It’s graduation season. Over the past couple weeks, some 2 million college students have earned their bachelor’s degrees and headed off to the next stage of their lives. For many, that next stage will be … back on campus, in a grad program, most likely gunning for a master’s degree. And for a sizable chunk of them, that decision will turn out to be a catastrophic error.
Millennials and Gen Zers have been told that a master’s degree is the new bachelor’s — meaning the minimum level of education needed to land a prestigious, well-paying job. But new research indicates that this advice is misleading at best, and cynical at worst. Many master’s degrees not only fail to deliver on the promise of better employment, they also leave their over-educated recipients saddled with crippling, lifelong debt.
More than 3 million students were enrolled in a graduate program in 2020. That’s a million more than there were in 2000. Over those two decades, the number of master’s degrees awarded almost doubled. And as the number of master’s students has soared, so has their share of total student loan debt. Although master’s students account for only 12% of all college-goers, the higher price tags on their degrees mean they’re burdened with 26% of all student debt. Bachelor’s students with federal loans owe an average of $32,000 upon graduation. Master’s students owe $65,000.
This towering debt, combined with the often modest earnings potential that…
