I strongly support…..

It is this time of the year again, when Chinese students all over the country are applying en masse to post-graduate studies in the UK. Requests for references pile up on the desks of teaching staff and email boxes are full with anxious emails “Dear Professor, did you write…”, “Dear Doctor… I would like to apply, can you kindly” and so on. Nervous students sit in the office hours, clinging to their folders in which they have neatly filed printouts from the webpages of the universities to which they want to apply. Yet, when asked what exactly they want to do, why they want to do a post-graduate degree and what they expect from post-graduate studies, students more often than not give you a blank look. Better job chances, the reputation of the universities, and the parents’ will are sometimes mentioned but overall, very often students do not seem to have very clear ideas of what they want to achieve with post-graduate studies. Even the question if they really need post-graduate studies remains unanswered. A couple of weeks ago I had a student in my office who had a wonderful plan of what she would like to do after her studies but as all her classmates were applying for post-graduate studies she felt that she needed to do so, too, even though this would not contribute anything to her original career plan.
What is the purpose of post-graduate studies? Mainly there are two purposes which are not mutually exclusive but, indeed, of different nature. One, a student wants to gain a deeper understanding of a topic area, a research area, or wants to gain the prerequisites for a professional accreditation. It is this higher qualification that makes Postgraduates find jobs with a higher starting salary. However, it is important to note that this relationship between higher qualified jobs and post-graduate degree exists only in one direction. It is most common that for a higher starting salary people need higher qualified degrees but it is not necessarily so that because you have a post-graduate degree that you will get a job with a higher starting salary. It can even happen that the number of jobs to which you can apply will be restricted through post-graduate studies as you are now “over-qualified”. Many jobs actually do not require many years of study but, rather on the contrary, a variety of professional experiences. Students should sincerely think about spending the year after graduation rather doing internships and making diverse real-work experiences then spending another year for more studies. Also, quite a number of companies prefer taking on “young” graduates to train them to the needs of their company then recruiting “older”, highly qualified but already specialized post-graduates.
But what if you feel that you do still have things to learn before you can go on the job market? In this case, it is important to think carefully about what you want to do in your future life and what kind of qualification you need to gain additionally to your undergraduate degree. The standard answer, especially if Chinese parents are asked, is “business” in whatever form but this is not a good answer for two reasons. First, it is widely accepted that, notably in China, there are “too many” … too many post-graduate, too many business graduates, too many young people looking for a job etc. And up to a certain point this is true, however, “too many” also always depends on the environment in which you are. If you take the bus at 5 o’clock in the afternoon when everybody in Ningbo takes the bus, then indeed, there are too many people on the bus. If you take the bus at 11 o’clock when nobody takes the bus you might find yourself all alone. If you do what everybody does then it is, indeed, very likely that you will be in this mass of people who are “too many”. Business is consequently only a good answer to your career question if a business post-graduate degree will allow you to take the bus at 11 o’clock, i.e. to continue to be distinctive, special and different from the masses. If not, if you want to do business simply because everyone does it, then you are heading directly for the masses and are bound to disappear in the category “too many”. In this case, you might rather think about what else you would like to do and what job would actually make YOU distinctive, special and sticking out. This means that you need to evaluate sincerely your strengths, your interests and your potential. Without such an honest introspection any “I want to be…” is as realistic as a 5-year old’s “I want to be a fireman”. But let’s say you think that you are good in analyzing complex social processes (as proven in your history and politics essays), let’s say you also like organizing events and associations (as you did in your 2nd year at UNNC’s student associations), you furthermore like travelling and are open to foreign cultures (as you have shown through your travels, foreign languages etc.), and additionally you are really interested in how public health services in China could be made to work better (because maybe your granny has had a major operation in a not top-standard hospital somewhere and is now suffering from the consequences). Did you know that there are Master degrees in international public health? Or Master degrees in humanitarian assistance? Or in development and health?
There are many, many very specialized master degrees which prepare students for jobs in specific areas beyond simply “business”, i.e. public health, social work, development assistance, public administration management, education, libraries and archives etc. etc. These master degrees will teach you the bits of business, of law, of organization, of theoretical knowledge, of case studies etc. that you will need to get a job in these areas. But you can only find these if you have a concrete idea of what you want to learn, and therefore you need to know what you can do and like to do. If you want to do post-graduate studies for better job chances, then you need to start with an honest assessment of what you want to do.
However, this might be exactly the question you do not want to answer. This is then the second reason for doing a post-graduate degree. Maybe you want to spend one more year in the cozy shell of a university, reflecting on the wide and deep destiny of the world. If your (or your parents’) purse agrees with this, then this is indeed a very legitimate reason for post-graduate studies. Originally, universities were always meant to be spaces for thought that has no immediate use, no immediate function, no immediate purpose but is an end in itself. Many young people need this free space to discover the world and themselves and to find through these discoveries their vocation. In this case, your choice of post-graduate studies should be guided by your intellectual curiosity and not by league tables or fancy MA titles. Here too, it is very important to make sure that you know what you want to learn and where you can do so best. The most fancy universities in the hippest cities might offer the most boring, standard curriculum; the biggest names might hide very distant and mediated teaching. Just to give my own example: I never went to the US for studies because in my area, international relations, the US was everywhere – we were using American textbooks, reading American theorists, discussing American case studies and referring to American debates. So, I decided that there was no need to go to the US but rather to places where the quality of research was one of the best kept secrets, in my case, to France. This way I could have both: the excellent research and teaching in France, and the US research which was available through publications and visiting lecturers.
So, think first about yourself and what you want to do before choosing your post-graduate studies (if at all) and the university you want to go to. You should first of all consider your interests and only then ranking tables and the like. You might also find exactly what you need just in front of you, at UNNC where we offer a variety of post-graduate degrees. We will always be happy to support such well reflected choices!