Is it bullshit?

[booknut]

Hi, I'm putting this thread here since the forum dealing with my professional degree is pretty inactive.

 

I'm in the final stages, (I hope), of a particularly onerous application process to one of the schools I hope to attend.

 

This morning, I woke up at 4:30 with the bald question: A graduate school degree (as opposed to trade school)....why can't I just go to school and learn something? Why this lengthy, expensive application process? Are they going to teach me something useful? Is this a cover for bullshit?

 

Your thoughts, please, and thank you.

[Pauli]

why can't I just go to school and learn something? Why this lengthy, expensive application process?

 

Supply and demand. There are only so many seats in the classroom, buildings to hold those seats, qualified instructors and professors to teach those courses, etc. With many applicants, the admissions committee has to carefully consider the best fit applicants.  If they just accept anyone, then lower-quality students will degrade the program since on-going and emerging research would have less chances to succeed (so decreased opportunities to fund future projects from funders) and less successful students graduating (so less companies willing to donate resources).

 

Are they going to teach me something useful? Is this a cover for bullshit?

 

That might not be the right question to ask. The better question is whether you are willing to learn something useful in grad school. Grad school is where you have to learn to take the initiative to learn while there. They're not going to spoonfeed you should and should not know; that would be what trade schools do.

[TakeruK]

Another way to phrase Pauli's answer to the first question is to think of it as "allocation of resources" as well as a "supply and demand" thing. Grad school applications work in a similar way as e.g. research funding grant. To make a very simple analogy -- NASA has allocated $X billion for research, and they aren't just going to equally divide the money to all scientifically valid projects. Instead, they hold a competition to determine what is the best way they can allocate their resources in order to get the most science/goodness out. Similarly, grad schools cannot simply admit every single qualified student. They have to allocate their resources (time, effort, classroom space, people power etc.) in order to get the most "goodness" (I guess in this case, the quantity and quality of skilled workers) out. In short, the school would rather spend their time training the best students to reach their maximum potential instead of training everyone to some equal level of goodness.

 

For the second question about whether they will teach you something useful, I think that's actually a very good question to ask. Grad school (whether it's a research degree or a professional degree) is a big commitment of time and finances. It's important to critically think about whether or not the grad school will actually meet your goals before making this commitment. I always tell people that they should not go to grad school if the only thing they want to do is learn. Learning is a big part of career development and grad school, but that is not a strong enough reason to do this. I think it is very important to determine what your career goals are and identify how you can reach them. If grad school is what is necessary (either because you will learn important skills there, or because the certification is simply required for the career you want) then go do it. Otherwise, pursue what you need for your career instead -- there are a lot of other ways to satisfy your desire to learn about the field without going into grad school. 

[socioholic]

Hmmm...

I think it depends on what you want to do. Trade school will lead you to, probably, a job and perhaps if you have the motivation, a small business of some kind.

Graduate school, depending on how far you intend to go, is training for you to contribute to the field of study and not just work within it.

With that said, I have a masters degree in library science (it says this is your field). good luck with that.