[QUOTE=even sven]
Why? I can think of no job that couldn’t be better learned spending that two years on the job instead of in a classroom. I’ve learned more in the past two years of my life than I could have in a dozen years of grad school. Furthermore, the real world is exciting, open and exhilerating in the way the structured life of school could never be. Who knew I could learn functional French in ten weeks instead of in years of classroom work? Who knows more about Africa, Bob the African studies major or me the girl who lives in Cameroon?
[/QUOTE]
I disagree completely, speaking as someone who worked about 5 years after undergraduate, and then went back to graduate school.
Sure, you learn all sorts of good, practical, nitty-gritty type stuff out in the real world, but in many cases, you learn only what you need for your particular job. In my field (IT/software development), that means that you learn all sorts of tips and tricks and the “right” ways to do things.
What you don’t learn on the job, or at least don’t learn in the first few years, is the body of knowledge that doesn’t directly involve your job - i.e. finance, accounting, the role of IT in the enterprise, how to calculate ROI on IT projects, etc… At best, you’ll learn these things if you’re lucky enough to be promoted, and lucky enough to be in a company that cares that their lower-level management knows these things.
If the company doesn’t, it’s likely that they’re hiring graduate school people (MBAs and MS types) who already know this to fill positions that require them, instead of teaching them to you by rule of thumb.
The fact of the matter is, unless you’re starting your own company, or getting in on the ground floor with one, you’ll pretty much need a graduate degree if you aspire to the higher echelons of responsibility.