For years, I heard a fairly standard piece of advice about graduate school: Don’t enroll directly after completing an undergraduate degree.
Finish your undergraduate degree. Get a job. Spend a few years in the profession. Figure out what you are good at, what interests you and where you want your career to go. Then return to school for an advanced degree.
I understand the reasoning behind that advice.
But lately, I have begun to wonder whether we have turned generalized advice into a rule that doesn’t fit everyone.
I oversee graduate programs in communication, and I have noticed more students moving directly from their undergraduate education into master’s programs. Some finish their bachelor’s degree in one semester and enroll in their master’s just days later.
At the University of Florida, there are some particular reasons this happens. Many students arrive in their undergraduate programs with substantial college credits already completed. They may have imagined spending four years in college, only to discover that they can complete their undergraduate degree in two or three. For some, pursuing a graduate degree allows them to extend the period of study they had originally expected while also earning an advanced credential.
Florida’s Bright Futures program can also play a role. For eligible students who complete their undergraduate degree early, remaining Bright Futures funding may help offset graduate-level tuition during their first semester after graduation. Combination-degree programs provide another pathway, allowing qualified students to begin taking graduate courses while they are still undergraduates. In our college, students can apply as many as 12 graduate credits toward both their bachelor’s and master’s requirements.
Those incentives make the decision easier.
But I think something bigger is happening too.
Graduate school no longer seems to represent exclusively the second act of someone’s career. For some students, it is increasingly becoming the final stage of their initial education.
The national numbers offer some support for the broader growth of graduate education, although they do not definitively establish that more students are going directly from bachelor’s to master’s programs. U.S. postbaccalaureate enrollment has grown over time, and recent Council of Graduate Schools data point to continued demand for master’s programs.
So perhaps the more useful question is not whether students are going directly to graduate school more often.
It is whether they should.
The case for waiting
I understand why the traditional advice developed, particularly in a field like communication.
Professional experience gives graduate education context.
Consider a class on crisis communication. A student who has worked inside an organization during a crisis hears that discussion differently. A lesson about managing clients means something different after you have dealt with a difficult client. Organizational communication becomes less theoretical when you have experienced a dysfunctional organization. Leadership courses become different once you have had a good boss, a bad boss or perhaps become a supervisor yourself.
Professional experience gives students a library of situations against which they can test what they are learning.
That is an important advantage.
Research on adults simultaneously working and attending graduate school has found that these students particularly value active learning and the opportunity to connect academic ideas with their professional environments. The relationship is not always seamless, but when the academic environment and workplace align, graduate education can become a particularly powerful form of applied learning.
Work also gives students something else: direction.
At 22, it can be difficult to know precisely what specialization you want. After three or four years in a profession, you may have a much clearer sense of the skills you lack.
You may discover that you want to move from execution into strategy. From journalism into audience analytics. From public relations into management. From content creation into research. Or perhaps into an entirely different part of the communications industry.
In those cases, graduate school becomes very intentional.
You are not getting a master’s degree simply because it is the next credential available. You are acquiring specific knowledge to solve a problem or move toward a particular career objective.
There is also an economic argument for getting some experience first.
Many entry-level communications jobs do not require master’s degrees. The bachelor’s degree remains the typical entry-level qualification for careers including public relations, journalism and technical writing. Employers often value internships, portfolios and professional experience alongside academic preparation.
That matters.
A graduate degree should have a purpose. If the job you want requires experience rather than another credential, two years in the workplace may produce a better return than two additional years in a classroom.
The case for going straight through
But there is another side to the argument.
A student coming directly from undergraduate school has advantages too.
First, they already know how to be a student.
They are accustomed to reading, writing papers, meeting deadlines, studying and navigating academic systems. There is no transition back into the classroom after five or ten years away.
More importantly, going directly to graduate school can allow a student to develop expertise earlier.
A bachelor’s degree in communication is necessarily broad. Graduate education provides an opportunity to specialize. A student interested in political communication, digital strategy, audience analytics, public relations, social media, journalism, artificial intelligence or another emerging area may be able to develop a differentiated professional identity before entering the full-time workforce.
And today’s communications environment changes rapidly.
The tools, platforms and business models our graduates encounter are evolving faster than they did a generation ago. A carefully designed professional master’s program can give a recent graduate another year or two to deepen technical skills, build a portfolio, work with industry professionals and develop specialized expertise.
There can also be a very practical financial argument.
Accelerated and combination-degree programs change the traditional calculation. At UF, for example, qualified students can take up to 12 graduate credits that count toward both their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Bright Futures can also reduce first-semester graduate costs for some students who finish their undergraduate degrees early and still have eligible funding remaining.
Telling a student in that situation to graduate, work for three years and then return to school simply because that is the traditional order may make little sense.
There is another assumption we should question.
We sometimes talk as though students without several years of employment have no professional experience.
That is increasingly inaccurate.
Many strong undergraduates graduate with multiple internships, campus media experience, freelance work, research projects, agency experience, student organizations, client projects and significant portfolio work.
A 22-year-old may not have three years of full-time employment, but that does not necessarily mean that person has spent four years isolated from professional practice.
What are you trying to accomplish?
Maybe that is the question we should be asking instead.
Not:
“How old should you be before graduate school?”
Or:
“How many years should you work first?”
But:
“What do you need graduate school to do for you?”
If you are unsure what kind of communications career you want, getting some professional experience may be the better choice.
If the career you want rewards professional experience much more than credentials, go get the experience.
If you have already identified a specialization and graduate study will help you develop it, continuing directly may make sense.
If an accelerated program dramatically reduces the cost of the degree, that should be part of the calculation.
If you are trying to change careers, graduate education may serve a completely different purpose.
If you are already working and have discovered a specific gap in your knowledge, your professional experience may make graduate study significantly more valuable.
And if you are considering graduate school primarily because you do not know what else to do after graduation, that may be a reason not to enroll yet.
A master’s degree is too expensive, in money, time and opportunity cost, to be a holding pattern.
There isn’t one right time
This is where my thinking has changed.
I still see enormous value in working before graduate school. Some of the strongest graduate students I have taught bring years of professional experiences into our discussions. They can immediately connect concepts to organizations, clients, colleagues and situations they have actually encountered.
But I have also taught excellent students who came almost directly from undergraduate programs. They bring different strengths: academic momentum, curiosity, emerging technical skills and a willingness to experiment.
The mistake is assuming that one path must be superior to the other.
Higher education loves general rules. Work three years. Get your master’s before 30. Don’t get a master’s until you know exactly what you want to do.
Real lives are more complicated than that.
There is no universally “right” time to go to graduate school.
There is a right time for a particular person.
And figuring out when that is requires us to stop thinking in generalities and start looking at the individual’s goals, finances, experience, opportunities and circumstances.
The question isn’t, “When should people go to graduate school?”
It is much more personal.
“When should you?”