” it can feel soul-crushing to enter into a workplace and answer phones or deal with mundane customer complaints. Higher education can feel a bit like a club. It’s fun to be in, but it can be uncomfortable when no one around you is a part of that culture. I’ve frequently worked in private sector jobs during, in, and around my own experiences in higher education, and it can be jarring to say the least. I worked as a shift manager at a pharmacy chain at the beginning of my MA. I remember leaving class one day after discussing Foucault and then vacuuming floors, making a schedule, and counting down tills. It feels like having a foot in two different worlds, and one of those worlds is vastly superior to the other. It can appear that further study is the only option when facing this kind of work environment.
In addition, career services at many schools can be less than responsive. My experience is, of course, limited to anecdote, but the career service centers I’ve interacted with as a faculty member and administrator were lackluster. It’s not the staff, but rather the structure in which universities operate. Career services offices are often peripheral, sitting on the far edge of a campus culture. The biggest issue is that career services units are not integrated into studies at most universities, so job preparation is treated as an afterthought.
If you are only considering graduate school because you can’t find a job, then you may need to approach your job search from a different angle. But, a lack of employment options is one key part of deciding to pursue graduate studies, particularly when you find that you lack the credentials to get hired into your preferred field or job type. Do not prematurely latch onto graduate school as a solution to all your problems, but, if you are unsure about your next move then it may be worth keeping the option open. Some jobs may specifically list than a master’s degree or graduate studies are preferred qualifications. If so, graduate school might make sense.
Interested in Research
If you find yourself drawn to a particular set of academic problems, graduate school may make the most sense as an option. Many students discover a strong interest in research during their time in undergraduate study. In upper-division courses, subject matter becomes more focused, and can feel like a breath of fresh air after a long period of general education curriculum. Often, across a semester, courses will be conversant with each other, each subject blending into the other. This feeling of immersion in a field of study can be very exciting, and often leads to an interest in conducting research and contributing to this scholarly conversation.
Most jobs outside of academia will not allow for this kind of experience. Private sector research does exist for many STEM disciplines, but much less so for humanists and social scientists. A traditional professorship is the best bet for a person who is primarily interested in conducting and publishing research, though there are other options in academia for those interested in research.
Prospective graduate students often ask me how they could determine whether they demonstrate research potential. The easiest route to answering it is through writing. Most commonly, students profess their love of reading to me. While reading is a huge part of graduate study, it’s only one piece in the larger tapestry of work you will be doing. A strong drive to write and share your thinking with other people is a great indicator of research potential. One student that I recently worked with had written 3 book-length projects as a student. That indicates to me that this student has a strong interest in crafting a message and seeking avenues for publishing that message. More often, prospective graduate students profess to me their love of writing without being able to demonstrate they are a writer. In other words, they like the idea of writing but don’t have any publications or experience producing text outside of limited writing in coursework.
Students that are averse to writing papers in their courses should think carefully about their relationship to writing. In addition to reading hundreds of pages of writing a week, you will typically be producing quite a bit of writing as well. My PhD program, for instance, had weekly writing ingrained in its philosophy. That meant I was reading several articles and writing 500-1000 words of polished prose for each course every week. This is done in addition to the 20-30 page seminar paper that’s due at the end of the semester. All told, most worthwhile graduate degrees are built on writing.
A caveat: you will learn many aspects of writing through doing it in graduate school, and it’s certainly possible to improve your relationship with writing through graduate study. At this stage, however, it’s important to take stock of available information to make your decision. In my own experience, students that have a problematic relationship with writing rarely address that problem in school. Writing deadlines come hard and fast in school, which can work to exacerbate a person’s existing problems with writing. I’ve known more than a few people that were prolific writers before school that found their output had diminished greatly in graduate school due to stress and pressure.
You Like to Teach, or You Want to Teach
A desire to teach is a common reason people enter graduate school. Many teaching opportunities require graduate degrees, so it might make sense depending on your intended career path. A graduate degree in education or in a particular subject are increasingly required to enter primary and secondary education, especially considering long-term advancement. Postsecondary teaching always requires a graduate degree.
Many of the students I’ve spoken to about teaching possess only a vague desire to teach, and that’s normal. You can’t really be sure about whether you want to get into teaching unless you’ve had some experience teaching. It sounds circular, but there are some ways into that circle.
There are typically many great opportunities for students on most campuses now that are related to education. The rise of “student life” means that clubs and events have exploded on many residential campuses, which offers students a variety of ways to get some formal and informal teaching experience. The most important part of this process is interacting with your target population: college students. Volunteering for a campus event in which you lead a small group, for instance, will give you some approximate experience of what it feels like to lead a group of college students in a classroom activity. Working as a tutor on campus can expose you to curriculum and delivery. The key is to find something analogous to teaching and try it out.
You are Open to New Experiences
During the second year of my MA program, I ended up sharing several of my courses with a first-year student that quickly began to dislike our program. They complained about their writing center work, and the lack of amenities in the physical space of the center. Their hand shot up in class frequently to ask probing questions about the usefulness of assignments. They once balked at having to use MLA format for essays because their previous degree program did not. After seeing and hearing these issues for the better part of a year, my friends and I wondered why this person had chosen to study with us in the first place. This kind of person isn’t uncommon in graduate studies, and it rarely means there is a major problem with the graduate program.
More likely, the student is a bit too stuck in their ways. Comparing your graduate program with your undergraduate program is inevitable, but holding steadfastly to what you learned in the past isn’t compatible with graduate study (or academic life in general). Most programs have an underlying philosophy upon which their pedagogies are structured. Exposure to that underlying philosophy is extremely important, and something that close-minded students are not going to receive as well.
There is merit to moving away from home and immersing yourself in a new program. The differences in how programs do things are important. Learning about those differences is key to becoming a professional in a field. It’s counterproductive to mark a program as inferior without much experience with it. It should be very difficult to even understand the character of a program after a single semester, but, regardless, students should have an open mind when approaching graduate studies. I’ve worked with many students that are not open to new experiences, and I typically caution them away from graduate studies. The entire process of getting an MA of PhD can feel like holding a tiger by the tail, and it takes a certain personality to thrive in those circumstances.
You Don’t Have Anything Better to Do
I fit into this category, and many students likely do. My undergraduate program was fairly large and traditional. There were no internship opportunities, and career services provided me with little help. I had worked a variety of jobs in the private sector, but nothing that screamed “this is my vocation.” I had worked as a high school debate coach and liked the limited teaching that I had completed. I also enjoyed reading for my courses and writing papers. Most importantly, I had no well-paying jobs lined up. At that point, I felt as though I wanted to pursue my studies further. I would have needed to consider the decision a bit more carefully if I had some solid opportunities in front of me or family obligations, but I didn’t. Making a good choice about graduate school can open some doors that are not open after graduating, but they will also close some doors.
The Take Away: It’s Your Decision
This is a book of advice and strategies related to graduate school, but it’s important to not get lost in the sea of advice. Your journey on this world is your own, and it’s important to make the best of the time we have. I frequently encounter students that have either been talked into or out of graduate school by someone like a professor or a close friend. While it is important to listen to advice from people you respect, it’s also important to make an informed decision for yourself. That also doesn’t mean the decision has to be perfect. As you will repeatedly read in this book, life is often about making the best decision you can based on available information, and graduate school is no different.
