Should You Do a Postgrad? A Teacher’s Advice for Making the Leap
The email arrived on a Tuesday evening, right after I’d packed up my own postgraduate dissertation from ten years ago into a cardboard box. A former student, now twenty-two and working in marketing, was asking whether she should apply for a master’s in public health. She’d been accepted into a good program, but her employer had offered her a permanent contract instead. Her message ended with: “I just don’t know which choice I’ll regret less.”
I sat on the floor with that box of old essays and annotated reading lists, trying to remember how I’d decided. Honestly, I couldn’t recall a single moment of clarity. I remember sitting in a university hall at an open day, holding a lukewarm cup of coffee and listening to a professor talk about research methods. I remember nodding along, not understanding half of it, and then filling out the application because everyone in my final year seemed to be doing the same.
That’s one thing I’d tell her straight away: a postgrad is not a natural next step. It’s not like moving from Year 11 to Sixth Form. If you’re doing it because everyone else is, or because you’re scared of the job market, you’ll notice that fear doesn’t disappear once you’re enrolled. It just morphs into a new kind of worry about deadlines and student debt.
Yet there are good reasons to go back. I’ve seen it work well for some people, and I’ve seen it flop for others. The difference wasn’t the program’s reputation or the subject itself. It was whether they had a specific thing they wanted to get better at, not just a vague desire to “add letters after my name.”
When I did my own master’s, I had a clear reason: I wanted to learn how to design better reading interventions for kids who struggled with comprehension. Every module, every assignment, I could connect back to the small group of Year 3 boys I was working with. That anchor made all the difference. I wasn’t studying because I loved academia. I was studying because I had a problem at school and I needed tools to solve it.
So for that former student, I’d ask: what problem do you want to solve? Public health is broad, which is both a blessing and a trap. If she can name a specific community, a specific health issue, a specific skill like data analysis or programme evaluation, then a master’s becomes a workshop. If she can’t name anything beyond her interest in “helping people,” that’s not a reason. That’s a job description.
She also asked about money, which most people skip over in polite conversation. So I’ll be direct: check whether the program actually costs as much as you think. I know people who took on part-time work during their postgrad and ended up dragging their dissertation across two extra years. I also know people who chose a less prestigious university because it offered a scholarship tied to community placements, and they came out with less debt and just as many job offers.
I told her to look at the course syllabus, not the brochure. Brochures are written by marketing departments. Syllabi are written by the people who’ll grade you. If the modules feel too general, if there are too many optional choices and not enough required foundations, that might be a sign the program is more about filling seats than building expertise.
Another thing I wish someone had told me: talk to students who are already in the program. Not just the official ambassador, but someone a year ahead. Ask them: what do you actually do on a Tuesday afternoon? How many hours of reading is realistic? Do the professors respond to emails? That last one matters more than you’d think. I’d rather be in a mid-ranked program with professors who answer queries than a top-ranked one where I’m a number.
I also told her to look at her own daily habits. A postgrad is a long-distance run, not a sprint. If you haven’t written an essay since your undergrad, don’t jump straight into a full-time master’s in September. Start with a single module or a short online course in something like research methods. See how it feels to study while working. If you still want to continue, you’ve lost very little. If you realise you hate structured learning, you’ve saved yourself a lot of money.
That advice comes from watching my own sister. She spent four years talking about a master’s in environmental policy. She bought books, followed programs, even went to two open days. But she never applied. When she finally took a six-week evening course in environmental law, she discovered she already knew most of the material from her work experience. The course confirmed she didn’t need another qualification. She used the money to fund a professional certification instead, which led to a promotion within nine months.
There’s a cultural pressure to think that more education always equals more opportunity. It doesn’t. It equals more access to certain kinds of doors, but it can also lock other doors behind a wall of expectation. I’ve met employers who prefer a candidate with two years of real-world experience over someone with a distinction and no idea how to manage a project. A postgrad is not a guarantee of anything except that you’ll write a lot of essays.
If she does decide to go, I’d tell her to set boundaries early. In my first semester, I treated my master’s like another job. I stayed up late, answered emails at midnight, and let reading spill into every free hour. By November I was exhausted. I started scheduling Friday nights as non-negotiable time off, and I forced myself to stop writing at a certain hour. The quality of my work actually improved. Rest isn’t the opposite of productivity; it’s part of it.
And I’d remind her that the best learning happens outside the classroom. The people you meet in a postgrad cohort will teach you more than most lectures. Group projects can be annoying, but they’re also a safe space to practice conflict, negotiation, and compromise. I still use skills from a particularly painful group presentation in my staff meetings today.
I didn’t give her a clear answer. I told her that both choices were valid, and that regret is a poor guide because it changes depending on what happens next. If you turn down the job and do the master’s, you might regret the lost salary. If you take the job and skip the master’s, you might regret the lost knowledge. The real question is not which regret is bigger. It’s which path will leave you with more options in three years.
She replied a week later, saying she’d deferred the program for a year. She’s taking the job, saving money, and planning to audit one online module next semester to test the waters. I thought that was a sensible middle ground. Not everyone needs to decide in one go. Sometimes the best way to understand whether you should take a road is to take a few small steps down it and see how your feet feel.
I still haven’t unpacked that cardboard box. But I’ve decided I don’t need to. The essays are done, and the degree is on my CV. The important part is not the certificate I’m holding. It’s the questions I learned to ask before I started: What problem am I solving? Who will I learn with? And what will I give up?
That last question never gets enough attention. But the answer, whatever she chooses, will be the one that matters most.
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