by Lee Sure, guest author

After a few years of working and several failed attempts at getting in to med school, a friend called me telling me she applied to law school.

Her dream had been to become a doctor, to stitch up bodies, to write prescriptions, and to make her family proud. She called me to ask what my experience was like (I’m a second year law student at Georgetown). When I asked her why she applied to law school, she said it seemed like the second best way to work in the health care industry. “A law degree is so versatile,” she said.

Reasoning such as “it’s a versatile degree” or “this is the best way I can engage such-and-such a field” are the types of conclusive and generic reasoning that show law school was a fallback for her. Add mediocre LSAT scores, loads of debt (say $180,000 over three years), and an embroiled legal industry and you have front-row tickets to a boring, slow-motion train wreck. She was misguided by the idea that “more is better.”

The flaws in her reasoning aren’t confined to law school. For thousands of people each year, this short-sighted thinking overlooks the real price of getting a graduate education.

Some of the dollar signs are obvious and some aren’t. A year of your life is still a year of your life and three years of your life is three years of your life. Time spent in class could be time spent exploring the world, pursuing something that you actually like, or starting a career. With grad school, there is the very large and mostly unaccounted for cost of time.

Here are some tips for weighing the pros and cons:

Forget the hype

It’s easy to buy into a school’s own glamorous and glittering assessment of itself. While some schools will fit you better than others, know the value of the degree hinges in large part on the reputation of the program either nationally or within the region you’re hoping to live in.

Talk to people

Ask current graduate students what they think of their coursework. Get in touch with professors at the schools you plan on attending. Finally, look for people with the degree that you desire and see what they have done, how they like their work, and what they think of the employment prospects for the degree.

Remember the hard costs…

Except for the lucky few, most grads will come out saddled with debt. For those lucky enough to find high-paying sweatshop jobs, this will mean years of indentured servitude (see big law firms). For others, consider yourselves marked for life or pray for a student bailout.

…And the opportunity costs

If you have no idea why you want to get a particular degree (ahem, this is mainly directed to potential law school applicants), then don’t do it. There is a rare opportunity to be extremely versatile in these next few years. The opportunity costs of exploring your dreams have never been lower. You don’t have to pine away at that big Wall Street job that could have been because it doesn’t exist anymore (see: here and here).

Instead, take some small solace in this opportunity of low job growth expectations to do things without regret. Don’t use grad school as a default or safety position because it isn’t. It certainly can open doors — but remember that for most of us (for those of us not innately and exceptionally gifted) graduate school will make us sweat to make it to the top.

As much as people want grad school to be the new undergrad, it isn’t. So if you want to relive the college glory days, buy a thirty of PBR and drink up. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and you don’t have to worry about waking up for class.

Lee Sure - March 20, 2009 - 12:28 pm
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