The Costs and Benefits of Grad School

Well, there’s good news and bad news making the rounds on the blogosphere. The good news, as most of you probably know, is that a bachelors degree (on average, of course) is a pretty good investment in terms of future income stream.

About a third of you (again, on average) will make a return to the ivory tower to pursue an advanced degree. And that’s where the bad news, if you can call it that, comes in. Check out the data from this post on law school and especially the figure showing salary differentials.

The table is especially revealing in the dangers of relying on “averages” when making a decision. If I was making a decision about heading to law school, I’d want to know whether I was more likely to end up in the high or the low-income humps of that distribution.