It can be really nerve wrecking when you think about quitting your job and going back to grad school and be a student all over again. You are not alone. Millions of grad students around the world have went through similar thought process before they decided to take the plunge and enrol in a grad school. We hope these reasons will help you in making a right decision.
1. Big Increase in Your Lifetime Earning
Based on research, on average, earnings for graduates with a master’s degree can be worth up to $10k or more compared to a bachelor’s degree. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce’s report shows that a master’s degree can be worth $457,000 more than a bachelor’s degree. There are many other research articles out there which claimed similar increased in earnings after grad school.
Let’s do an analysis of our own. We will use a baseline starting monthly salary of $5000 (per annum $60k) and inflation/increment rate of 5% per annum. Now assume that you get a 10% increase in monthly salary to $5500 (per annum $66k) after your grad school, the difference in the first year alone is $6000. At different starting monthly salary after your grad school, the difference at 5, 10 and 20 years are shown in the table below. If you managed to land a new role with a new starting salary of $7000, you would have earn an extra $132615 after 5 years.
If your grad school cost is $60k, you would have more than break even at 5 years with total extra earning of $66308 if your new monthly salary with a master’s degree is $6000.
One thing is for sure, in order to let the magic of compound interest work its wonder, you have to boost your earnings as much as possible and as early as possible. The increase in earnings from grad school can then be compounded to extraordinary sum as the years go by.
In the long run, grad school makes perfect financial sense even after factoring in the opportunity cost and the cost of attendance. In fact, the earlier you start grad school, the lower your opportunity cost and the lower your cost of attendance. Higher education tuition fee is only going to rise each year as there are only a limited number of top tier schools in the world (you can’t just build a new Harvard or Stanford overnight to increase the supply) catering to growing demand by more and more people to attend grad school.
Therefore, even if your current job feels cushy and you might not want to miss your comfortable monthly pay checks, by investing in grad school and forgoing the current comfort, you would achieve greater return of investment in the future.
2. Open Up Amazing Opportunities That You Never Know Exist
Jobs requiring a master’s degree is projected to grow the fastest in the coming years compared to the growth at any other education level (see the chart below) as the world economy is moving towards high tech industries and less demanding jobs are being automated away. Future jobs will require more and more technical skill and knowledge in niche disciplines that are acquired at grad school and thus people with a master’s degree will have a significant advantage over others in the future job market. Look at the current buzz around Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Advanced Manufacturing etc. All of them require advanced graduate degree.
Furthermore, being in grad school allows you to mingle with other like minded and highly driven individuals and together you can create new startups and start noble ventures. Many billion dollar startups are founded at grad school such as Stanford’s Snap and Google (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_Stanford_University_alumni) , Berkeley’s Cloudera and Zynga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_UC_Berkeley_alumni) and many more. Being in such an entrepreneurial environment, you increase your chances of being part of the next big startup.
Would you grab the chance at chasing your dream, charting your own destiny and be your own boss versus staying on a cushy job?
3. Enjoy Your Life!
Because why not? You deserve it! Do you really want to continue to work at that 9 to 5 job everyday? Who says you can’t take a short break to upgrade your skill and enjoy student life all over again? A one year graduate program out of a potential 40 years of your work life doesn’t sound that long isn’t it?
In fact, based on our survey, there are many 40 to 50 years old who regretted that they didn’t go back to school when they were younger. None of our survey respondents ever feedback that they regretted attending grad school. Almost always people gave positive feedback about their grad school experience and how their lives have changed for the better.
Therefore, if you are still wondering if you should quit your job and go to grad school, do it before it is too late. Now is the best time. Enjoy the journey along the way. You’ll love it!
