The Trump administration is now pushing students to weigh costs before signing up, especially if loans are involved. The message: do the math on your specific program before betting years and tens of thousands on a credential that might not pay.
Women, full-time students, and those with lower-earning undergrad degrees see bigger relative gains from grad school. But "bigger relative gains" doesn't always mean positive absolute returns when you're drowning in loans.
The trap: prospective students look at grad program salary outcomes without checking what those graduates earned before grad school. High earners were often high earners already. The degree didn't create the boost — it just looked like it did.
Winners: Medicine (salaries nearly tripled), pharmacy (up 67%), and law degrees still pay off. These fields justify the investment. But they're the exception, not the rule.
The data comes from tracking 800,000 students over 30 years at Texas public universities. Researchers calculated lifetime earnings boosts, then adjusted for total costs and what salaries would've grown to anyway. The math is brutal for many fields.
Most popular grad degrees in the US are financial dead ends. Social work, psychology, and curriculum degrees can yield zero or negative ROI when you factor in tuition, lost wages, and debt. You'd literally be better off skipping grad school entirely.
6/6 🧵
The Trump administration is now pushing students to weigh costs before signing up, especially if loans are involved. The message: do the math on your specific program before betting years and tens of thousands on a credential that might not pay.
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📎 Source
#threadstorm
5/6 🧵
Women, full-time students, and those with lower-earning undergrad degrees see bigger relative gains from grad school. But "bigger relative gains" doesn't always mean positive absolute returns when you're drowning in loans.
4/6 🧵
The trap: prospective students look at grad program salary outcomes without checking what those graduates earned before grad school. High earners were often high earners already. The degree didn't create the boost — it just looked like it did.
3/6 🧵
Winners: Medicine (salaries nearly tripled), pharmacy (up 67%), and law degrees still pay off. These fields justify the investment. But they're the exception, not the rule.
2/6 🧵
The data comes from tracking 800,000 students over 30 years at Texas public universities. Researchers calculated lifetime earnings boosts, then adjusted for total costs and what salaries would've grown to anyway. The math is brutal for many fields.
1/6 🧵
Most popular grad degrees in the US are financial dead ends. Social work, psychology, and curriculum degrees can yield zero or negative ROI when you factor in tuition, lost wages, and debt. You'd literally be better off skipping grad school entirely.