The Real Cost of Grad School - $88,000

It's funny. If you go get an education and work hard, you'll make it. That's what the people on Fox News say. If it weren't for all those lazy, uneducated people just wanting hand-outs, America's economy would be in better shape and we wouldn't need welfare. I mean, the answer to solving the welfare problem in this country is education and hard work, right? Right. 

I sat down and calculated how much graduate school cost me recently. I went and got more education so I could be a better and harder worker, which I knew would come with some kind of investment cost. As a fully funded student who got paid to attend school, I thought I was doing something potentially great. I sought a dual master's degree, so I could become a rounded thinker and a more complete contributor to my field. Surely, with education and hard work, I would be worth at least as much as I was before I got my graduate degree.

When calculating how much graduate school cost me, I have to consider foregone wages for the entire duration from the day I quit my job to this day -- the day that I am employed again in my same field (I didn't switch). When I consider the amount I was making the day I left my job, I forewent just over $148,000 in wages. While in graduate school, I earned $32,000 over the entire period. In total, I forewent a net $116,400 in wages to attend graduate school. Graduate school cost me $116,400 in missed wages.

Then, I have to consider my changes in living expenses. Before going to grad school, I was spending about $18,000 per year to live in a suburban luxury townhome by my lonesome. That's a lot of money. So, I moved into an RV. In the RV, I paid rent, utilities, and for a storage unit. My living costs went from $18,000 per year to $7,700 per year. By moving from a luxury townhome to an RV, I saved roughly $10,260 per year. Over the ~2.8 year period, I saved roughly $28,700 in living costs. That feels good.

Regrettably, I also have to consider what grad school did for me in the way of market value. So far, it looks like my market value has fallen by a solid 40% from my value before I attended graduate school. Keeping in mind that I am not starting my career over and have instead built upon my worth, it sure seems fishy that I seem to now be worth 40% less than I was when I had a bachelor's degree. So, graduate school cost me 40% of my market value for an indefinite and unforeseeable period. 40% loss for more education in the same field. Yikes.

It appears that my net cost for graduate school was about $88,600 considering foregone wages and changes in living costs. But the tally doesn't stop there -- my choice to go to graduate school will now cost me 40% of every hour of every day I go to work until I rebuild my career to where it was before. Which may not be possible.

So, was graduate school worth it? I used to think so. Sometimes I think so. But when I see these numbers and my state of economy and employment, I'm afraid my answer is: Absolutely not. If I knew what I know now, I would have done things very differently. I wouldn't have attended graduate school. Instead, I would have continued with the RV plan, though perhaps my more minimal van plan, and I would have continued working my old job. I would have kept my wages, paid off my student loans that I already had, and I would have saved enough money to take off and roam for years.

It is difficult to account for all of this since hindsight is so easy to distort and see. But was graduate school worth two years of my life, $88,000 in foregone wages, and a 40% reduction of my market value? The answer is a resounding HELL NO. The myth of more education increasing market value drove me to seek more schooling and it was money poorly spent. I could have executed my van plan, paid off all my debt, and saved enough to road trip for years had I just stayed with my old job.

The analysis is preposterous, but I think it's incredibly sad to look at how much of a waste graduate school was, professionally and financially. Personally, I enjoyed it thoroughly -- it was probably one of the best experiences of my life -- but maybe there was another way to have a great experience than to go work my ass off to get more education, only to run myself bankrupt? Maybe I should have just saved my money and taken off on a multi-year road trip instead? Maybe I should have packed a backpack and headed to South America, New Zealand, and Asia instead? How much traveling and time could I have had with $88,000 worth of foregone wages? 

The answer is troubling. I could have done so much. Instead, I worked to find intellectual fulfillment through an instrumental pathway. The institution is an instrumental pathway and I wish I had chosen to travel and read books instead.

Someday, I will follow up with this. I could find a better job tomorrow. But I could also become a shoe salesman. The future is uncertain. But the past is a lesson.

A New Kind of Social Justice Issue

When I set off to earn my master's degree, my thought was that my realistic, worst-case scenario afterward would be a job like the one I had before I got my higher degree. I figured there was a distinct possibility of no advancement and the same pay (plus or minus a reasonable percentage for starting out again), but that in the long-run, the master's degree would dissolve any potential ceilings for advancement. I figured the job market would welcome me back with a great resume that spans 15 years of constant and consistent performance and a solid set of in-demand degrees.

While I have been welcomed back and have found work, I find myself severely underemployed. I have sent out resume after resume to jobs that I am qualified for at the very least, and even "overqualified" for. Not many jobs actually need a master's degree -- but it should be a benefit to an application. After sitting on an interview committee and watching the ONLY candidate with an advanced degree in the technical skills that we were seeking get flushed on count of him being "overqualified," I realized something big: Job hunting and the way the job market works creates new kinds of social justice issues.

Social justice boils down to the necessity to combat discrimination against a person for any trait or condition that creates exemptions to their potential success. A useful definition I found online includes this:

In conditions of social justice, people are "not be discriminated against, nor their welfare and well-being constrained or prejudiced on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion, political affiliations, age, race, belief, disability, location, social class, socioeconomic circumstances, or other characteristic of background or group membership" (Toowoomba Catholic Education, 2006).

(http://gjs.appstate.edu/social-justice-and-human-rights/what-social-justice)

The part of the definition that lends to my argument is the "social class, socioeconomic circumstances, or other characteristic of background or group membership." Those with higher degrees are part of every single one of those items. Social class is often a function of education, socioeconomic circumstances doesn't necessarily just mean indigent, and those with higher degrees are definitely part of a group membership. Those with higher degrees are part of a group that are well educated, yet not necessarily part of a higher economic class privilege.

After hearing so much about "overqualified" while on the job market, I came to view this word as a hidden and pervasive social justice issue. Those who are overqualified are discriminated against -- by those in power and those in the position of hiring. In workplaces dominated by those with bachelor or lower degrees, "overqualified" is a word used to create a form of discrimination that eliminates someone on count of "too much education" rather than too little.

The space where this becomes a problem is when higher degrees end up broadly excluding a person from doing positions that they are well suited for and that they can do and do well. If a person is to apply for a job that requires a bachelor's degree, yet a person with a master's degree is flushed on count of being "overqualified," we have a major problem. That problem is the discrimination against a person for having "too much education."

The strange thing about this argument is that it flips the conventions on social justice. Social justice positions are built on the idea that there is a group that cannot be discriminated against -- the wealthy, the white, and the educated.

As a person on the job market with great experience and education, after being flushed from pile after pile of jobs that require a bachelor's degree, I can say with confidence that I am getting flushed because I am "overqualified." To not even be interviewed is an indicator that I was put into a pile of a very particular kind. After seeing the interview process where the guy in the room with a bachelor's degree was vehemently against hiring a guy with a master's degree on count of him being "overqualified" and because "he would buck the group dynamic by being too good at these tasks," I suggest that the problem is systemic and discriminatory. After being on countless interview committees in my previous life where this was the reason for flushing countless candidates, the problem is here and it is real.

I am now weary of those who wield overqualification as a word used to cleave candidates from an interview pile. What this does is sets the bar high, but the bar is intended to cleave both those too far below the bar and those above the bar. Those above the bar are well-educated, polished candidates and are being cut on count of a membership that they belong to -- a social class that is now exempted from positions because of their education. When did overqualification become such a negative thing? Why are those in power by majority and status quo (bachelor's degrees) able to shed both those below their status and those above? The problem is systemic, but because of our conventional views on social justice, those above the bar of status quo are somehow exempt from discrimination protection.

I now understand those using this word to be part of the institutional structure of mediocrity and idiocy. At what point in our social development did we decide that those who work too hard or are well educated are both targets of our discrimination and exempt from complaints of discrimination? The world is broken.

The Rational Universe

One of the most important lessons I have learned over the past few years is that the rules we make about the world to navigate it are all wrong. And they're right. And there are no rules.

A belief in a rational universe is the construction of one in our mind. It's an invention that we make up with varying levels and kinds of structure to understand what's going on around us. And it's all made up in our heads. Kind of.

The rules we "discover" through our everyday ramblings are unique and based on our own experiences and our ability to map and interpret the systems that we are encountering. But the rules that we make up from these experiences are nothing more than cloudy approximations of a falsely objective system for which we invent a rule.

One thing I have noticed lately is that rule breakers are almost all of our heroes. Superheroes defy physics, Harry Potter defies the rules of magic, and Captain Kirk always wins by reinventing the rules to be in his favor.

The rules we make for ourselves based on some imaginary sense of an objective truth or reality are limited to our own experiences or anecdotal experiences of others. The rule doesn't exist, it's just a foggy approximation of how we think we should deal with all other situations that appear similar in the future.

The problem with rules arises when our rules become self-imposed limitations. When systems change, cultures change, or the foggy thug we call "reality" shifts unbenounced to us, our rules no longer apply.

Rules drive our sense of "should." I think this word is overlooked. It is a word mystically rooted in our sense of making rules and living by them. Most importantly, "should" becomes the way we exert force on those around us based on the belief in the rules that we faithfully think exist in some objective way.

"You shouldn't do that or else you will __________." That's a rule being imposed on someone else based on our own experience. It is the seed of culture.

It's a fascinating way of living -- viewing the world through a lens of rules based on our own experiences. Then believing that the rules that we form for ourselves will work for other people.

Most interestingly, the rules that we believe exist and then live by would appear to be the mechanism by which classes are formed and our social behaviors are designed. The wealthy CEO views the world through a completely different set of rules than that of the minimum wage burger flipper. If they lived in the same reality, how could they possibly end up in such different places?

My sense of "should" shifted a few years ago. My sense of rules about the world started crumbling more recently. I no longer view the world as objectively as I once did and I no longer treat experiences as a way to form new absolutes. I no longer have the same fear-based method for making rules and I am far less sold on my world view than I ever was before. The effect has been freeing.

I no longer think there's a right way to live or a good income to have or a right answer. Many will add those up and come up with an answer that appears entirely irrational. Well, the world isn't rational. It never has been. Some try to impose rational structure, but with only the self-illusion of success.

Living in an RV was supposed to be a bad idea. It's not. For me, at least. I know that most would not choose to do it and for good reason. But those reasons don't resonate with me because I have a different set of drives, skills and experiences that make it possible. Even highly enjoyable.

But that's the way every situation, lifestyle, and experience is for every living being. Hot coals are a bad idea to walk on, yet some do it anyway. Fighting a Gorn is a bad idea, but James T. Kirk does it anyway. There are no rules; only limitations that we impose on ourselves through the cloudy experience of the flawed infancy of consciousness that the human race collectively enjoys.

Live lightly. Observe the experiment. Fear nothing. Accept what is.