More On Going Back To School

In response to my advice to a reader in Should I Go Back To School?, Peter Dunn of Righteous Investor commented with his perspective:

May I please add my two cents. The educational complex is divorced from reality in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, the promotion of students to the level of graduate studies, either at the master’s or the PhD level, is entirely self-serving on the part of the educational complex. In order to maintain their jobs, those in education must promote education programs, without any regard to the harm that they will do to those who finish and can’t find a job. I went into theological education. When I could not find adequate employment and complained, those in the complex began to blame me and even to the point of defaming my character (and I mean I was given reference in which I was falsely accused of “breaches of trust”. After my complaining about work conditions, my former boss castigated me: No one should expect to get a livable wage just because they have a PhD; there is no relationship between pay and having a PhD, even from a prestigious institution (in my case Cambridge). And furthermore, he said that even when I went to do further studies, there were no real job prospect available to the thousands of people doing PhDs in the humanities, but that schools depended for their very survival on the exploitation of contingent labour (i.e., adjuncts) just to keep their doors open. So why didn’t he tell me then, in 1991, that I shouldn’t waste my time doing a PhD? Because the whole venture of education must justify its own existence. And that is one of the reasons why it is a bubble, and when 8000 people with PhDs are working as waiters and waitresses or parking lot attendants wake up, they will realize that they’ve been had.

There is an old gen-X joke: a t-shirt that says, “I have a master’s degree in history: would you like fries with that?” Fifteen years after hearing that joke, things are much much worse.

I don’t think it is much different for MBAs. Programs are appearing everywhere. That seriously dilutes the worth of an MBA when anyone can get one.

In my stint at college and graduate-level teaching, I can attest to the validity of Mr. Dunn’s comments. There are two points I would like to add:

1. The demand for students is just as severe at the undergraduate level. Professors are “selling” their subject as majors to undergraduates all the time. While I was not an accounting teacher, on one occasion I recommended to a student that he major in accounting rather than economics. My reasoning was that this particular student planned only to get an undergraduate degree and then wanted to get the best job he could. He expressed no preference for one area over the other but had told me the Economics Department Chair was encouraging him strongly to major in Econ. My advice was strictly on what would benefit the student and not me or my department. Accounting jobs are available for undergraduates were higher paying. An undergraduate degree in economics will not get you a job practicing economics. To pursue that field, you must go on for the Phd, which this student had no interest in pursuing. To pursue accounting, he was all set, including sitting for the CPA exam if that was his interest.
2. I was teaching at an historically black university and had a particularly bright young man who I thought would be better off at a more demanding institution. I offered to do what I could to get him into Duke, my alma mater. A few days later I received a call from the Chancellor warning me to never talk to a student again about switching to another school. The Chancellor cared not at all about this kid’s future. All he was interested in was padding his headcount.

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