To Masters Or Not To Masters?
I am frequently asked whether a Masters is essential for the social impact sector. And the harder question – is it worth me taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans to do so when I likely won’t come out with a job that pays 6 figures let alone has a bonus?
Of course, it depends who you are and what you want to do.
For some jobs, such as monitoring and evaluation or research, you might need a PhD in fact. To be a human rights lawyer, well, you first need to have a law degree which in the US is an advanced 3-year degree.
Unfortunately, for many jobs at the United Nations or other multilateral organization, a Masters might be a minimum requirement, and closing off those options might be a pity, but then they also often have language requirements, so you may still not qualify if you are not multi-lingual anyway.
In my mind, the big questions are not whether you should do a Masters in and of itself, but:
What do you want to do? What problem are you trying to solve?
What skills and experience do you already have and are those enough to get the job / the career you want? To solve the problem you want to solve?
Does the next step or the step after that require a Masters or an advanced degree or is the ‘Masters preferred’?
How much will you be able to earn after your Masters and is that realistic to pay off your student debt relatively quickly?
One of the most important - What is the opportunity cost? What learning and salary are you giving up to do a Masters full-time, and is that worth it? What could 1-2 years more work experience do to differentiate you versus the army of people who will have a Masters?
The opportunity cost goes up as you start earning more and getting more advanced in your career, it goes down if you are at the beginning of your career or have lost your job as a result of a recession.
The equation changes dramatically of course if you can get a fully-funded ride, if your Masters is 1-year or does not cost $50,000+ a year. Don’t be afraid to check out opportunities outside the US. For example I did my Masters at Sciences Po in Paris and the London School of Economics, but no need to limit yourself to Europe either. But the math may be hard to justify if upon graduation, getting your dream job is still very competitive, pays $50,000 a year and you are now $100,000 in debt at 5% interest.
Consider doing your Masters part-time alongside a full- or part-time job. You will lose your evenings and weekends for sure, but you don’t lose out on 2 years of work and your job may even some offer tuition assistance.
And then another big one: What Masters should you do?
Here, I may surprise you by dissuading you from going for International Relations / International Affairs / International Development / Public Affairs. (Even though, let’s be clear here, I myself did International Affairs.)
It goes back to the fact that the type of job you want in the social impact sector matters hugely. If it’s human rights, a law degree is preferable. If you are interested in health policy, a Masters in Public Health is more appropriate. If you want to do comms, a Masters in Journalism or Communications is doubtless more relevant.
If you want to become, or invest in, social entrepreneurs, a MBA might be more suitable. In fact, a MBA may be a preferred qualification for many of the management jobs although it will cost you. Moreover, if you think you won’t find like-minded people on your course, you may want to think again. One of the largest societies at Harvard Business School is the Social Enterprise Club, but the risk with a MBA is that you sheepishly follow the crowd and upon graduation join a management consultancy or Google and lose your original plan...
It’s also about differentiating yourself. If everyone else has a Masters in International Affairs from the same 5 top colleges and spent a year working in a tiny NGO in India, and I receive 200 of the same CVs for one position (as I have), I can’t interview all 200 of you.
I would go for a Masters in International Affairs / International Relations / Public Affairs if:
1. You have solid skills acquired through previous work experience, e.g. you spent 5 years working in Marketing, and now you’d like to do Marketing for a big NGO. Although you may not need a Masters anyway then.
2. You really don’t know what you want to do and can’t get a job doing something interesting where you are learning. Then a Masters in International Affairs is broad enough so you can spend time dabbling in international law, economics, politics, etc. That’s basically what I did, because I had done biochemistry as an undergraduate, started a PhD and quit after 3 months. I realized I did not want to be a biochemist pipetting small quantities of liquid into test tubes for the next 20 years in the hope of finding a cure to a cancer no pharmaceutical company would ever develop a drug for… so I was lost and needed time. But I still went and worked in private sector after my Masters because no one would pay me to do something interesting in the social impact sector. So I can’t say I would recommend this path for many!
3. You do a joint degree e.g. MBA / MPA, or whatever combination suits you best. They may be a year longer, but usually much harder to get into and they allow you to acquire the more specific specialization while studying international or public affairs.
Regardless of what Masters you pick, use the time to do as many internships, social ventures, and side projects as possible.
You might get credit for those, and you can delve into what a job may be like in reality. The organization may even hire you at the end (you should try and find out whether the organization has done that in the past or whether interns are just cheap resources they never hire). Or your start up may take off after winning one of the many on-campus student competitions, and you can move to that full time upon graduation.
Thus, consider picking a college which is in the city where you may want to live after your Masters, and one where there is a lot of social impact activity – New York, DC, San Francisco, Boston would be the top obvious US choices; and other hubs such as Geneva, Nairobi, Bangkok, or London are good internationally but there are plenty more and you may in fact want to work on issues in your community in which case your local college may be the most appropriate.
If you don’t particularly want to do a Masters, don’t do one, but you should still invest in yourself.
There are plenty of jobs which list ‘Masters preferred’ in their job descriptions and for which, relevant work experience is much more differentiating. A Masters is leg up but certainly not an obligation. As stated earlier, I have never had an issue finding 200 CVs with excellent Masters listed. I do have trouble finding 10 CVs with good relevant experience for the vacancy I am looking to fill.
Further, after a few years, no one really looks at where you went to school or what degree you got unless they went to school there too (in which case they’ll be terribly excited you’re an alumni although I hope they don’t make decisions based on that. Oh wait, nepotism and picking people who are like you rather than complement you unfortunately makes the world go round).
If you don’t do a Masters, do consider at some point dedicating a year or two to ‘invest’ in your career — at whatever stage you feel is most necessary.
If you spent 2 years doing a full-time Masters in the US without a scholarship, you’d have to pay $100,000+ in academic fees for the privilege, and that does not count room and board or the opportunity cost of not being paid during that time. Spending 1 or 2 years earning less than what you were used to, or even next to nothing instead could still be more beneficial and certainly more cost-effective if you’re doing something that provides great relevant experience and connections.
That might mean taking a year to volunteer around the world to figure out what you want to do next, and gain relevant experience and connections. Or, it may mean cutting your salary by 40%, like I did when I moved to New York to work for the Clinton Global Initiative. I was already working in the social impact sector, for Save the Children in London and also traveling all around the world. I was making very decent money for the social impact sector in London and at age 28 - $90,000 back in 2009, after having been promoted twice in 3 years. But my role was that of an internal management consultant, and I was knee deep in HR, legal, and financial spreadsheets wherever I went in the world. I was not doing anything related to the programs themselves, and I was traveling 3 weeks a month to countries marked ‘red’ on Save the Children’s security map – Pakistan, Haiti, North Korea, and more.
So when the opportunity came up to move to New York City, the city of my dreams, and take a 2-year position at the Clinton Global Initiative as ‘Program Fellow’, I jumped on the opportunity despite a 40% pay cut, and despite the fact that I would only be able to afford a tiny shoebox of a studio compared to my 2-bedroom apartment in Camden. It was easier to think of it as an investment in my career, both because the title itself said ‘Fellow’, and because many of my friends from management consulting were on their way to Harvard Business School and taking 2 years out of their career but paying for it through the nose! That investment paid off – I got promoted after 6 months anyway to a higher role and salary, and then again after a year. I also learnt a lot, and met everyone in the field.
It’s sometimes easier to follow the crowd and go do a Masters rather than take a year to volunteer or a big pay cut, but once you’ve asked yourself the right questions, don’t be afraid to take these risks — if it does not work out, you will still have learned a lot, and you won’t be saddled with thousands of dollars in student debt at least.
Regardless of whether you end up doing a Masters full time or part time or not at all, careers are no longer linear, and the nature of work is constantly changing.
There is no doubt that you will have to learn new skills as you go throughout your career – a lot of this will be on the job, but to stay abreast, you will also probably need to take courses throughout – online, or in-person, whether they count for college credit, or not. I recently took a Zoom course to learn about Giving Circles as I hope to launch one soon (stay tuned!), and right now I am doing an online class on marketing to attempt to understand marketing automation, Hubspot, and more!
