Is It Too Late For Me To Go Back To College For An Advanced Degree?

Returning to school and earning an advanced degree is often recommended for professionals seeking to increase their opportunities and potential income. But what if you’re in the later stages of your career? Returning to school when you’re thirty-five years old is a much different decision than when you’re fifty-five

This scenario is more complex than you might think, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. A comprehensive assessment of your circumstances and targeted research to determine the time and resources you will need to consider the following:

1. Are you employed or unemployed? If you’re employed, there are many obstacles to getting a new degree. If you’re going to be unemployed, you may not have the luxury of not working and earning an income while getting a new degree.
2. How much time do you have left in your professional career before you want to retire? Twenty year? Five years? If you’re on the last mile of your career, there may not be a good reason to spend half of it earning a degree that will only be useful for a short time. The economics may not make sense. The return on your investment may be minimal or non-existent. Do the research and see if a cost-benefit analysis works in your favor or not.
3. If you are employed, will you continue working while you earn your degree, or will you have to temporarily leave the workforce? There are no good answers to this question. If you’re employed and plan on earning a degree with a full-time job and whatever other responsibilities you have (see question #6), you will be faced with the unenviable task of maintaining performance standards at work and passing your classes with flying colors. Leaving the workforce, even if it’s just temporary and to earn an advanced degree, can be a dagger in the heart of your future, especially given the rapid pace of technology that drives business. For example, nobody was talking about AI a couple of years ago. Now, it’s about to transform everything we do. No matter what degree you earn, even if it’s in AI, being out of the workforce will put you behind the curve.
4. Will you be paying for the degree, or will your company pay or contribute to the cost? Earning a degree is a very large investment in your future. The reality of higher education is that it’s expensive and, in many cases, prohibitively expensive. According to Grantford.org, “The average cost of annual tuition for a four-year degree is twenty-three times higher than it was in 1963 – that’s 747.8% in sixty years.” (Grantford.org, August 2024). The increase applies to many types of degrees, not just four-year degrees, and tuition is not the entire cost.
5. If you’re footing the bill yourself, do you have the money or do you have to take out a loan? If you’re rolling in money, then there’s nothing to discuss. You just have to be willing to spend it on education with no guaranteed expectation that you will make it back plus more. If you’re less than independently wealthy, there is enough anecdotal evidence to say with confidence that taking out student loans is a double-edged sword. Young workers face a grueling, sometimes insurmountable, process of paying back thousands and thousands of dollars in loans with interest. There is no dollar store for education, and you’re not young, are you? You could take out a student loan that won’t be paid back until you’re well north of the standard retirement age. Once again, do a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the cost of a loan will benefit you in the long run (no matter how short it is).
6. Do you have the time to work, study to earn a degree, and fulfill your other responsibilities? Everybody is busy, especially working professionals whose responsibilities don’t end when they leave the office. Do you have the bandwidth to “do it all?” The easy answer is “yes,” but you really need to think about it. If you do, well done. But if you don’t, you may end up doing a mediocre job at work, school, and home.
7. Do you have the skills and fortitude to go back to school? Not everybody thrives in the classroom. If you haven’t been in one in a long time, adjusting to being in that environment may be more difficult than you believe. However, if you are attending in-person classes, you are subject to a predetermined schedule, a syllabus, and a structured environment. If you are earning a degree through online classes,  you must have a high level of discipline to study and complete the required work on your own. Do you? Be honest.
8. Would you be better served by a professional certification instead of degree? By now, you may have concluded that continued education late in life is like the 100m hurdles. You may not have the money or time for a degree. However, there is a cottage industry of reputable and valued certifications designed for working professionals that are less expensive, require less time, and may be more aligned with the exact work you’ve been doing for years. Earning a professional certification(s) may be a better route and coould translate to positive ROI in less time.
9. With new skills, will you be in demand as an older worker? You may. That said, you’re the old dog that’s learned new tricks, but employers often want a puppy. Age discrimination is illegal but very real and very difficult to prove, especially for a job seeker. This dovetails with whether or not you’re going to temporarily leave the workforce to earn a degree. You will contend with a gap on your resume, and the advantages of having a new degree may be canceled out by being two, three, or four years older.
10. Do you need to work, well, forever? Unfortunately, our boom and bust, and bust, and bust economy is not designed for workers, even the ones who would be traditionally considered “successful.” Lucrative professions are not inoculated from external factors. Two recent examples are the Wall Street-caused global economic crash of 2008, which ushered in the Great Recession, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Sadly, many “seasoned” highly skilled professionals will have no choice but to work until they literally cannot work anymore. If you fall into that category, earning an advanced degree may be a golden ticket to your golden years… if you’ve got the money.

Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.