Is your master’s degree useless?

New data show a shockingly high proportion of courses are a waste of money

Nov 18, 2024, The Economist

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In the coming months millions of people across the northern hemisphere will apply to do postgraduate study. Most will top up an undergraduate qualification with a one- or two-year master’s degree in the hope that this will set them apart in a job market crowded with bachelor’s degrees.

“The number-one reason people get these degrees is insecurity,” reckons Bob Shireman of the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think-tank in New York. “The feeling that if they are going to get a job—or keep their job—they need a master’s degree.” Yet on average these provide a much smaller bump to wages than an undergraduate degree does. And a new body of data and analysis suggests that a shockingly high share of master’s courses leave graduates worse off.

In America close to 40% of workers with a bachelor’s also boast a postgraduate credential of some sort. In the decade to 2021 the number of postgraduate students there increased by 9% even as undergraduates fell by 15%. PhDs required by academics and long professional degrees of the sort needed by doctors and lawyers are becoming more popular. But master’s courses still account for most of the growth.

They are an even bigger business for universities in Britain, which hand out four postgraduate degrees for every five undergraduate ones. This has much to do with a boom in master’s students from places such as India and Nigeria. Britons have been getting in on the action, too. The number enrolling in taught master’s courses has grown by about 60% over 15 years.

In part this has been driven by employers demanding higher qualifications as jobs in science and technology, in particular, grow more complex. But universities are also keen. In Britain, undergraduate fees are capped by the government and have barely increased in a decade. Enrolling more postgraduates—who may be charged whatever the market will bear—is one way to cope. America’s university-age population will soon start declining. College presidents there hope that repeat customers can keep their institutions afloat.

Since 2000 the cost of postgraduate study in America has more than tripled in real terms, according to the Centre on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. The median borrower now acquires around $50,000 in debt while completing their second degree, up from $34,000 20 years earlier (in 2022 dollars). Almost half of the money America’s government lends to students goes to postgraduates, even though they are only 17% of learners. In Britain domestic master’s students paid about £9,500 ($13,000) a year in 2021, some 70% higher than in 2011 after accounting for inflation.

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