Some of the most popular graduate degrees don’t pay off, study finds

(NewsNation) — Some of the most popular graduate degrees don’t seem to offer much, if any, financial return once costs are factored in — or at least that’s the takeaway from a report published this week by the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University.

Economists Joseph Altonji and Zhengren Zhu, using administrative data from Texas, found that graduate programs boost students’ earnings by about 17 percent on average, though returns vary widely by field.

Most popular graduate programs with highest returns

Across 18 of the most popular graduate programs, pharmacy (PharmD), medicine (MD) and law (JD) delivered the highest returns, increasing students’ earnings by 114 percent, 110 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

By comparison, returns were significantly lower for programs like business administration (16 percent), social work (7 percent) and clinical psychology (4 percent).

But those gains don’t tell the full story. Once factors like tuition costs and foregone earnings are taken into account, the........

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