\n<\/p>\n
Of the 18 most popular fields included in the report, return on investment is highest for Pharm.D. graduates, who see an average 114\u00a0percent earnings boost.<\/p>\n
On average, going to graduate school increases a student\u2019s lifetime earnings by 17\u00a0percent. But that return on investment varies significantly depending on what they studied, according to new research published by the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University. <\/p>\n
Graduate school has become more popular over the past several decades. In 1993, 31\u00a0percent of bachelor\u2019s degree holders aged 35 to 39 also had a graduate degree. As of 2022, that share had risen to 41\u00a0percent, the report states. Of the 18 most popular fields included in the report, return on investment is highest for Pharm.D. graduates, who see an average 114\u00a0percent earnings boost after graduate school. M.D.s and J.D.s also see high returns\u2014110\u00a0percent and 59\u00a0percent, respectively. <\/p>\n
However, those numbers don\u2019t take into account what the student paid to earn the graduate degree or the potential earnings they lost while in school. After factoring in those figures, M..D programs come out on top, offering a whopping 173\u00a0percent average lifetime earnings boost for graduates. Pharm.D. programs offer an average net earnings increase of 68\u00a0percent, J.D. programs 41\u00a0percent and master\u2019s of public administration programs an average 26\u00a0percent boost.<\/p>\n
Professional degrees in social work, clinical psychology, psychology and curriculum and instruction yield the lowest returns on investment for students, the report shows. Students who graduate with a master\u2019s degree in social work earn an average 7\u00a0percent more than they would have without the degree, but after factoring in tuition costs and forgone earnings, the programs yield a negative 2\u00a0percent return. In other words, their average lifetime earnings decreased because they went to graduate school. Clinical psychology programs yield a negative 5\u00a0percent return, curriculum and instruction programs a negative 2\u00a0percent return, and psychology\u2014a popular major among undergraduates\u2014a negative 8\u00a0percent return. <\/p>\n
But more money isn\u2019t always a graduate student\u2019s goal, said Zhengren Zhu, an assistant professor of economics at Vassar College and co-author of the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs economists, our target is looking at earnings returns, but clearly, for some of these programs, people don\u2019t go to maximize their earnings,\u201d he said. \u201cEarnings are not everything.\u201d <\/p>\n
High postgraduate earnings don\u2019t always mean higher returns on investment, Zhu and his co-author, Yale University economics professor Joseph Altonji, wrote in the report. Engineering, for example, offers high postgraduate average earnings but only \u201cmoderate\u201d returns on investment\u20148\u00a0percent for computer engineering, 10\u00a0percent for mechanical engineering, 10\u00a0percent for electrical engineering and 21\u00a0percent for civil engineering before factoring in tuition and forgone earnings. Programs that yield lower postgraduate earnings, such as M.B.A. and nursing programs, offer higher returns\u201416\u00a0percent and 24\u00a0percent, respectively. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe wide range of returns indicates that reporting quantitative measures is necessary for both accountability and transparency purposes,\u201d the report states. \u201cFor prospective students choosing between related degree programs such as architecture and civil engineering, the difference in earnings returns (10\u00a0percent for architecture and 21\u00a0percent for civil engineering) should be a critical factor in their decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Women, on average, see higher returns on investment after attending graduate school than men, the report shows. The same is true for students who hold undergraduate degrees in relatively low-paying majors. For M.B.A. and J.D. programs, postgraduate earnings correlate with U.S. News & World Report <\/em>program rankings\u2014programs that rank higher yield higher returns. This is one factor Zhu and Altonji hope to dig into in future research, Zhu said. <\/p>\n In the meantime, Zhu said, he hopes the report will be useful to students looking at graduate programs as well as policymakers who develop accountability measures for institutions. <\/p>\n \u201cThis paper has a bunch of different estimates in it, so the estimates themselves could be of interest for individuals thinking about different programs. But I think the bigger-picture takeaway is that you really can\u2019t rely simply on looking at earnings,\u201d Zhu said. \u201cIf you look at the after-grad-school earnings of Harvard Business School graduates, of course it\u2019s going to be high, but that really hides a lot of very important intricacies about the returns\u2014one of which is that Harvard Business School graduates would have had high earnings even if they didn\u2019t go to Harvard Business School.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of the 18 most popular fields included in the report, return on investment is highest for Pharm.D. graduates, who see an average 114\u00a0percent earnings boost. On average, going to graduate school increases a student\u2019s lifetime earnings by 17\u00a0percent. But that return on investment varies significantly depending on what they studied, according to new research published<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1109,2052,6274,17565,334],"class_list":{"0":"post-47675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-graduate","9":"tag-pays","10":"tag-pharmacists","11":"tag-psychologists","12":"tag-school"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}