Published: April 1, 2010

In the world of higher education, it is very easy to get caught up in one’s surroundings. College provides a kind of safety net for young undergraduates that nestles them with righteous ideals until releasing them to the harsh realities of the real world. Students on college campuses today are particularly charged with the responsibility of pursuing even higher levels of academia, making the bachelor’s degree seem like nothing more than a precursor to the inevitable end that is graduate school. Knowing all along that attending graduate school was no desire of mine, I have constantly felt the necessity to at the very least feign interest in it while surrounded by my fellow undergrads. While others are stressing about which grad schools they will get into and what master’s they will pursue, I’ve always felt like some sort of an outcast for being completely satisfied with my bachelor’s. Considering the fact that I don’t need a master’s to pursue my field of interest along with the fact that I already owe Sallie Mae my first born child, I decided, what’s the point? But for some reason my prior convictions did nothing to alleviate the sense of inferiority I felt among those pursuing higher academia.  That is, until I read the statistics.

In America, only 27 percent of the population acquires bachelor’s degrees according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Furthermore, only 6.9 percent of the population has completed a graduate degree or higher.  That means that a graduate degree isn’t nearly as much of a necessity as it once seemed, at least to me. Of course, education should be pursued for the sake of knowledge and not just for a degree or career, but my decision not to attend grad school is by no means a decision to stop my quest for knowledge. I can learn on my own.

For me, being a journalism student with a desire to work in the magazine publishing industry, I wondered if graduate school would actually serve a purpose in getting me to where I want to be. Like many others, mine is a competitive industry and of course, any extra advantage over the competition is worth contemplating. The more I thought about it however, the less sense it really made. The first phase of my decision making process was the fact that I just don’t want to go to grad school, plain and simple. The next factor was that many journalism graduate programs focus on news writing or broadcast journalism, neither of which are really my specified area of interest. But the final evidence that eventually tipped the scale toward a definite NO, was hearing from an experienced, accomplished person, doing the exact job I wanted to do.  A woman I know, who has worked for three of the top women’s fashion magazines in the country and is currently a senior editor at Glamour magazine, told me that going to graduate school was definitely not necessary for her or those she works with. That was all I needed to hear. What is valued in my field, and I’m sure many more, is experience. Compare then, a student who goes straight into the workforce after graduating from undergrad, and one who continues on to graduate school. In four years, which person will be more prepared? Which one will have more experience?

Undoubtedly, there are many majors and career goals that require further education, and for some, graduate school is not an option, but a necessity. Consider occupations in the medical or legal field. However, for those students who have no actual need of a graduate degree, I don’t understand what the huge draw to graduate school is. Are more and more students just feeling the same pressure that I was and buckling under it? I have friends now who have actually admitted that they only decided to pursue graduate school because they had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives. The pursuit of another degree was merely a buffer to provide extra time in making the ultimate decision of a final career choice. What’s worse is that often times some people go to grad school for one thing and end up doing something completely different. Unless that was the original intent, then that experience can leave one with a feeling of wasted time, effort, and money. I’m not saying that graduate school is entirely pointless, but I am saying that whatever someone’s reason to attend grad school is fine, just as long as they make it for themselves, and not because they think they have to.