ZeChocMoose

I agree with so_it_goes and nashville0808. You'll need several courses in statistics and research design to be competitive for education research/policy jobs directly after your master's. They are right that generally a 1-year program is not going to be particularly helpful because it doesn't give you enough time to take the courses that you'll need. Ideally, you'll also want to have an internship/assistantship in a research/policy centered position because the datasets that you use in class are not the ones that you'll encounter on the job and you'll want to learn good data cleaning, coding, and management skills with raw data. I don't think you necessarily need a higher ed master's, though, to do education research or policy. I have seen people get these jobs with just solid methods backgrounds (economics, political science, psychology, statistics, or public policy) and work experience in either education or higher education. If you do go the higher ed master's route, I would do a two year program that requires you to take at least two courses in statistics and one course in research design. There are not a lot of programs like that - most of them focus on student affairs - but so_it_goes mentions a couple. I would also look at Vanderbilt, Penn State, and Maryland. I went into institutional research directly after my higher ed master's, but I took 3 courses in statistics, one in research design, and one in qualitative research methods. I felt that my methods training made me sufficiently prepared for my job interviews and working on the job doing analyses.

I am fairly lucky as I research education and honestly mostly everyone I meet tends to have an opinion on education! One of my specific interests is in college affordability which tends to get people talking about the high price of tuition these days. When I don't want to specifically talk about why tuition keeps on increasing, I'll try to initiate the conversation by asking the person questions until we hit on a topic that we both have in common. Current events work really well -- I also have a daily email sent to me that condenses important events across a broad range of topics which I try to read every morning (or at least skim) so I have some recent current events to talk about. If I can't avoid the "what do you do?" question (i.e. I'm in DC and people just wouldn't give up until they know what you do and who your work for -- your comment made me laugh Crucial BBQ because it is so true!), then I tend to be vague and change the subject. I'll say I'm a student at X University. Thankfully, X university happens to be a huge football school so I can talk about how the football team is doing -or- if it is off season, I can talk about my initial experience with going to a football school and comparing it to my undergrad which was not a football school. I try to make it light and funny on my comparisons so usually by that point we are laughing and sharing stories. For the most part, people who ask me "what I do?" usually are just looking for a conversation starter. There are some rare occasions where people are genuinely interested and I'll have a conversation with them about it, but for the most part people's jobs are kinda boring and most people don't want to hear the nitty gritty details of your daily work/student life. I would say be slightly more vague if you think what you are saying is turning them off and/or segue into other topics or a random anecdote about student life.

Great topic! My 30 second pitch is: I study higher education policies mainly focusing on college affordability and early college programs in high school. I evaluate these types of policies to determine what is the impact of the policy on specific outcomes - usually college attendance and/or college completion and I also look at whether the policies/program are a good use of limited governmental resources. And because I was curious, I timed my pitch - 24 seconds - not bad if I do say so myself

Thanks all for your comments and suggestions! I really thought a lot about what you all said, what I wanted to be the goals of the group, and whether I still wanted to propose such a group. In the end, I decided on an modified version of what I was thinking about originally and I put in some very minimum guidelines in my initial invitation email (attendance, amount of work expected) with the hope that people who didn't feel like they can meet the minimum requirements will decide not to join. I also just proposed it for the summer so if it is not working out it can be easily dissolved. Hopefully, it will be a productive experience!

I will echo the chorus and say that this behavior is not normal and you need to get out - like yesterday! Is there a possibility of a co-chair with the ass't professor and dept chair? To me that seems like it could be a good solution just in case the ass't professor doesn't get tenure and then you will also have the network/political power of the dept chair. This assumes that they would work well together because if not yea, just pick one. I would not leave your old chair on your committee though (I think you wrote that somewhere but I can't seem to find it). That seems like a recipe for disaster especially given her prior behavior and I would worry that she would sink your chances and make your life more hellish. Not at all the same situation by a long shot, but I also had to make the awkward decision of switching midstream to a new research team after my third year. I knew I needed to get out and I knew I was unhappy, but I didn't want to deal with the politics of making the switch and ruffling feathers. Well let me tell you, I am *so* happy that I did because it was definitely worth it and I am much more productive and happy on my new team.

As I'm in the throws of writing my dissertation proposal, it can be an isolating and sometimes frustrating process that it would be helpful to get feedback on certain sections before I submit them to my chair. I recently came across advice to create a dissertation writing group to help with the process. Does anyone have experience with dissertation writing groups? Did you find it helpful? How did you structure it? Did you commit to ground rules in the beginning or did they form organically as you went along? The one group thing of this nature that I was involved in I have mixed feelings about. My cohortmates and I studied for our comprehensive exams together two summers ago. Overall, I think it was positive, but ended on a meh note. At the end of the summer, it got to a point where people's schedules did not align anymore and there was a lot of back and forth trying to find alternative times, but we couldn't seem to satisfy a decent number regardless of the time proposed so eventually the group dissolved which was unfortunate because when we did meet it was helpful and productive. I am concerned that something similar will happen again and I am trying to figure out how to reduce this possibility. I *really* don't want this group to turn into a time suck where I am spending a significant amount of time trying to find a time to meet that it takes away from working on my dissertation.

Since a lot of master's programs are classes - use your electives wisely. Don't be afraid to take classes outside of your department or the school of education! In my master's program, I took a PhD-level course in Cognitive Science and it was pretty awesome. So explore! To maximize your chance to be employable after graduation, don't just do classes. Get an assistantship, internship, teaching, or research position. As education tends to value experience a lot, you want to make sure that you are securing positions that are similar to what you want to do after you graduate. I had a 2 year assistantship and two semester long graduate internships. While I was extremely busy, it helped me to narrow down what I wanted to do after graduation and gave me the necessary experience to secure a job relatively quickly. Make friends with your cohort mates. These people will be the start of your professional network when you graduate and can be extremely helpful to you in the future. Also -- it makes the program much more enjoyable to have people to study with and commiserate with when times are tough in the semester. Also --utilize the older students in the program. Ask for course recommendations and good places to do internships/assistantships. And if you are all interested in going on to your PhD -- make sure you have a good relationship with at least one ideally two professors in your program. And try to get involved in research during your master's. It will give you some good insight on whether the PhD makes sense for you in the future. Particularly helpful if you are not sure whether you want to go on or not.

Congrats, JBums! Glad to hear that this cycle worked out for you.

Actually, higher ed is one of those great fields where there are a good number of quality programs that fully funded their master's students by offering them assistantships. These assistantships* are (usually) part-time staff member positions in an office on campus. A good assistantship offers you tuition remission, guaranteed salary, and healthcare. It is been over 10 years (!) since I applied to master's programs, but when I was going through the process the places that fully funded their master's students were: University of Connecticut, University of Vermont, Ohio State, University of Maryland, Bowling Green, Penn State, and Michigan State. And I am sure a bunch others -- I was only looking at East coast and Midwest schools at the time. *It gets a little bit confusing because some programs call a part-time job on campus - an "assistantship" when they are not offering any of the benefits of an assistantship i.e. no tuition remission, healthcare, or guaranteed salary. Instead, I like to think of these part-time jobs as paid "internships" because they only offer an hourly wage that can range a fair amount depending on the job. So you will get the experience which is great, but you won't get the great financial benefits of a true assistantship which is unfortunate. NASPA (an organization for student affairs professionals if you are not familiar) has a search feature on their website: http://apps.naspa.org/gradprograms/search.cfm that you can click off master's program and "assistantships" under the financial aid options and it will give you a list of programs that meet your criteria. That being said some programs say they have an "assistantship," but it is more of an internship (as mentioned above) so you'll want to independently verify the ones that are listed to make sure they are true assistantships. I think there are a lot of different pathways you can take to make you a competitive applicant. In terms of picking a good master's higher ed program that will prepare you -- I always like to first look at the curriculum to make sure you are at least being introduced to statistics and research methods. Since PhD programs are all about the research, in your master's program -- you'll want to take ideally three classes: a class on statistics, a class on research design, and class on qualitative methods. You'll also want to know what is the culminating experience of the program. Is it a comprehensive exam, a capstone paper, or a thesis? Or is there no culminating experience? Just classes, internship component, and you are done. A comprehensive exam and/or a thesis/capstone paper are more aligned with what you'll do in a PhD program so you might want to lean towards those programs instead of just straight classes programs. Also -- since you know which area you want to study, go to programs where the faculty study the topics that you are interested in and try to get involved in research with them. Some programs make it harder than others for their master's students to get involved in research -- but you can always reach out to current master's students and ask. Since SHIP is your dream school -- see if they have profiles of their PhD students so you can take a look at where these students did their master's. I know in my program, we have some limited profiles of PhD students who chose to have their information displayed so prospective students can reach out to them. If SHIP doesn't have profiles, you could also search LinkedIn for SHIP PhDs and read their pages to get a sense of their experience and where they went for their master's degree. Also, you could always contact SHIP and ask what makes a competitive PhD applicant to their program and see what their recommendations are for good higher ed master's programs. Good luck!

In my program - a top 10 PhD program in Higher Ed -- it is not technically necessary to do a master's before the PhD - it is just that people who haven't done a master's don't tend to be that competitive in the application pool. I sat on the admissions committee this year - and the people that didn't have master's that applied for the PhD got referred to the Master's admissions pool. We do have a couple students in the program currently that didn't do a master's before the PhD, but they had a lot of research experience (2+ years) in higher ed with known higher ed scholars during college. So it is definitely possible - but I would say difficult if you are looking to enroll in a selective program. The two typically pathways* that you will see for higher ed PhD students: (1) work - master's - work - PhD or (2) work - master's - PhD. There are some variations, of course, but this is generally the two trajectories. *You need to realize that higher ed PhD students tend to be older (late 20s - early 40s) than the typical social science PhD students and definitely science PhD students. Science PhD students don't tend to do master's degrees unless their credentials are not strong enough to do the PhD right away - this is not the case for most competitive higher education programs especially since there is no undergraduate degrees in higher ed. This assumes you want to do a selective higher ed PhD. There are a bunch of non-selective programs that you would definitely be able to get in w/o a master's.

If I understand your post correctly -- you are thinking of leaving before you have even started at your institution? That seems a bit unusual to me. Is this the norm for you when embarking on plans of this nature? If it is normal that you like to think through worst case scenarios because it helps to calm your nerves about a decision with potentially uncertain outcomes then okay -- keep on digging about what will happen if you leave w/o graduating. If this is not the norm for you - I wonder if your gut is trying to tell you something either this isn't the right time for you or this isn't the right program for you. Generally, people come in either positive or at least neutral to their PhD program. It's going to be a lot harder for you if you are already planning your escape so to speak. And since you mention salary concerns -- I would speak to current students about how they manage and I would try to get a better understanding of the cost of living in your program location. If the financial package that the program offers is not going to allow you to cover living costs you could either try to negotiate a higher package (if possible) or turn them down. If you decide to go and then drop out after 1 year -- you are going to be out the moving and transition costs and potentially not have anything to show for it if they won't award you a master's degree. That does not seem like an ideal situation either.

Since it sounds like you have already started this conversation with your POI, I would just bring it up at your one-on-one meeting with him/her during your campus visit. A conversation opener about it could be: "You mentioned that you may have funding for students in your email and I wanted to follow up with you about this because funding it a very critical component in my decision making process. Do you know whether you will be able to offer me any funding?" I would just stop talking at that point and see what the response is. If the response is yes -- I would assume at that point he/she would let you know what that entails. I would also ask current students about the typical funding package so you have a general idea what the funding situation is in the dept and you'll know how to compare what your POI offered you to what the norm is for your department. If the response is no -- you need to ask whether it is possible if funding will come available later in the admission season (when other students decline) or whether funding will never be possible for you. You also want to know whether there are university funds that you can apply to. However -- if they are not willing to fund you at all in a PhD program - I would strongly urge you not to attend. Not only will you go into a substantial amount of debt that will be difficult to pay off in the education field, you won't get the necessary training and mentoring that comes with RAing or TAing for a professor. And to put your mind at ease -- funding is a very normal conversation to have when you are visiting campuses. It is important to know how you are going to pay for tuition and your living expenses during the 4 - 6 years it takes to complete a PhD.

Have you been offered an aid package and you are trying to get a better offer? Or have you been offered nothing and are trying to get any aid package? My answer would change depending on which one it is.

When I read articles like this, I often wonder what the heck happened during this person's PhD? It just reads to me like "this is the life of a tenured-track professor and *surprise* I had *NO* idea?!" It just seems so odd to me that this person never had a discussion with their professors about the lifestyle of an academic and whether they thought they were well suited towards this type of career. It just makes me wonder - did they think they wanted this and then when they had it, it wasn't for them? Or did they go forward with this career path, but didn't really think about what it would mean once they were on it? I also wonder whether they had worked before in a professional capacity because some of these issues are not unique to academia i.e. travel, public speaking, committee work, mentorship and personnel management, and providing recommendations. Definitely the tenure process is unique and high stakes - but other professions (the health fields or law fields for example) have high stakes tests or trial residency periods too. I am just always baffled when articles like these come out and makes me wonder what happened?! and how do we do better in PhD programs to provide more information on academia and non-academic career pathways so that people are satisfied or at least neutral with their post-PhD life.

It seems like you are really trying to make a public/private distinction rather than a quality distinction because there are public and private schools at each level of quality. Unfortunately - not all PhD programs in Education are fully funded. Some are known for funding only a small proportion of their PhD students like Columbia. Other places you have to apply year-to-year to receive funding. I heard UCLA was like this at some point, but hopefully they have changed their model. I guess you could argue that at places like UPenn and Harvard have higher stipends than places like Michigan and Penn State - but the cost of living in Philadelphia and Cambridge is a lot higher than in Ann Arbor and University Park so you would need to take that into consideration. Ultimately - you want to find a place that offers you 4 - 5 years of guaranteed funding which can be found at both private and public schools. It just tends to vary a lot within subdisciplines of education so I doubt anyone can really make an accurate generalization given that we don't know your subdiscipline. I could tell you about higher ed, but that is only important if that is your area because how educ policy or curriculum & instruction (for example) fund students can be very different. Personally - my funding packages varied a lot in terms of the amount of the stipend, how many years of guaranteed funding, and whether the stipend covered 9 or 12 months of work. Once you can cover living expenses with your stipend, usually you base your decision on other factors. You also want to know whether the funding requires you to do research or teach. If your ultimate goal is to be a professor at a R1, you'll want to chose a funding package with more research over teaching.

Rising_star raises all good points. The other thing I would think about if you stay and he leaves, but he is still willing to be your primary advisor -- is that really the best for you? I would worry that so early in your program - not having a faculty member physically in your dept that currently knows you well may be very detrimental when you run into hiccups along the way. He won't have much if any power in your department if or when you need him to advocate on your behalf. Also how well do you work with this person? If you work well together and there is no one else that has similar enough research interests or you feel like you could work well with, it might make more sense to follow your advisor to his new institution. You could also see if he could negotiate with the dept and get you waived out of certain first year requirements so perhaps you will only lose a semester - but not a year. And yes - definitely check on the funding situation. That is also important.

I am assuming you are applying to master's programs? If you are straight from undergrad and you are applying to top tier programs that fund their applicants - you will be competing with a lot of people and not having full-time work experience is going to be seen as a negative. If you are applying to programs that assume that you'll pay for most of your education and you are not getting acceptances, I would assume it might have to do with either your SOP or your letters of rec as your GPA is good and GREs don't tend to be weighted too heavily in higher ed programs. But honestly - it's seems a bit too early to tell. You still have 2 apps pending. I would distract myself as much as possible while waiting for the decisions. If those apps aren't successful - then it might be a blessing in disguise. You'll be able to apply for full-time positions in higher ed which will give you the necessary background to make the most out of your higher ed master's and will give you some savings (hopefully!) to help supplement your income for when you do decide to go back to school.

Education programs tend to draw people from a wide variety of academic backgrounds. I know in my master's and doctoral cohorts, there were few people that had education bachelor's degrees. The main thing that tends to tie people together is that they have experience in the education field. You don't mention your experience -- do you have any? You also mention that you are interested in education policy, but that is a broad topic area. In education policy, it tends to divide into K - 12 issues or higher ed issues usually. (There is also some K - 16 issues but that deals with the transition from high school to college generally.) Then, the field further divides into specific subtopics such as policies around educating teachers, or policies around how to finance schools, or policies around access to higher ed. Which subtopic area(s) interest you the most? Once you have those answers - it will be easier to develop a compelling narrative in your SOP about why a master's in education is right for you.

I believe someone mentioned this up thread, but usually working in undergraduate admissions or financial aid post bachelor's degree are really good areas to look into as they hire a decent amount of people to work as counselors and there seems to be a fair amount of turn over each year. You would also be able to build some transferable skills that you can use as an academic advisor as usually you get to meet with students and their families. All of the academic advisors that I know (which is about a handful) worked somewhere else in higher ed (student affairs, admissions, financial aid, res life) and then transferring over to academic advising after working for a couple years in the other area. I am assuming that you are asking about my job search right after my master's degree? It was fairly painless - I secured a job in the semester that I was graduating along with the rest of my cohort who were also looking. (There were a couple people who were part-time so they were staying with their jobs for now.) I secured a job in institutional research which is a mix of higher ed admin and educ research so not as traditional as some of the entry-level jobs that you see graduating higher ed master's students getting. Although that being said - I think it is becoming more popular as I notice there are now classes being taught on the topic in higher ed depts and some schools have certificates in IR. The majority of my cohort ended up either in admissions or academic advising/affairs. I also graduated in the early stages of the great recession which I was really lucky as a couple months later a lot of the universities had hiring freezes and were asking staff members to take pay cuts. Also there just seemed to be a lot of entry level IR positions open so I was able to be more choosy about the positions that I applied to. The most challenging aspects I found was trying to finish up my program (it required a comprehensive exam and final seminar paper that was around 30-40 pages while I was also taking another class), working my 20 hr assistantship, and flying around the country for the multi day job interviews that is typical in the field. It was a very busy semester!

That sounds like a good plan i.e. trying to get work study status. I also wouldn't be too concerned if I was you if you need to take a couple gap years between your undergrad and master's. It is fairly typically for the field as a whole to see "older" graduate students given that the field values experience. In my master's program, about 1/2 of the people were in their mid 20's and the other 1/2 were early to mid 30's. I had two years of experience between my undergrad and master's degree and I would say experience wise that was on the low end compared to the rest of my cohort mates. I would also say that I was a more attractive candidate with my two years of experience + my master's degree than I would have been with just the master's degree when I was searching for jobs. So yes while it is important to get into a program - you also want to think long term and set yourself up nicely for multiple job offers when you graduate. The other option is work full-time in higher ed and attend a program part-time which is not atypical for the field.

I am going to go against the grain and recommend that you have a clearer idea of what you want to study in a PhD program before you start selecting schools. It is not clear to me why you would want to study higher ed specifically. Based on your experience so far - it seems like you would be a better fit for an Applied Linguistic/ESL PhD program not a Higher Ed PhD, This assumes that you want to do research - which I am not convinced that you do. Ultimately - you want to select PhD programs that have professors that you want to work with because their research interests overlap with yours. Picking schools based on whether they require you to submit GRE scores or not is not a good selection criteria especially given that taking the test is only a couple hours of your life compared to being stuck in a program that is a poor fit for you for the 5+ years it takes to complete a PhD. It just doesn't make much sense... I also would narrow down what you really want to do and then decide whether you actually need the PhD. I am not convinced that you need a PhD (at all). I also recommend that you get work experience in higher ed before you decide this is the career path for you.

It might be better for you to finish your bachelor's and then try to find a job in student affairs/higher ed for a couple years. Then after about 2-3 years of working in the field, apply for a master's degree in higher ed/student affairs. The other problem is since the field values experience a lot, I am not sure how much you are going to get out of grad school without having some experience to draw from to be able to talk about in the classroom. Ultimately, you want to be competitive for a program that is going to fully fund you (pay tuition, offer a stipend, and give you healthcare). As these programs tend to be competitive, it is going to be hard to secure an assistantship without any experience especially since you will be competing against other people who have experience. You might be able to get into a program where you will need to self pay. The problem is that these programs are expensive and they cost more than what your entry level salary is going to be. Also, sometimes the professional experiences that they offer are not adequate to secure a job in the field after you graduate which is definitely concerning. I think your best bet is to take a couple years off between undergrad and grad school to work on getting the experience so you'll be more competitive to apply to programs that are going to fund you.

Yes, but the OP is not someone straight from undergrad so while it is understandable that someone straight from undergrad is going to have limited experience, it is going to more difficult to reconcile why someone who is in their late 20s wants to change fields. Granted late 20's is still young so it is definitely doable - but you are going to need to come up with a believable story of why you want to work in student affairs/higher ed. Unfortunately, what you wrote so far of really enjoying school is not going to put an admission committees fear to rest that you don't know what it is like to work in the field. In some areas - it is low pay for long hours and a good proportion of young professionals in student affairs end up leaving the field in their first couple of years. It is not even clear to me what you want to do in the field. This is where experience comes into play. If you can say I volunteered at this education organization or I am a mentor for first generation college students or I interned in the x,y,z office in this university it will help the adcom see that you understand what this work is about and are serious about this career change. The problem is there is this idea that working in a university is a plum job - great pay for little work - so it is not uncommon to see career changers decide that they now want to work in a university because they are burnt out working in business, consulting, etc. The problem is you need to convince people that you don't have a rosier view of the field than what it is and one way to do that is to couple your experience in the field with a compelling story.

Since it sounds like you are dealing with a lot of back and forth - I would just give them a deadline for this to be resolved or you can no longer work there. I would give about 3-4 days to resolve it as it sounds like this has been dragging on for a couple weeks now. I would tell your PIs and HR the deadline and explain that if it is not resolved by that date that you can no longer work in the lab as you need to seek out paid employment to cover your living and moving expenses. Although since it sounds like this lab, department, and possibly university has some serious issues, this might be a good excuse to just walk away now. Sometimes it is better to heed the red flags when you see them. It also sounds like you are really not getting much in return from this internship. The environment sounds terrible as all of your coworkers (fellow grad students) are miserable, you don't have the necessary equipment to do the research, and you don't have IRB approval for the research. I am also not sure why you are contemplating going into debt to continue to work there?! Don't put one credit of tuition on your credit card in order to get paid! Clearly, the other grad students are not getting paid either so it sounds like there is a money flow problem in general not that you are not a student anymore. As I have previously hired students once they have graduated to continue working in my office at a university - it is not that difficult. There must be other issues going on that they are not telling you about or that your PIs are so disorganized that they can't go through the right channels to get it done. I am not seeing any benefits for continuing to work there except for maybe some contacts that you would like to get from one of your PIs. That doesn't seem enough of a pro to continue to put up with this situation. If it was me, I would schedule a meeting with both of your PIs (or I guess email if they are difficult to meet with because they are so busy) and tell them that this situation is not working out (you can go as much or as little detail as you want to go into that - or- you can entirely blame it on not being paid and not being able to affordable to continue to work there if that seems easier) and say that your last day is X and that you will hand over all your notes/documents on the research to them on your last day. I would schedule my last day to be in a couple days. Two weeks notice is not warranted here as they have not held up their end of the bargain.

I meant more service to the institution or the field. Usually if you hold a position in your professional organization or you are a member of a committee for your department or university, they get listed under service. You could definitely put external volunteer positions, but I only do that if it directly relates to the job. This is more for your post master's resume. For your application to your program - I would just make sure you include any experience where you potentially might want an assistantship in that area. So if you got res life, civic engagement, and admissions - definitely list them all because then you can get offered interviews (and hopefully assistantships!) for all of those offices.