The College Solution » Careers

Rushing to Get a Graduate Degree

Lynn O'Shaughnessy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:23:44 +0000

I’ve met a lot of college students who assume that they must slog their way through graduate school to enjoy a successful and lucrative career.

What is troubling, however, is how little information young adults know about what is involved in earning a graduate degree that can be expensive and a huge time commitment. No one should pursue a graduate degree without a lot of research and soul searching.

Here are some of the things you should know about grad school before you forge ahead:

1. Don’t be in a hurry.

There’s rarely a good reason to go to grad school immediately after earning a bachelor’s degree, observes Andrew Roberts, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and the author of a fabulous book, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education. The book is primarily focused on undergrads, but it does contain advice on graduate school issues. (I highly recommend getting this book for high school seniors after they are done with the admission process.)

Roberts says that it’s hard for students to know if grad school is the best option until they’ve been in the workforce for a while.

2. Don’t make grad school your default move.

Students often enter grad schools without knowing much about the eventual careers to which a graduate degree could lead. The worst thing young adults can do is go to graduate school because they aren’t sure what else to do or they can’t find jobs. Grad school, after all, is often an extremely long commitment. A Ph.D., for example, can take six years or more. Less than 50% of students who begin a PhD program leave with a degree.

3. Don’t expect to get a job as a professor.

Even if you do survive grad school, the job market for Ph.D.’s in academia is lousy. You can find out the realities of grad school by downloading a book, Grad Skool Rulz: Everything You Need to Know About Academia From Admissions to Tenure, (just $2!) that was written by Fabio Rojas, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University. Rojas also sums up the challenges grad students face in blog posts that he’s written about graduate school life over the years at orgtheory.net.

Here’s one of Rojas’ observations:

The job search process is harrowing for academics…there is little guarantee that persons completing their terminal degree will land a job teaching and doing research in their area. At a top medical school, the question is if you will get the residency of your choice. At a top graduate program, it’s often doubtful that someone will be offered a job at all.

4. Life in the Ivory Tower can be a grind.

Grad programs are hard work and require much more challenging coursework. Roberts notes in his book that “the course material now becomes, to a considerable extent, technical, insider reading—that is, dense, abtruse, jargon-filled works polished in academic journals and by university presses. …You will not be tempted to recommend your reading lists to friends outside your field.”

Fabio warns about “toxic” grad programs where departments provide no support for students and seem happy to pit students against each other. He describes the most common grad program as one guilty of “benign neglect.” A few good students get support from professors, but most don’t.

5. Ask intelligent questions.

If none of this dissuades you, here are some questions that William Pannapacker, an associate English professor at Hope College, in a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, suggested would-be graduate students ask before selecting a program:

What kind of financial support can a student expect to receive during the entire course of the program?
How much educational debt do graduates leave with?
How many discussion sections and courses are graduate students required to teach in order to receive a stipend each year?
What is the average annual teaching load for graduate students?
How many years does it typically take to graduate?
How long are graduates on the academic job market?
Where is every graduate employed in academe and in what positions: tenure track, visiting, adjunct?
Where are graduates working, if not in academe?
Does the program lead to appealing career paths outside of academe?
What percentage of students earn doctorates?
How many earn master’s degrees?
What reason do students drop out?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of Shrinking the Cost of College, a workbook available on her website. She also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter @CollegeBlog and on Facebook.

Beware: Law School Rip-Offs

8 Reasons Not to Get a Business Degree

Parents Take a Chill Pill

College Students Who Study the Least

Lynn O'Shaughnessy — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:19:16 +0000

What students are the biggest slackers?

A report released on Thursday by the National Survey for Student Engagement suggests that business majors may have earned that title.

In the survey, which polled college students at hundreds of colleges and universities earlier this year, concluded that business majors and social science majors spend the least amount of time studying. The typical business student devoted 14 hours a week to homework versus 19 hours for engineering students, who were the hardest workers. Frankly, it is hard to be impressed with the average number of hours spent studying among any of the following groups, which are clustered by majors:

Weekly time spent studying

Business majors 14 hours
Social sciences 14 hours
Education 15 hours
Arts & humanities 17 hours
Biological sciences 17 hours
Physical sciences 18 hours
Engineering 19 hours

While social sciences majors also spent an average of 14 hours a week on homework, a slightly greater percentage of them (23%) studied more than 20 hours a week. Just 19% of business majors studied that hard.

Seniors spending more than 20 hrs. a week on homework

Business 19%
Social sciences 23%
Education 26%
Arts & humanities 31%
Biological sciences 36%
Engineering 42%

Are College Students Learning Much?

Earlier this year a couple of academics released blockbuster research, which was turned into a book, Academically Adrift, that concluded that business majors learned the least in college. Specifically, the business majors performed the poorest on national exams that tested the college students’ writing and reasoning skills. Does anybody else find it ironic that despite the poor showing, business is the most popular major? Twenty one percent of undergrads earn a bachelor’s degree.

Academically Adrift concluded that 45% of college sophomores did not show any significant improvement in writing or critical reading and thinking after two years years in college and that the same thing could be said for 36% of college graduates!

Lowered Expectations

One reason for these dismal numbers is because too many professors have low expectations for their students. And certainly those lowered expectations only encourage student not to study enough. According to Academically Adrift, more than a third of students spent less than five hours a week on homework and the average was just nine hours! That’s beyond depressing.

I just texted my son, a college sophomore, to ask how much he studies and haven’t heard back. He told me this week that he’s ready to declare his majors and that he intends to double major in math and art while minoring in physics. It’s hard to imagine selecting more work intensive majors.

Great Website for Exploring College Majors

Lynn O'Shaughnessy — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:33:11 +0000

Today I’m sharing a great resource for students, who want to learn more about college majors and their career paths – College Majors 101.

I’d urge everybody to spend some time on this website, which is stuffed with valuable information about college majors as diverse as biology and engineering to video game design and dance. This is one of my absolute favorite college websites.

The goal of this website is to teach students about a variety of college majors so they can make informed college and career choices. How does College Majors 101 accomplish this? By providing information on the following categories for each college major featured on the website:

In-depth description of the major
Employers which hire within the major
Accredited schools that provide the major
News articles pertinent to the major
Publications related to the major
Students competitions
Relevant student associations
Recruiting opportunities

College Major Channels

Each college major has a channel that includes links to all the above information. This is what a section of the Environmental Science channel looks like.

College Major Videos

For each major, students can look at videos developed by colleges and universities that discuss what the major entails and/or focuses on activities of students in that major.

On the environmental science channel, for instance, I found a video from Michigan State that discusses the green roof research being conducted there. I also watched a video from a professor at Wayne State University, who shared how he ended up in this field and a student at Endicott College talked about his experiences.

As I said before, this is a tremendous site and I hope you take advantage of it.

In case you missed them, here are my recent blog posts on college majors:

What Colleges Offer the Right Majors?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and Shrinking the Cost of College, a financial workbook. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

What Colleges Offer the Right Majors?

Lynn O'Shaughnessy — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:42:30 +0000

How can you find schools that offer the college degree that you want?

That was the question that I got from a mother whose daughter hopes to become a registered nurse. The mom asked me how her daughter could find a list of colleges and universities that offer nursing degrees. (Nursing, by the way, is the most popular major in the United States after business and accounting.)

This is a common question and the answer is relevant to anybody who wants to cast a wider net when looking for colleges. Luckily, it isn’t hard at all to develop a list of schools by college major. The resource that I referred her to was the federal College Navigator, which is a massive depository of information on thousands of colleges and universities.

To find a list of schools in a particular major you want to head to the College Navigator’s home page. Here’s what you’ll see:

When you’re on the site, look on the left hand side and click on the rectangle that says Browse for Programs.

In this case, I typed in nursing, which produced lots of different nursing majors. You must click the +add button to include the majors in your search.

To narrow your search you can designate that you want public or private schools and two-year or four-year schools. In my search, I selected private non-profit and public universities. You can also narrow your search by focusing on certain states. To choose by states, click on the Use Map icon. In this example, I selected 8 states in the Midwest. Yellow pins on the map designate the states that I picked.

Based on my criteria, I ultimately obtained a list of 160 Midwestern schools that have nursing programs. By clicking on each school’s hyperlink, you will find lots of information about the institution. Here is the beginning of the list of Midwestern nursing schools:

Bottom Line: You can find college and universities that offer any college majors that you are interested in by using the federal College Navigator. So check it out!

Does anybody else have suggestions on how to research majors? If so, please use the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

Popular College Majors With the Highest and Lowest Unemployment

Lynn O'Shaughnessy — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:39:20 +0000

I want to welcome all my new visitors to my college blog. Spend time at The College Solution and you’ll find lots of tips on finding great colleges and making them more affordable.

What college majors pay the most money?

What college majors are the ones most likely to lead to a job in this lousy economy?

Which college majors have the highest unemployment?

These are the kind of questions that parents and teenagers wonder about — a lot.

Someone visiting my Facebook page on Monday shared with me an interactive graphic on The Wall Street Journal’s website that can help you find great statistics about the marketability and paying power of college majors.

Using U.S. Census Bureau data that was compiled by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, the newspaper created an interactive tool that you can manipulate to find the majors ranked by unemployment, as well as earnings. If you go to the newspaper’s site, you can click on the categories to rank majors by the lowest and highest unemployment, earnings and popularity.

Majors With the Highest Unemployment

Using the WSJ tool, I looked at the 100 most popular college majors and discovered which ones have the highest unemployment rates. During the nation’s sustained housing meltdown, architecture beat out all other majors as the one with the worst job prospects:

Architecture 10.6%
Linguistics & comparative literature 10.2%
International Business 8.5%
General social sciences 8.2%
Commercial art & graphic design 8.1%
Studio art 8.0%
Liberal arts 7.6%
Fine arts 7.4%
Film video & photography arts 7.3%
Philosophy and religious studies 7.2%
Drama & theater arts 7.1%
Journalism 7.0%
Journalism 7.0%
Computer engineering 7.0%
Mass media 6.9%

Majors With the Lowest Unemployment

Medical technology technician 1.4%
Nursing 2.2%
Treatment therapy professions 2.6^
Agriculture 3.0%
Pharmacy 3.2%
Elementary education 3.6%
Special needs education 3.6%
Misc. Education 3.7%
Mechanical engineering3.8%
High school teacher 3.8%
General education 4.2%
Health & medical admin. service 4.3%
Transportation science & technologies 4.4%
Finance 4.5%
Physics 4.5%

Majors with the Poorest Median Salary

Many of the college majors with the lowest unemployment are not the ones that earn the most money. I’ve included a chart from the WSJ site below that shows the earnings of the nation’s 20 most popular majors in order and you can see for yourself.

Popular Majors With Poorest Salaries

The most popular majors with the lowest median salary are:

Elementary education
General education
Psychology
Sociology

Popular Majors With the Highest Median Salary

No surprise, all the majors with the highest median earnings require math skills:

Electrical engineering
Computer Science
Economics
Finance

Employment Stats from the WSJ on 20 Most Popular Majors

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of Shrinking the Cost of College, a financial workbook that can help you make a college degree more affordable.

Job and Grad School Placement Rates at Colleges: Good Luck Finding Them

Lynn O'Shaughnessy — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:07:37 +0000

When you’re looking at colleges and universities wouldn’t you like to know if their students found jobs after graduating?

Wouldn’t you like to know what kind of success students at a particular school enjoyed in getting into graduate school?

Duh. Of course, you would.

Believe it or not, federal law requires colleges and universities to disclose job and graduate school placement, as well as others pertinent statistics. A new report recently released by the Education Sector and the American Enterprise Institute, however, suggests that many institutions are ignoring these disclosure requirements or doing a poor job of sharing this critical information.

A federal law passed back in 2008 (Higher Education Opportunity Act) mandated that schools provide statistics in a variety of areas, but these are the five area that the think tanks thought were of most important to policymakers and families:

Employment and graduate school placement.
Credit transfer policies and articulation agreements.
Textbook prices for courses taught at the school.
Private loans.
Graduation rates of low-income students.

Job and Grad School Success Rates

Here is how the two think tanks summed up the employment and grad school placement requirements:

Colleges must make available to current and prospective students “information regarding the placement in employment of, and types of employment obtained by, graduates of the institution’s degree or certificate programs,” as well as the types of graduate and professional education in which their graduates enroll. In addition, colleges that advertise “job placement rates” as a means of recruiting students must provide prospective students with the most recent job placement statistics.

Searching for the Elusive Statistics

In looking for the information, the researchers examined each school’s website and if the information was missing, they called the colleges. The researchers contacted 152 public and private four-year colleges and universities to see if they were complying with the law.

Compliance was lowest for low-income grad rates – -just 25% had the stats posted. Ninety nine percent had credit transfer information for students who want to transfer to the institution.

Sixty seven percent and 60% of schools respectively shared information about employment and grad school success. A significant portion of this information, however, was vague and not helpful including attempts to meet the federal requirement by sharing alumni success stories.

The report did mention schools that provided meaningful statistics. The Colorado School of Mines, for instance, provides employment figures for its graduates by industry and degree.

The study also shared employment from Oakland University in Michigan and Iowa State University, but the screen captures for those schools were just as fuzzy when I tried to replicate them. You can find their charts by reading the report, The Truth Behind Higher Education Disclosure Laws.

State Statistics on Employment Success at Universities

The study also noted that some states, such as the Arizona Board of Regents and the state of Florida, are sharing employment information for public universities, which is an excellent practice.

Job Placement Stats at Florida’s Public Universities

Job Placement Stats at Arizona’s Public Universities

Bottom Line:

When researching colleges and universities, inquire about a school’s grad school and job placement rate. With any luck, you’ll be directed to meaningful information. Also check to see if a particular state collects them. In the meantime, let’s hope Congress rewrites the provisions to make sure the job statistics that schools do share are required to be helpful.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she has just released an eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook.