On the value of Grad school...

[rebel100]

Grad School Is Attractive, Expensive and Not Usually Worth It - TheStreet

Basically the article seems to attempt to steer you away from Grad school unless you have a great plan on how to pay for it....largely decent advice IMHO.

Of course it's an article slanted towards full time, presumably B&M schools, and not really geared towards the alternative methods and schools we generally talk about around here like WGU, Patten, and AMU/APU

[soliloquy]

I'm attending a full-time brick-and-mortar school and my degree will cost me less than $12,000. Granted I am taking classes online. If people are willing to give up the big names schools and place value in front of prestige, they will be able to find affordable education.

[Decius73]

Soliliquy,

What school are you attending?

[soliloquy]

Soliliquy,

What school are you attending?

Missouri State University, online classes are billed at the same rate as in state tuition.

[sanantone]

I made sure my master's degree was cheap. The price is in my signature.

[rebel100]

Cost for mine was three semesters at $3250 or $9750 total. All but $750 of that was covered by my employer. WGU includes all books and misc. in that price.

[Leherself]

The author seems to be mostly talking about academic graduate schools, and not professional degrees. In that case, I largely agree. Graduate degrees that don't directly lead to a new job or promotion seem to mostly be a luxury item - if you can't afford it, don't go.

Entry level professional degrees are a totally different thing though. Becoming a qualified clinician, therapist, lawyer, teacher - a lot of these programs are entry level Masters and/or Doctorate programs now, as bachelor's degrees get more and more devalued. It's still worth being sensible about cost of course (don't go $400k into debt for a gorram teaching degree, for instance), but the return on investment is much more predictable.

I'm not sure where the MBA lands on that scale though.

[sanantone]

The author seems to be mostly talking about academic graduate schools, and not professional degrees. In that case, I largely agree. Graduate degrees that don't directly lead to a new job or promotion seem to mostly be a luxury item - if you can't afford it, don't go.

Entry level professional degrees are a totally different thing though. Becoming a qualified clinician, therapist, lawyer, teacher - a lot of these programs are entry level Masters and/or Doctorate programs now, as bachelor's degrees get more and more devalued. It's still worth being sensible about cost of course (don't go $400k into debt for a gorram teaching degree, for instance), but the return on investment is much more predictable.

I'm not sure where the MBA lands on that scale though.

The MBA is considered a professional degree only because it's an applied subject, but it's different from the ones that specifically qualify you for an occupational license. Whether you'll get a good ROI with an MBA is hit or miss unless you attended one of the top business schools.

[dfrecore]

The MBA is considered a professional degree only because it's an applied subject, but it's different from the ones that specifically qualify you for an occupational license. Whether you'll get a good ROI with an MBA is hit or miss unless you attended one of the top business schools.

I think an MBA can sometimes take you higher in a corporation than a Bachelor's degree, but it just depends on so many things. I say get a bachelor's degree, start your career, and THEN consider going back to get the MBA if you find that you really need it for some reason later on. Most companies don't expect a 22-year old recent college grad coming to work in finance or accounting or HR to have an MBA, but if you want to move very high on the corporate ladder, then you might be expected to get one later on. But that might not be until you were 10-15 years into your career.

Many companies will pay for it as well, another reason to wait. Some very large corporations even do a cohort program, and put a bunch of specially chosen mid-level managers through the MBA program together. They may even have classes onsite.

[SweetSecret]

I would say this is pretty slanted as well. In my case I'm under-employed right now (a bit by choice since I need time for the capstone), though during summer I was pretty well over employed but under-paid. After my injuries left me out of work, and many months after I signed up with DegreeForum, it took a few years to prove my injuries and receive assistance from DVR along with the scholarship. Its now been years since my initial injury and up until fall '14 I wasn't employed at all. That was essentially years of lost time in work experience, and depending on which job you compare to I am only making about 10% now of what I used to make per hour. I plan to go for a masters degree because it will give me a credential that can help me sort of make up for the lost years, also check off a box that is generally needed for an Executive Director or CEO position, and give me certain skills so I won't need to be asking other people how to make things happen - or getting others to invest. While some people may also balk at the idea of going for a masters at prestigious school, in my case it would probably be very helpful because I need to quickly create a very solid professional network, since my previous line of work wouldn't be at all helpful in the future since it's pretty much like the work I'll be doing is calling out all of the shortcomings and law bending of my previous field. The prestigious school could in my case also help me look more legitimate on my rÃsumÃ, which is important for someone coming out of my line of work which was legal but often not viewed as legitimate because of all the law bending that often happened. Sometimes its all a matter of personal situation.