10 reasons not to go to grad school if you’re pursuing social justice
A guide for not going back-to-school
Like most millennials living with existential dread, I went to college before I really knew what I wanted to do professionally. After a couple of tried and failed paths, I graduated in 2013 from the University of Washington with a degree in International Studies and what felt like little to no hard skills.
My first job out of college was for a running shoe store, where I made $10.50/hr. After about 6 months, I moved on to work at my first state job at the capital, and was excited to finally have a path in local government administration.
After several years of working in public admin, I moved onto my first couple of nonprofit jobs, which taught me a lot about the social service ecosystem and exposed me to the large class divide that exist between nonprofits with endowments (large sums of money that gain enough interest for the organization to consider revenue), and those on grassroots, shoestring budgets.
Guess which ones were doing the most impactful change work…
When I finally got to graduate school (a robust 4 years after graduating college), I had a fairly put together idea of what I wanted to do: change systems, create equity, and build better outcomes for people like me.
I quickly learned that graduate school is actually one of the most hostile environments for people trying to pursue social change.
I almost quit my master’s program during my first semester because of the intense isolation, gaslighting, and inaccessibility of the entire process of applying for and starting grad school. In retrospect, I am glad that I graduated for personal resilience reasons, but I left ashamed that I had bought into a classist ideation of institutional hierarchy that I was in fact trying to dissolve.
A note on this guide:
To this day, when prompted, I almost always recommend my social justice friends do not buy into this system; you do not go to grad school to succeed in changing the world and making money. I have developed this guide to catalog my thoughts and analysis on this topic, but this guide is not meant to be prescriptive: choose your own adventure, and leave the advice you don’t find fitting.
Higher education institutions are scams
I will forever argue that modern globalization and proliferation of social media has led us to a place where we can effectively educate ourselves, expand our points of view, and engage in meaningful dialog outside of a paid classroom environment. The return on investment looks super sexy on the outside, especially for those pursuing a Master’s over a PhD (PhDs on average make lower wages than MAs), but it’s literally a gamble. Tuition rates rise literally every year, meanwhile entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, influencers, and online coaches are making millions without more than college degrees.
As someone who had to work to put myself through college and through grad school, I either had to work past my human ability, or take out additional loans to cover living expenses as well. I did a lot of both due to the state of the economy and being a single person living in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. (Seattle). I spent one year as a Teaching Assistant in graduate school, which allowed my base tuition to be paid (about 60k). I still left school with $84,000 in debt. The program lasted two years.
The inaccessibility is almost unfathomable, and it is designed that way.
The business model for any graduate school is essentially part for-profit, part state agency, and part nonprofit (able to take donations). Graduate programs typically sit outside of the true University as independent “schools” who have to generate their own revenue, do their own reporting, and function within their own rules, regulations, and budgetary processes. They pursue multiple available revenue streams, including philanthropy, state funding, and revenue generation through enrollment and other student fees. The amount and quality of support the program is able to give to an individual is therefore a race to the bottom: the business model tells us where the incentives are, and it’s not in quality of service delivery, but in revenue generation. They are not here for you.
Academia is fake and gatekeeping AF
Academia is largely categorized by in-group practices that keep everyday people from accessing knowledge. There’s a lot to say about this, and it definitely requires its own essay. Essentially, we can follow the business models for academic settings, fellowships, jobs, and publications, and they all show deprioritization of knowledge democratization and capitalizes on the in-group paradigm instead.
Your lived experience is far more important to the work than another degree
This notion of “lived experience” acting as expertise is very real in social justice land. If you have a story that demonstrates public policy failure, your analysis on that thing is incredibly valuable to the people trying to understand those issues. If you work on developing that analysis, it is far more important in the long run than the credential alone.
Graduate school is nowhere near as fun an undergrad
They lure you in with cute campus pics and the promises of collegiate camaraderie, but it’s mostly a facade. Remember #2, when I said that grad schools are mostly independent programs? It comes up here too. The resources at Universities mostly go to the undergrads (because they’re a bigger market), which means the clubs, the teams, and the amenities are all designed for undergrads. I wanted to go to grad school and also sing acapella, and yet I was the only mid-20 year old who signed up for auditions. I was too embarrassed to show up to 2nd auditions– she died of old age.
Social good work often means low pay forever, which is also by design
Late-stage capitalism tells us that markets dictate wages. Well, the market for social change work in pursuit of social justice is drastically underfunded and under marketed, and that is also by design. If social do-gooders could amass great wealth, we could actually change the world. The resources matter here, and capitalism is betting on your willingness to work for your cause and not “for the money.”
Institutions of higher education were built mostly by slaves and current funders include legacy slaveholders
If this alone doesn’t get you, social justice work might not be right for you anyway. Let’s unpack this in another essay.
You can develop the skills you need outside of school
Here are some examples of hard skills that one can develop totally outside of school and in high demand in the social good sector: Facilitation, conflict mediation, note-taking, project management, data collection, issue analysis, grant writing Another pro tip: Public universities often publish their course descriptions online. Look at the courses that seem interesting, and find the professor's reading list. Read those books. You’ve done half the work of the degree program.
The toxic dynamics you hated in high school will play out in grad school again
Sometimes there’s even Grad School Prom, and I’m not kidding.
You don't need to relive this, friend. Preserve your energy, for it is finite.
Grad schools should actually pay you to be there
You’re an asset and you being there adds to the vibe and validity of the thing. Therefore, your presence is required in order for them to make money. You also add critical insight to discussions and to others’ learning. Therefore therefore, they should actually be paying you!
I acknowledge my privilege in being able to take out loans, in navigating the institutional barriers, in being able to afford therapy, in being able-bodied enough to work the 3 jobs I needed to get through school, and the many other things that allowed me to make it through grad school. For me, liberation is not that everyone have access to higher education, but rather that we move beyond the perceived need for institutional academia at all.