How to Help Your Child Decide If a Postgraduate Degree Is Actually Worth It
Last Tuesday, my daughter poured herself a glass of milk and said, “I think I want to apply for a postgraduate degree.”
I didn’t answer right away. I kept cutting carrots, because I wanted to see if the sentence would land and then change shape, as it did when she announced she was going to learn Korean, or move to Montreal for a summer. When I looked up, she was staring at the fridge, not at me. That felt like a good sign.
“Okay,” I said. “What do you want to do with it?”
She shrugged. “Maybe public health. Maybe policy. I haven’t narrowed it down.”
I nodded, because I recognized that kind of thinking. I’d done the same thing at her age. When I was twenty-two, I applied to three graduate schools because I couldn’t figure out what else to do with my history degree, and I got in everywhere, then realized I still didn’t know why I was going. I ended up deferring for a year, found a job at a bookstore, and never went back. It took me a decade to understand that the problem wasn’t the degree. It was that I’d been looking for a next step instead of looking for a reason.
That’s the conversation I wanted her to have now, not after she’d spent a year filling out applications.
“What do you mean ‘policy’?” I asked.
“You know, like health policy for a government agency. Or a nonprofit.”
“Do any of those jobs actually require a master’s?”
She didn’t know. Nobody had told her to check. She’d only heard from one of her professors that a master’s might make her “more competitive.” When I asked her what that meant, she said, “I guess that I’d have more options.”
We’ve all been there. A postgraduate degree feels like a promise: if you get one, the vague future becomes a little less vague. But the truth is that a master’s is not a magic key. It’s a tool. And like most tools, it’s only useful if you know what you’re trying to build.
Over the next week, we took a different approach. Not arguing, not doubting her ambition, but turning a big scary decision into a bunch of small boring questions.
First, I suggested she find five job or fellowship listings online for roles she actually wanted to apply for in five years. Not dream jobs, just real ones. She had to read the qualifications closely. Did the posting say “master’s preferred” or “master’s required”? Because there’s a difference. “Preferred” means a strong undergraduate record plus a couple of years of work experience can still get you in the room. “Required” means the degree is a filter. If none of the five postings mention the degree at all, that’s useful information too.
She came back from that exercise less excited but more grounded. One job listed a master’s as “strongly preferred.” The other four just asked for experience in community outreach and data analysis. “So maybe I don’t need it right away,” she said, half asking me.
Maybe. Or maybe she needed experience first, then the degree later. Many people I admire went back to school in their late twenties or thirties, with a clear specialization and a list of problems they wanted to solve. They got far more out of their programs than the students who were just continuing because they didn’t know what else to do.
The other thing I asked her to do was talk to three people who already have jobs in health policy. Not professors, not admissions counsellors, not her parents. She balked at the idea, said it would be awkward. So we made a compromise: she picked three people she’d met through volunteer work or whose emails she could find through her university’s alumni directory. I gave her a simple script: “I’m thinking about a master’s in this area. Would you be willing to tell me whether your degree mattered for the job you have now?”
One person replied that they had a master’s but thought their internships were the real reason they got hired. Another said they’d worked for four years before getting one and wished they’d waited, because they’d ended up specializing in a subject they didn’t even know existed in their early twenties. The third wrote a long email about how a master’s helped change careers from clinical work to administration.
That’s exactly the information her glossy brochure couldn’t give her.
We also did the math. Not in a dramatic “you’ll never buy a house” way, but in a realistic way. She’d been looking at a two-year program with tuition around forty thousand dollars, plus living costs in a different city. I printed out a simple spreadsheet. We looked at the average starting salary in her field, then subtracted what she’d lose by not working full-time for two years. She stared at the numbers for a while.
“I didn’t think about lost income,” she said.
Most young adults don’t. They think about the cost of the program itself, not the money they won’t earn during the years they’re in it. That’s not a reason to abandon the idea. But it’s a reason to be deliberate. Some students can do a program part-time while working. Others find funded research assistant positions or employers who will chip in tuition. Plenty of universities offer teaching assistantships or graduate assistantships that reduce fees. I told her to ask the admissions office directly, “How many students in this program receive funding, and how many self-finance?” If they dodge the question, that’s an answer.
I also asked her to check whether the school offered a practicum or capstone project. This surprised her: she hadn’t thought about the experience side of a graduate degree. But an applied program that places you in a real hospital or city agency for six months is worth far more than a campus-based program with no external projects. In her field, the relationships and the portfolio pieces are often more valuable than the final thesis.
There was a moment in the kitchen, about a week after it all started, when we were sitting at the table with her laptop between us. She’d just found a one-year program with a summer internship built in. “This one might actually make sense,” she said.
I didn’t cheer. I didn’t say I was proud of her for doing the research. I just said, “It looks manageable. What else is on the list?”
We still haven’t made a decision. She’s sent out three emails to ask about financial aid, and she’s set a reminder to look at job postings again in the spring to see if anything new appears. She’s also mentioned she might work for a year in the city where she wants to live, just to see if she likes it before committing to a program there.
That feels right. Not because it delays the decision, but because it puts the decision in the right place. A postgraduate degree is a step, not a destination. The best reason to get one is not to find a direction. It’s because you already have one, and the degree helps you move further along it faster.
I don’t know if she’ll end up applying next fall, or in five years, or never. But for now, she’s asking the boring questions first. And in my experience, that’s the part that actually matters.
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