Master’s Degree or Nah? The Value of Lifelong Learning In and Out of the Classroom

Adrian McIntyre: 00:00:04

On June 22, 19 44, just two weeks after the Allied invasion of Normandy, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the bill that was known as the GI Bill of Rights. It was probably one of the most significant pieces of federal legislation ever produced in the United States.

And one of the key things that this bill did was drive a massive expansion in higher education. Within a few years, the number of people in the United States with degrees had more than doubled.

And by the time the bill first expired in 19 56, almost half of the 16 million World War II veterans had gotten education or training through the GI Bill. One of the things that this did was create a sense in America that education was a pathway to prosperity. And it certainly supported that with funding, and universities expanded and grew.

And almost since 19 65 or so, sort of the peak of that expansion, the universities in America have been in decline. The number of PhDs far outweighs the number of jobs available. And the question now in 20 25 is, do you need that degree? What is the value of--let's set college aside for a second--what is the value of postgraduate education, Master's degrees, PhDs, things of that nature? This is a complex issue. Abbie, what's on your mind?

Abbie Fink: 00:01:30

Well, thanks for that really interesting introduction. I wasn't expecting that to be the direction that we took. But I think the, you know, I have a master's degree. Did it more for my own benefit than necessarily for job advancement or additional opportunities. It was more of a self, an opportunity for myself to grow and advance.

And I think, you know, I'm a big proponent of continuing education. I am not 100% convinced that it always has to be through a formal university or college program. You know, we've placed such significant emphasis over the years, your numbers bear that out, on going to university, getting a four year degree, coming out, putting that degree to work for you.

And over the years, I think we've heard the conversation around where we are now lacking in qualified individuals in the trades, you know, electricians and roofers and painters and things like that, which is a shame because for our society to exist, we need all sorts of individuals with different skill sets finding success.

So my simple answer to the question is, there is value in having continuing education. Is that value necessarily have to be connected to a formal education? Now, I'm sure I have many individuals listening to this podcast that will take issue with that. And when I talk with college kids and make presentations on campuses, I often get the teacher in the back of the room giving me a slightly dirty look when I talk about it.

But we all have to think about what our own path is going to be and pursuing those opportunities and getting the education that you need in order to be successful in that thing that you want to go out and do.

For some, that will be a college or university degree, that will be continuing education and going on and getting their master's degree, or in your case, a PhD. You know, we need lawyers and doctors and we need individuals with professional degrees to do the work that we do. And we also need those that are skilled in other professional trades that we also need. So to me, the, the benefit is there and you do need to recognize it.

I think you also need to recognize where you need to pursue that education and what format that's going to take.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:04:14

In our last episode, we were talking about how there seems to be multiple and conflicting narratives out there. Hiring managers take one view. Graduates, or soon to be graduates, have a whole other outlook.

This is a situation as well, where certainly no matter who you are, what you believe about the value of higher education and what your parents believed about the value of higher education does not match what some contemporary scholars and even business leaders are saying now in 20 25 about the value of education.

And it puts us in a really interesting spot because you still need to figure out what you want to do with your life, no matter what age you are, right? 85 years old and you're trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. I get it. It's great.

And there's no clear, easy path to make this decision. So I think this is a really good topic for us to weigh in on because there's just quite a number of different ways you can think about it.

One of them, of course, is return on investment. That's one of the things that I was looking into here. And quite honestly, this is where the numbers tell a story that really conflicts with the standard or traditional narrative--the old-fashioned, if I can be a little pejorative, view on this. Because in many, many fields, the return on investment for a Master's or certainly for a PhD is negative. You will spend more money getting the degree than you will make because you had the degree.

Does that invalidate it? I actually think it doesn't. I think there's plenty of things that we spend money on that have zero ROI or negative ROI that increase the quality of our life. And a Master's degree, certainly a PhD in the right field, can be one of those things. It can be one of the most rewarding periods of time where you sink yourself into something intellectually stimulating. You're challenged by your peers, by your professors, whether you're in the library or in the laboratory. You're grappling with complex issues. You're trying to learn how to deal with lots of information, maybe make sense of it all. You're thinking about thinking, which is an increasingly rare quality these days. So who cares if you waste, quote-unquote, waste a bunch of money doing that?

On the flip side, if that's not the reason you're doing it, and you're doing it because you think it's going to get you a job that's going to be worth it, that's not always the case. So we need to have that conversation. What are your thoughts?

Abbie Fink: 00:06:57

You know, I think about when I was getting ready to graduate from high school and having absolutely no idea what my future was going to look like. I did not know what a major was. I had no idea what was going to happen when I walked into those first classes at Arizona State University and struggled for a long time with what, what it was going to be and what I wanted to do.

And, you know, the conversation with my parents was always, you're going to go to school for at least one year. If it's not working out or it's not the thing that you want to do, that's great. But we want you to try it. If you like it, great. If you don't, that's great too. Well, of course I was going to finish because I don't quit. So I was going to struggle. But I finally figured out what I wanted to do and great. So I finish in 4 and a half-ish years with my degree in journalism. Public relations.

When I got my first job and I was doing some work for the agency that I was working at at the time, I felt like I did not have enough formal education in the things that I was being asked to do. And I said, all right, well, I'm going to take a class. At that point, that was really the only option that existed. There wasn't a lot of ... there was no such thing as online learning or certificate programs or things that I was aware of. So I went back to ASU and I enrolled in a couple classes, and then I enrolled in a couple more.

And when it came right down to it, if I'm going to continue to do this, let's pursue the Master's degree. Did I need a Master's degree to do this job? No. Did having a Master's degree help me? 100%.

I mean, just to what you've said, it gave me a different way of looking at things. I was in school because I wanted to be there, not because it was the natural thing you do after high school, you go to college. I chose to be there. I was learning in a different way. I was grasping the information in a different way. I was making relationships with other fellow students and with my professors in a different way than I did when I was the typical undergrad, struggling with what the college experience was going to be.

If someone were to ask me, did you need need the degree? No. But I wanted the degree, and I wanted that formalized education. But what I do say is, whether or not you choose this type of path, continuing to learn is always going to be a good thing. And I don't mean that that even has to be within the context of the things that you're doing for your career.

If you have a particular interest in mosaic art, then go take an art class, even if that has nothing to do with what you do for a living. It gives you an outlet. It gives you something to use another part of your brain. It gives you interactions with other individuals.

I don't know that it is a perfect answer to say, I'm doing this so I can get that. I don't know that we will ever have that direct path.

Now, certainly there are some professions that need to have that continuing education in order to do the things that they're doing. I certainly want, you know, my orthopedic surgeon who did my hip replacement to have had the right education in order to do that work. He needs to have that education in order to do that. But there are plenty of other professions and other areas of expertise that you can get education in other ways.

And what I believe has been, if we can look at COVID as having some benefits, is giving us access to learn other ways and in different formats, and being able to log on to a Masterclass and listen to two or three episodes and get what, again, a topic that you're interested in or to, you know, Zoom into a classroom in another part of the world that you would not have ever had a chance to do, to listen into a lecture of someone you might be interested in.

And so it can never hurt you, in my view, to continue your education. It gives you additional things to understand. It opens up your eyes to some other things and gives you a view of what's going on in a way that will be beneficial to you into the workplace and other things.

I could turn the tables and say, what are you doing with your doctorate right now, today? Is it of value to you? And I'd like to believe you think that it is. And you used it when you got it and you found value in it. It's a point of distinction, It's a point of separation. It gives you some additional credentials that another colleague looking at doing similar work may not have. And you know, did you get your money's worth? Maybe, maybe not.

But I would hope that anyone that chooses to continue their education finds personal value if they don't necessarily find financial value in doing it.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:12:12

Yeah, you make some really important points here. And one of the things that people are asking more these days has to do with this question of well, what's required? Do I need this or not need this? And clearly in many of the fields where professional licensing is the norm, there are degree requirements that are part of meeting the licensing requirements.

And at the same time the years you spend in a degree program also have opportunity costs. There are things you're not doing during the time that you're in the degree program. So this just ... there's no right answer. You have to weigh all of these things out. And I think just knowing these different factors are there really matters.

A very interesting thing, I think, is if you look at two typical business specializations, one in the realm of finance and the other in the realm of marketing, you may not realize that almost all CFOs, Chief Financial Officers, are going to have some sort of finance or accounting related degree. And almost no CMOs, Chief Marketing Officers, have a marketing degree. One study said less than 10% of Chief Marketing Officers actually have a degree in marketing.

Now, does that mean you shouldn't go get the degree because you want to be like them? No, it means you have to understand their pathway to that role, and it may not be what you expect. In fact, the vast majority of people who get the best on-the-job training in marketing tend to go work for, there's about 10 or 15 CPG companies, consumer packaged goods companies, that have very robust in-house training and development programs, sort of pathways, professional development pathways, for people who then will go on to move up the ranks and become the Chief Marketing Officers at other organizations.

These include, I mean they're the, the usual suspects. Procter and Gamble, Yum Brands, PepsiCo, Unilever, the Coca Cola Company, Clorox, General Mills, American Express, Apple, Nike. I mean if you want to become a Chief Marketing Officer, do whatever you need to do to get a job at one of those companies in a marketing function and go through their in-house training and development. Commit 15 to 20 years, and you too could be the CMO of whatever companies are around 20 years from now.

Abbie Fink: 00:14:32

Well, in those companies have obviously made an investment in continuing education, in providing professional development opportunities for their employees, regardless of their job title and what they're doing.

Now, when I got my degree several years ago, there was no public relations degree. I got a degree in journalism and took basically one class in what was defined as public relations at that particular point. Students today are coming out of the journalism program with a degree in public relations. The world has changed. It has become, you know, the industry itself has evolved and degree programs are available.

You know, if you think about that path that you just described, a Chief Marketing Officer may not have been a defined job description 25, 30, 40 years ago. It evolved. We understood it differently. We recognized that some of the skills that were transferable, they might have been good in sales, they were, you know, creative, they had a handle on public speaking. I mean, there were a lot of things that might have gone into it. Let's create this degree, this program, this internal opportunity to grow and advance.

Where I think an emphasis needs to be from, you know, from a ... we talked about workplace culture and we're talked a lot about what, you know, what graduates today are looking for. But it has always been an important part of our culture at HMA to promote continuing education. We provide a stipend for each one of our team members to go and take classes. And there is no real guideline on what that needs to be. I don't tell them they have to be PR classes or communications classes. They have to be "continuing education," meaning something that you can do that gives you more information than you had when you walked in the front door. And we will cover the cost of participating in those things. We want our team to be well-rounded and have interests and pursue those interests.

It to me would be one of those factors that you would look for, when you are thinking about joining an organization, is how do they feel about continuing education? Do they put an emphasis on providing opportunities not only from a financial standpoint, meaning I will pay for you to attend that seminar, but I'm also going to let you do that during the workday and I'm not going to dock you vacation time in order for you to go. It is considered part of your day to take those classes or webinars or whatever it would be.

You can see how continuing education opportunities have evolved. Just take a quick look at LinkedIn on any given day and you see people posting, "I just received my certification in ..." fill in the blank. And it can be anything. And what we don't necessarily know is if they were doing that to advance their own personal benefit or the employer themselves was pushing it out there.

But there can be no downside, in my view, to finding things that interest you and giving yourself the benefit of the time to take those classes. And again, however that plays out, there can't be anything detrimental to doing that. Now, can it be expensive? Yes. Can there go. Yes. Not suggesting that you, you know, you go into debt to do these things if you can help it. But if I have the type of individual that I want in my world, the ones that succeed in my workplace, and those are those more curious individuals, the ones that continually seek learning opportunities that want to understand and do things differently. Those are the kind of people I want, you know, surrounding me.

And if it's in a formalized way where they take a class or they go, or they log on every Tuesday at noon, great. If it's checking a book out of the library, people still do check books out of the library, right? They might do it online, but they take a book and read it, borrow it and send it back on your own. That's all great too.

And bringing that knowledge and that expertise and that understanding into the workplace that you're doing can again, benefits you personally. It benefits the organization that you work in, gives us a more well rounded experience in our workplaces.

And to me, that's really where the benefit comes in, is that it gives all of us the chance to have different experiences and bring those experiences together to do the work that we do in a slightly different, maybe more efficient way than we started.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:19:30

One of the things that I'd like to leave folks with is just a simple framework or a rubric for thinking about this.

If you're considering a degree program or some formalized structured training, you might want to ask yourself, do the people who are further along than you in the direction you aspire to go ... well, the obvious one is do they have degrees like this or not?

But beyond that, I would actually say, think about what they need to be able to do, what they need to know, how they need to have been trained to think, and--this one's a little bit tricky--what they're able to see. And what I mean by that is this: Perspective. Exposure to certain things. Exposure to knowledge. Exposure to situations. Exposure to the things that form a professional's field of engagement teaches you how to see and understand what you're dealing with.

When I was in graduate school, one of the guys in my PhD program had formerly worked as a Toyota master mechanic and he had been trained in their advanced training program. So he was certified as a master mechanic. And I had a beat up old truck and it wasn't running very well and I said, hey Jerome, could you come take a look at this? He said, start it up. I opened the hood, started it up. Within four seconds of just listening to the engine running, he said, here's your problem. Now that's hearing, not seeing, but it's the same thing that I'm talking about.

He was able to diagnose a situation because of his training and experience. That's what you actually aspire to do. That's what you want to be like. You want to master whatever your field is such that you see the opportunities, you see the threats, you see the pathways to deal with problems. Some of that comes from a degree program, but some of it does not. So where else do you need to engage to get that?

And I really like, Abbie, what you're saying here about these many different opportunities that people have. What I would care most about if I were hiring somebody is, are they a curious person who's actively seeking answers to questions and trying to solve problems. That matters to me. May not matter to every hiring manager.

Whether you learn that knowledge base from books and professors and classroom discussions, or whether you learn it in a hands-on way, in certain situations, there are things you're going to have to be able to know. T

here are also things you're going to have to be able to do. And maybe we could end on this. Abbie, if someone's coming to you now saying, hey, I'd like to work in the field of public relations, there's a set of skills. Now, it's probably too long to list here, but what are some of the top ones that you would say, great, here's what you need to actually be able to do. Skills that you have to have. What are they?

Abbie Fink: 00:22:14

And that is actually a question I typically get for students that are thinking about going into it. So so much of what we do in our daily life is we write, we put together content on an ongoing basis of all different kinds.

So you need to have a good grasp of being able to creatively succinctly put together thoughts into the written word. You have to have confidence to share your ideas and be quick on your feet to be able to, you know, adjust to whatever objections that you might get.

And you need to be curious, right? You need to have a natural understanding of asking for more. Why are we doing this? What else can we be doing? How else can we do it?

There's other skills that they will learn when they go through the program. But what I can't teach and what we look for is what else are you doing to understand the work that we are going to be having you do?

So that's reading the newspaper and watching television news and knowing what's happening in the community. That's the curiosity factor. It is letting me know that you are also and volunteering, have another job, do something right.

So I understand that you've got this time management skill that you're that you've putting other things together and that you are looking for a way to take the skills that you're learning in school and apply them in the real world. Have you had an internship? Have you had any other job that you had to show up on time, spend time there, complete tasks and move along?

I will take the person any day of the week that has all of those things going on for them and maybe has a slightly less than perfect GPA than the 4.0 student that does not have the extracurricular activities. I value the education. I'm glad that they have it. I don't want to discount that and I don't want to discourage anyone from doing it.

But we do need a well rounded individual and you get that well roundedness when you participate in things outside of the classroom that give you life experiences that help you understand working in teams and having other people rely on you and be responsible. And that comes from outside of the traditional book learning that we do in school.

Paired together, I think makes the right kind of employee and the one that wants to continue to be curious and find out more in order to make their contributions to the workplace that much more significant.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:25:02

Thanks for listening to this episode of Copper State of Mind. If you enjoyed the conversation, please share it with a colleague who might also find this podcast valuable. It's easy to do. Just click the "Share" button in the app you're listening to now to pass it along. You can also follow Copper State of Mind in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast Apple. We publish new episodes every other Friday.

Copper State of Mind is brought to you by HMA Public Relations, the oldest continuously operating PR firm in Arizona. The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm in Phoenix, and distributed by PHX.fm, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona.

For all of us here at Speed of Story and PHX.fm, I'm Adrian McIntyre. Thanks for listening and for sharing the show with others if you choose to do so. We hope you'll join us again for another episode of Copper State of Mind.