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:

1. What kind of financial support can a student expect to receive during the entire course of the program?
2. How much educational debt do graduates leave with?
3. How many discussion sections and courses are graduate students required to teach in order to receive a stipend each year?
4. What is the average annual teaching load for graduate students?
5. How many years does it typically take to graduate?
6. How long are graduates on the academic job market?
7. Where is every graduate employed in academe and in what positions: tenure track, visiting, adjunct?
8. Where are graduates working, if not in academe?
9. Does the program lead to appealing career paths outside of academe?
10. What percentage of students earn doctorates?
11. How many earn master’s degrees?
12. 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. 

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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.

I got an email this week from a California mother who was happy that her child would be a attending St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a wonderful public liberal arts college, in the fall.

Her husband, however, remained skeptical. He worried that his daughter would be jeopardizing her chances of going to graduate school if she went to an obscure liberal arts school. He thought she’d have a better shot at attending graduate school if she earned her bachelor’s degree from a large state university in California or elsewhere.

Here’s my answer to that:  Nonsense.

Students who attend liberal arts colleges enjoy many advantages that students at large public institutions often don’t.

At liberal arts colleges, there is a much greater chance for undergraduate research. Classes are routinely small. Instead of 200 or 300 in Calculus II, you may have 15 or 20 students. Students have more opportunity to develop bonds with professors because the learning is in small settings and not lecture halls. And remember, it’s the professors who are writing those graduate school recommendations. My son, who is a sophomore who intends to major in math and minor in physics at Beloit College, is certainly experiencing the benefits of connecting with his professors.

Okay, you might be wondering, but where are your facts to back up your claims?

To answer the email from the mom, I tracked down a report produced by the National Science Foundation that examined where scientists and engineers, who had earned PhD’s, had obtained their undergraduate degrees. The majority of schools in the top 50 list of PhD-producing schools were liberal arts colleges.

When the NSF  looked at what schools were producing the most PhD’s, per 100 undergraduate degrees granted, only three public institutions made the list – University of California-Berkeley, William and Mary College and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

50 Top Schools for Science & Engineering PhDs

Without further ado, here are the top 50 schools where graduates ultimately received a PhD in science or engineering:

1. Cal Tech
2. Harvey Mudd College
3. MIT
4. Reed College
5. Swarthmore College
6. Carleton College
7. University of Chicago
8. Grinnell College
9. Rice University
10. Princeton University
11. Harvard  University
12. Bryn Mawr College
13. Haverford College
14. Pomona College
15. New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology
16. Williams College
17. Yale Univeristy
18. Oberlin College
19. Stanford University
20. Johns Hopkins University
21. Kalamazoo College
22. Cornell University
23. Case Western Reserve
24. Washington College
25. Brown University
26. Wesleyan University
27. Carnegie Mellon University
28. Macalester College
29. Amherst College
30. Duke University
31. Beloit College (My son’s school.)
32. Bowdoin Collge
33. Wellesley College
34. Ressenlaer Polytechnic Institute
35. Earlham College
36. Franklin and Marshall College
37. Lawrence University
38. University of Rochester
39. University of California-Berkeley
40. Dartmouth College
41. Occidental College
42. Hendrix College
43. Vassar College
44. Trinity University
45. College of William and Mary
46. St. John College
47. Bates College
48. Whitman College
49. Brandeis University
50. Hampshire College

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.

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Is it worth it to get a graduate degree?

A lot of young college grads are asking that question as they face lousy job prospects. Telling people that you work as a barista doesn’t seem nearly as satisfying as mentioning that you are heading off to graduate school. I wrote a post about the grad school decision earlier this month:

Should You Really Go to Grad School?

I’m  bringing up the issue today because The New York Times devoted its Education Life quarterly on Sunday to  graduate school issues and included an article that  examined whether graduate degrees are worth the cost.

I cringe when I think of all the students who are graduating with debt after earning bachelor’s degrees and then promptly doubling down by borrowing more money to attend graduate school.

Nonetheless a Georgetown University study that received a ton of press in the spring suggests that the median salary of a worker who possesses a master’s degrees is 25% greater than those with bachelor’s degrees. According to Anthony P. Carnevale, the study’s author, graduate school is better for those young enough (under 35) to reap the financial benefits of a graduate degree. There are many factors that come into play if you want to attend graduate school and I suspect most grad students never do enough research before taking the leap. That’s certainly true with law school.

A Journalism Master’s Degree

As you can see from the New York Times’ chart below, grad schools provide a far greater boost in salary in some disciplines.

Journalism represents one of the least lucrative master’s degree programs. My husband got one of these puppies. Bruce didn’t earn his master’s degree at Columbia University’s journalism school because he expected to make more money in the field (good thing), but because he wanted to get the hell out of Fairbanks, AK, where he landed his first reporting job after earning an English literature degree at UC Berkeley. A master’s degree from Columbia didn’t appear to increase Bruce’s earnings over his career, but it did save him from minus-50 degree winter days and a TV station with filthy orange shag carpeting.

Who Gets an Earnings Bump

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Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News.

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.

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.

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. Fabio Rojas, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, summed it up in one of the many 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:

1. What kind of financial support can a student expect to receive during the entire course of the program?
2. How much educational debt do graduates leave with?
3. How many discussion sections and courses are graduate students required to teach in order to receive a stipend each year?
4. What is the average annual teaching load for graduate students?
5. How many years does it typically take to graduate?
6. How long are graduates on the academic job market?
7. Where is every graduate employed in academe and in what positions: tenure track, visiting, adjunct?
8. Where are graduates working, if not in academe?
9. Does the program lead to appealing career paths outside of academe?
10. What percentage of students earn doctorates?
11. How many earn master’s degrees?
12. 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. On Twitter follow her @CollegeBlogs.

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Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas A. Benton, an English professor at Hope College made a stab at answering that question. He observed that the  universities receiving the highest graduate school rankings aren’t always the best places to earn a graduate degree – at least in the humanities. That makes sense to me since the colleges that “earn” the highest rankings for undergraduates aren’t always the best either.

The graduate schools and programs that receive the top rankings don’t always deliver when graduates are looking for jobs. The elite research universities prepare their graduates to teach at other research universities, but most teaching jobs are at non-elite colleges.

Hiring committees at the schools lower on the food chain, however, can be suspicious of candidates from top-ranked graduate school programs. They suspect that these graduates will leave as soon as possible.

So how do you evaluate a graduate degree program without looking at the dubious rankings? Here are some of the questions that Benton says future graduate students should ask:

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

If you’re considering graduate school, this is a great list of questions to start off your search. And whatever you do, don’t believe the rankings hype.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com. Follow me on Twitter.