More graduate students than ever.
The notion that we are over-educating people is a normative idea, and the proposed solutions reflect a sort of policy arrogance.
It’s a crisis of too much education! Or maybe not?
On social media, I often see non-specialists declaring that there are too many master’s students or too many PhDs. The vibe is that we (the US) are over-educating by producing too many credentialed workers or generating a bunch of worthless degrees, or both. This sweeping conclusion is usually delivered above the posted picture of a line graph or along with a link to a newspaper story highlighting some extreme case. A big dramatic conclusion to a complex problem, and the commentator gets there with some flimsy evidence. That’s ok; it’s how social media works. Based on some flimsy evidence, I will also offer a conclusion. But I think you should trust me, or at least consider what I have to say, because I’m a specialist. In other words, trust me. I’m an expert. (That has never gone badly!)
So, there seem to be more graduate students than ever because there are. And I have a couple of pictures of line graphs to prove it. All the data come from the Department of Education. The first graph shows total enrollment at all degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the US by level. The top (red) line shows the number of undergraduate students at two and four-year colleges from 1985 to 2021, and the lower (purple) line shows the number of graduate students. Literally, there are more graduate students now (or about now) than ever before. Not so for undergrads.
The second graph shows the number of undergraduate students enrolled for every grad student. This time, the purple line is easing down, meaning there are fewer undergraduate students for every graduate student enrolled in the US. In 1985 there were 6.4 undergraduate students for every grad student, and in 2021 there were 4.8. There are more graduate students than ever, but grad enrollments are higher than ever relative to undergraduate enrollments. A tell-tale sign of over-enrollment, right?
Maybe. But “over-education” or “over-enrollment” is a normative conclusion and not the reasoned, value-neutral policy determined that the posters who come to this conclusion think it is. It is normative because the policy posters think they know what’s best for others.
Education begets education.
Let me explain. To conclude that there are too many graduate students, we must understand why there are as many as there are in the first place. This determination should come before we decide if there are too many or too few graduate students. And to get to it, we must consider why higher education participation expands.
Several scholars have taken up this problem, including yours truly. Here is one famous example of research enrollment expansion and one less famous example that I think is pretty good. The scholars don’t all agree. Most of the disagreement is about the theories of what causes expansion. Sadly, we can’t randomize large-scale historical processes like the global expansion of higher education—a pity, I know. But if there is one point of agreement among those who have taken up the question of why higher education enrollments swell in country after country, it is this: education begets education. Verging on tautology, what we know - or think we know - is that when secondary school enrolment and completion grow, higher education enrollment follows. In other words, people who get an education tend to get more education. It is that simple.
Why this happens is a matter of debate. Maybe it is about the economy and the demand from employers for skills (actually, there is surprisingly little evidence for this because enrollment seems to follow economic growth rather than produce it), maybe it is about the diffusion of liberal values globally, perhaps it is all about family aspiration or some innate human drive to know more. Probably there are many causes.
So, let’s get back to why there are so many graduate students; probably, it’s because there are so many people with an undergraduate degree. We talk about how rare it is for someone in the US to have a degree, which is true, but not the whole story. About 38% of US adults have a bachelor’s degree or above. If you add those with an associate’s degree, just under one-half of adults in the country have a college degree. Here is where things get fun. Most adults who complete a bachelor’s degree go on to graduate school. 14.4% of US adults have a master’s degree or above. That’s about 60% of those with a bachelor’s degree or above and does not count people who start a grad program but don’t earn a degree.
In my expert opinion (see what I did there), the steady growth in the number of students enrolled in graduate school in the United States reflects the growth in the number of people who attend college and earn a baccalaureate degree. Those with degrees go on to get more education. Why they do this is hard to know for sure. We could ask them, but that would actually not provide us with great info, IMO, because their rationalizations and behaviors will likely not align. Maybe it’s status-seeking. Maybe it reflects labor market demands. Perhaps they like to learn and define themselves through education. Probably all of it. But the point is what we are seeing reflects the rule of education begets education.
Graduate enrollment has grown steadily. The ratio of undergraduate to graduate students has shot down recently because of the decline in the number of undergraduates. This is mainly happening, but not exclusively, at community colleges and for-profit colleges. In the recent past, we saw a growing number of students with a marginal propensity to go to college enroll. Now we are seeing that processes ebb a bit. That’s an interesting question. But the consequences of it are likely that we will see higher graduation rates (because there are fewer “marginal” students). Many of those new graduates will go on to graduate school. And the ratio of undergrad students to grad students will continue to creep down.
The arrogance of policy solution-ism.
What should we do about it? I don’t know for sure. Many policy analysts think we should create incentives to prevent people from getting graduate degrees. They want to create a world where people end with a vocationally-relevant undergraduate qualification, possibly followed by a set of micro-conditions that people will take to up-skill over their careers. Almost no thought is given to the potential intrinsic motivations at play within individuals or the historical processes of education begetting education. Everything is instrumental. And yet it appears that people are less instrumental in their own lives. The possibility that people like to learn and define themselves through education is all but ignored.
I don’t know if we have too many graduate degree students and advanced degree holders because all I know is that education seems to beget education. Do we want less education? I don’t feel that it is my place to say who is wasting their time getting an education and who is not. Or who is getting an education for a good reason and who is not.
I do worry about educational debt. My solution to this is not to make decisions about how people live their lives and the role education plays in them. My answer is to figure out a way to provide the chance for people to educate themselves (for whatever reason they want to) in a way that does not mortgage their lives. How to do to that? I’m an expert, and I am not sure.
Ok, enough.