Is grad school worth it?

 

Is grad school worth it? Survey says...it depends!

Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images

Here’s something to send to your friends who keep saying they are thinking about grad school after two cocktails. While graduate degrees in medicine, law, and pharmacy have high returns on investment, secondary degrees in fields including social work and psychology can actually yield negative returns, according to a new study released this week by the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University. The researchers examined income before and after grad school for 800,000 students who attended public universities in Texas between 1992 and 2019. They factored in the cost of programs and how much pay they missed out on by being in school: Adjusted returns for individuals with a pharmacy doctorate earned 68% more, while those with a graduate degree in clinical psychology had a −5% return on investment. Doctors and lawyers saw a significant jump in adjusted returns, with 173% and 41%, respectively. MBA earners earned a 13% adjusted return on average. Big picture: Lists that show only post-degree earnings can be deceiving, as the cost of attending graduate school has ballooned in recent decades. The researchers acknowledged that some people choose to pursue grad school for reasons other than pay bumps, like getting a special certification, building out their networks, or longing to use the word pedagogy more.