Yes.
That's it. That's the post.
This surprises the sum total of nobody; we already knew that higher education almost never pays off, and that it's a status symbol/signaling mechanism for employers and others that you are hardworking and disciplined. (Hashtag Bryan Caplan; Pew Research Center; St Louis Fed; original Dale & Kreuger paper kicking off these economic conversations)).
And it's a race to the bottom—think standing up at the movies or at a concert to see better (...then everybody else has to as well, because you're in the way. In final equilibrium, everyone, now standing up, is worse off, with constant utility/enjoyment of the entertainment.)
The aim of all these credential-hungry student is to "top up an undergraduate qualification with a one- or two-year master’s degree in the hope that this will set them apart in a job market crowded with bachelor’s degrees."
Since 2000 the cost of postgraduate study in America has more than tripled in real terms, according to the Centre on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. The median borrower now acquires around $50,000 in debt while completing their second degree, up from $34,000 20 years earlier (in 2022 dollars).
It's easy to post statistics about "OMG people with university credentials earn more," but that's an elementary stat/econ mistake:
Yet earnings vary enormously by subject and institution. Moreover, postgraduates are usually from richer families and got better grades as undergraduates than did their peers. They would tend to do well in life, regardless of additional credentials. Working out the real returns requires comparing the outcomes of this brainy cohort with those of similarly impressive people who decided against further study. Seen through that lens, the average master’s student will bank no more than $50,000 extra over their lifetime as a result of their qualification, reckons Preston Cooper, an analyst formerly of FREOPP, a think-tank in Austin, Texas, who also considered fees paid and potential earnings forgone while studying.
Result?
In 2019 analysts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank in London, concluded that one-fifth of undergraduates would be better off if they skipped university all together.
The IFS also found that master students, by the age of 35, earn "no more than those with just a bachelor's."
In the UK, the higher education population of each cohort has increased from about 25% (2006) to almost 40% in 2021. (The BBC reports 50% in 2019.) A good public policy would be to squeeze/force/incentivize this number down. (Universities and their toxic, woke social environment, I believe, is doing this on their own—when it's this ridiculous, people will hopefully just stop showing up.)
But FIELDS OF STUDY MATTER, right right??!! Uh...
Yes, yes. A little.
Still, the default conclusion is pretty clear. Financially speaking—and I suspect also employment/professionally speaking—it's not worth going to university; and certainly not getting a master's (for reasons other than prestige, symbolism, social cred, or consumption.)
Also, these days there's a non-zero chance you catch a debilitating sling of climate doom, wokeness, and Marxist.
Why risk it?
non-paywalled here: https://archive.md/oj5t2