A lot of early/mid-career folks ask me whether it’s worth it to go to graduate school to transition into social impact. In my opinion, the answer is probably NO (and I welcome any of you to write a blog post rebutting this blog post!).
I have a lot of friends who have graduate degrees and who work in social impact, and don’t use any of the training they used from graduate school in their current work. Many of them also say they regret going to graduate school, especially those who have multiple graduate degrees. The issue is that terminal master’s degrees, certificate programs, and other similar programs can be very profitable, and so schools will churn out compelling marketing that a graduate degree is a necessary ingredient for career success.
I was chatting with my friend Maureen (who is profiled on this site) and we agreed that people should only attend graduate school under 1 of 3 conditions:
- You are independently wealthy and can easily afford the entire expense of graduate school (or your family can).
- Someone else is paying for it. Either your employer is paying or you get a scholarship that will cover 100% of your graduate program costs.
- For the career you want (and first make sure you actually want that career), the only way you can get into that career is if you get this particular graduate degree. E.g., if you want to be a physician, you really have to get an MD.
Graduate school bears a large opportunity cost. You are investing 2+ years of your time into a degree where you could have been getting valuable work experience otherwise, and you are also incurring a lot of debt. On top of that, most social impact jobs don’t pay very well and so it will be challenging to pay off your school debt, unless your school has a loan forgiveness program. Also given how competitive the social impact space is, if you don’t go to a school that is fairly highly ranked, your chances of getting a social impact job may be more limited.
I would recommend figuring out what kinds of jobs that you want, and talking to people who work in those positions. Ask them how important it was to go to graduate school to get into their current position, and whether there are other pathways. I’ve conducted dozens of informational interviews and many people will say that they got their current position almost due to serendipity — they happened to be at the right place at the right time / happened to know exactly the right person (and they might not even have had the exact qualifications needed).
So think hard about graduate school. Are there other ways you could cultivate the needed skillset through your job or volunteer work? Or can you go to graduate school part-time while you continue to work?
Tread carefully.