Graduate Degrees: Which Pay Off the Best?
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Here's your Money Briefing for Thursday, April 28th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. We're continuing our week-long look at student debt and what students and their families should think about before taking out a college loan. Now, that calculus around financial aid isn't just limited to undergraduate study. Today, we're taking a closer look at the financial side of getting a graduate degree.
These programs are some of the biggest culprits when it comes to burdensome student debt. Master's degree programs are, by a lot of universities, considered cash cows, meaning they bring in a lot of money.
So how can someone considering an advanced degree prepare themselves for that heavier financial burden? On today's show, reporter Andrea Fuller, who co-wrote the WSJ's Guide to Student Loans e-book, will discuss which higher degrees offer the best return on investment. That's after the break.
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If you think getting a graduate degree is a guaranteed way of scoring a job with a higher salary, the truth may surprise you. It turns out fields that require a master's actually pay less on average than ones that only require a bachelor's. What's more, graduate degrees can come with a major financial burden, much heavier than for undergrads. So which graduate degrees deliver the biggest return on investment? And how can you prepare yourself to take on the cost? Andrea Fuller has written extensively about the finances of master's and graduate degrees, and she joins me now to discuss. Andrea, thank you so much for being with us.
Thanks for having me.
So, Andrea, I think it's always been pretty widely assumed that a graduate degree automatically meant a higher salary, but the statistics tell a different story.
Absolutely. So some fields require a master's degree. For example, if you want to become an occupational therapist or a physical therapist, you need a master's degree. A lot of social work jobs require a master's degree. Other fields require a professional degree, which is even more time and money and debt usually. So for example, to be a lawyer, to be a doctor, to go into a dentistry, you need that advanced professional degree. And these can be very expensive. But a lot of the jobs that require a master's degree, like social work, school counseling, are jobs that don't pay a lot. And so just getting that graduate degree, whether or not there's going to be a salary premium is going to vary a lot by field.
Some fields, there's going to be a pay bump and others there's not.
What financial risks do graduate programs pose compared with undergraduate loans?
So I guess the question is, how often does a master's degree or a graduate degree actually pay off?
So even in fields that may not be those higher paying fields, there is an advantage of getting a master's degree. For example, in teaching, government work, having that additional credential puts you in a higher pay scale. So it's important for people to research in their field whether or not the master's degree is a guarantee of higher pay or just leads to the possibility of higher pay.
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