The recent Ask Ed column advising against grad school struck a chord with a number of Edsters and started quite a debate on the message board. To get to the bottom of this, we decided to investigate the question further: Is it worth it to get a master’s in journalism?
According to a recent Ed2010 survey, the majority of working Edsters didn’t attend grad school. While 78% of you have a full-time editorial job, only 10% went to grad school for journalism.
“It’s not a popular route,” says a mid-level editor at a national magazine. “I can count on one hand the number of people I know in the industry who went to grad school — and most only did because they were pursuing a different career during college.”
Jane, a recent graduate of NYU’s journalism masters program, is one of those people. After four years of studying politics, Jane realized that journalism was her true passion. “I had no experience, no related education, and no idea where to start,” says Jane. She decided to attend grad school to learn the basics and hopefully gain valuable industry contacts through professors. It paid off — she landed an editorial assistant job two months after graduation. “Since I didn’t intern all through college like the people who always knew they wanted to work at a magazine, grad school put me on the fast track to getting a job.”
Despite having a higher degree than her fellow assistant-level colleagues, Jane wasn’t able to negotiate a higher starting salary. “Grad school professors always tell you that you’ll earn more with an extra degree in hand, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with magazines,” she says. “I wasn’t doing anything more — or better — than what the undergrads do. I was just doing it later.”
Charli Penn, on the other hand, thinks her graduate degree fast-tracked her journalism career. Now an online managing editor at The Knot, she attended grad school after already studying journalism as an undergrad. Though she focused on print journalism in college, she wanted to explore her interests in television, film, and radio without making three career changes. “I wanted to be a quadruple threat in the business and an invaluable resource to my employer,” says Penn. Upon graduation, she and many of her classmates went straight to upper level positions, even those who had no experience prior to starting the program.
Still, many feel that real-world experience is just as, if not more, valuable than a master’s degree. Elizabeth, a recent college graduate, decided against attending grad school, even though her parents were willing to pay for it. “My five internships prepared me better for a job than my classes, anyway. I didn’t see a reason to sit through more months of school when I could be starting my career,” she says. A few months prior to graduation, Elizabeth started working her contacts and applying to every job that appealed to her. She landed a job at her top choice magazine a few weeks before graduation.
The fact is that journalism and other creative fields are different than, say, business or law. In other industries, the person with the highest degree typically wins, but in magazines, the person with the most real work experience often gets the job. And you’ll never hit a glass ceiling if you’re missing a grad degree. “It’s not like you need a master’s to become an editor-in-chief,” says Elizabeth. The proof? Just read their bios.
