With more people attending and graduating from college, each person is looking for a competitive edge in the job market. The distinguishing characteristic of excellent students has traditionally been grades, however with grade inflation running rampant through higher education, an A average isn’t what it used to be. Internships are valuable experiences and help set up job connections, but some of these students are now working for free, which may not even lead to a job. So what’s a college grad to do? Increasingly, they turn to masters and doctoral programs.

Graduate school is an ambiguous term. For the unacquainted, it would seem to be advanced study in a particular topic. This isn’t wrong. Graduate school is taking a sub-field, immersing oneself in it, and creating or discovering new knowledge in it. Almost without exception, graduate school is the de facto path towards world-class expertise and professorship. As a graduate student you’ll hone research skills and manage your own research project, and if you’re in the natural sciences seeking a Ph.D, you’ll get paid to do it!

Jorge Cham at PhD Comics

For those college grads that are looking to stand out from their peers, nine times out of ten, graduate school is not the answer. Advanced degrees are designed to focus your interests and skills towards a specific career. College grads who fully understand what they want to do in the private sector may benefit from a masters degree, but rarely from a doctoral one. Today’s ambivalent college grads seeking to distinguish themselves from their peers are better off developing skills through a MOOC and volunteering these skills than they are attending any sort of graduate school.

College professors do three main things: research, teach, and administrate. The research portion, especially at large research institutions, is what professors care about most. It’s this responsibility that leads to fame, fortune, and tenure. This responsibility comes with advising graduate students, which is the crux of the problem.

Doctoral students work with their Ph.D thesis adviser to carry out research and report findings. This arrangement is mutually beneficial because doctoral students get trained and thesis advisers get data/publications from the doctoral students. If we envision a scenario where the graduate student spends less time researching and more time doing something else (i.e. teaching), the thesis adviser gets the raw end of the deal. As an internet analogy, think of it like paying for 25 Mbps down and getting 12. As such, grad students are often highly discouraged from pursuing anything that doesn’t directly benefit their research. And this discouragement is very influential, as thesis advisers can dismiss students for “lack of adequate progress”.

Grads consistently face pressure to perform, oftentimes at the expense of their own interests and ambitions. This places grads in an uncomfortable position at the end of their programs. Now that our hypothetical grad has strengthened her skills and holds an advanced degree, she feels comfortable over the swaths of college grads. But her thesis adviser didn’t allow for exploration of careers outside of academia, and now she realizes that her only real employment option is to a post-doctoral position in academia.

To be clear, this culture is starting to change. Unless federally-funded research agencies receive a sizable windfall in the next few years, the funding climate is likely to be even more competitive than it is today. This means that even more Ph.D holders will be pushed outside of academia to find careers elsewhere, whether they have the appropriate skills or not.

Employment outside of the ivory tower is very hit-or-miss, and field-dependent. A Ph.D in physics or math will probably help you land a sweet job on Wall Street, but a degree in medieval history may land you on food stamps. Industrial jobs in pharmaceuticals are good for those in biological sciences, but labs are cutting back, making it more competitive here in the US. Computer science is great if you have some fancy new tech to start a company with, but if you’re looking for employment, a Ph.D may not necessarily be beneficial (employers associate more education with higher salaries).

What separates desirable job applicants from undesirable ones is rarely education. Employers want people who demonstrate initiative, yearn to learn, and are competent. Grad school will help with competence via skill development, but will not fundamentally change who you are. Maintaining discipline to learn and practice new skills will hits all three on the employment checklist.