1. Careers where there is an explicit barrier to further advancement otherwise.
The typical example here is the MBA, but this is also often the case in engineering, education, and nursing, of the fields I know people in, and I'm sure there are more.
2. In order to get your foot in the door in a different field.
I think this is more effective than it's often given credit for. It's really difficult to switch careers, and an academic program is a good way to both make initial connections and have a credential at the end that helps get past initial screening. This may well not show up as positive ROI in a quantitative sense, but I think that's because the calculation is failing to capture the (very high) value of choosing what you do with a very large portion of your time on the earth.
I think bachelor degrees can also be seen as a form of this career switching. The kinds of careers you can do without a college degree are different than those you can do with them. That difference is about a lot more than the level of pay.
I also think optionality is valuable, and never seems to be analyzed in these kinds of papers. My impression is that any college degree opens up a bunch of options that are simply closed to those without a degree, and doesn't close any existing options. I'd like to see an effort to incorporate the value of that increased optionality into these kinds of discussions.
1. Careers where there is an explicit barrier to further advancement otherwise.
The typical example here is the MBA, but this is also often the case in engineering, education, and nursing, of the fields I know people in, and I'm sure there are more.
2. In order to get your foot in the door in a different field.
I think this is more effective than it's often given credit for. It's really difficult to switch careers, and an academic program is a good way to both make initial connections and have a credential at the end that helps get past initial screening. This may well not show up as positive ROI in a quantitative sense, but I think that's because the calculation is failing to capture the (very high) value of choosing what you do with a very large portion of your time on the earth.
I think bachelor degrees can also be seen as a form of this career switching. The kinds of careers you can do without a college degree are different than those you can do with them. That difference is about a lot more than the level of pay.
I also think optionality is valuable, and never seems to be analyzed in these kinds of papers. My impression is that any college degree opens up a bunch of options that are simply closed to those without a degree, and doesn't close any existing options. I'd like to see an effort to incorporate the value of that increased optionality into these kinds of discussions.