Degrees Of Expectation

By LINDSAY WILKES-EDRINGTON The Tampa Tribune

Published: Aug 20, 2007

Anais Sori wasn't exactly sure what to do when she graduated from the University of South Florida in May.

The 22-year-old English major from Miamiknew she was interested in pursuing a career in public relations, but she didn't know exactly how to get there.

Some people suggested she find a job. Others told her to go after her master's degree.

"I just wasn't sure," she says. "I was all over the place."

After working with USF's career center, she decided to pursue a graduate degree in communications. By doing so, she says she hopes to walk away with a clearer focus on how to achieve her goals.

Even after spending four years inside the ivory towers, many students of the Millennial Generation - those born primarily during the 1980s and early '90s - are graduating without really knowing how to enter the real world.

So instead of jumping right in, many are deciding to postpone their job search with a few more years in the classroom. The thought is that maybe it will help them figure out exactly what they want to do.

But is an extra degree an automatic ticket to greater success, or is it just delaying the inevitable?

It all depends on what you're using it for, career experts say.

"If you don't know what you want going into graduate school, the odds are you won't know what you want going out of it," says Michael Ball, president of the Career Freshman training company. "I call it the $100,000 Band-Aid. It's a lot of time and money."

Young people are used to being told their opinions and ideas matter, Ball says. They expect to enter their first jobs with enough credibility to keep them from getting stuck doing grunt work.

If they're not sure how to get that kind of job, Ball says, they think graduate school will help them figure it out.

"It's a very shaky and unsubstantiated rationale," he says.

But getting bumped around in the working world a little bit isn't a bad thing.

"I've learned that if you get a lot of these hiring HR managers behind closed doors and ask what do you prefer, an extra two or three letters behind someone's name or two or three years behind the desk, they'll take the desk," Ball says.

Sori says a few college advisers told her a graduate degree wasn't required for a career in public relations and suggested she at least work for a few years first.

But she decided she wanted the academic background and says she thinks that by completing a few internships, she'll be able to better feel out what she enjoys and become a better job applicant in the future.

That's not a bad idea, says Drema Howard, director of USF's Career Center. But the problem a lot of students have is that unlike Sori, they don't take the time to ask themselves what they're trying to get out of the extra instruction.

"Going to grad school isn't just an education; it's an informed career decision," Howard says. "It's very strategic."

Many potential graduate students, Howard says, see it as a way to earn more money in the future. But that's not always a guarantee in every profession, she says.

And there's no promise it will automatically lead to a job you love, she says.

Rather than just hoping the degree will offer you what you want, Howard says, it's best to take the time to reflect seriously on what can realistically be obtained.

"Because you're talking about investing so much time and so much money and many students graduate with debt, it's really critical to think about the end result," she says. "What is it you want to do? You have to be able to articulate that."

Sori says she's optimistic that in two years, she'll have some of the tools she needs to eventually start her own consulting business. But she knows it won't come automatically and without hard work.

It can't, Ball says.

"Three, four or five jobs in your 20s - that's what it takes to figure it out," he says.

School Versus Job

If you're thinking about heading to graduate school, here's a checklist of things career columnist Penelope Trunk says you should do before you apply:

1. Try a job or two first. The people who do best in graduate school are those who don't use it just to escape a job they dislike. So find decent alternatives to going back to school, and if you still want to go back to school, then you should.

2. Determine if an advanced degree is necessary. Talk to people who are where you want to be in five years to 10 years. If those people got there without a degree, then you probably can, too.

3. Take the passion test. Are you reading about your proposed graduate topic now, before you are in school? If you're not passionate enough about the subject matter to read about it on your own, then you should find something to pursue that excites you more.

By The Numbers

The Millennial Generation, those born primarily in the 1980s and early '90s, are entering the labor force. Here's a look at their size and the volume of potential workers coming up just behind them.

42 million - Total population of those ages 16 to 29 in the U.S. labor force

14 million - Total population of those ages 15 to 34 enrolled in college or graduate school in the United States

119 million - Total population of those ages 0 to 29 in the United States

Source: U.S. Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey