Gradschool ROI

One of our assignments is to do a cost-benefit analysis of grad school and to calculate an ROI. The thing is, the ROI depends on what you study and if you get your degree. So for my analysis, I will assume the degree is completed. I've tried to assign weights based on the following criteria: magnitude, importance, frequency of occurrence, strength of connection to grad school.

Since I expect most students in the class will analyze the M.Ed program, I decided to do mine on a Ph.D. (in mathematics) instead, so that there's a bit more variety in our results. I'll try to list cost and benefits related to a mathematics Ph.D. in general, not necessarily my personal costs and benefits.The rating is indicated by *'s. The use of 'grad school' below will always refer to getting a doctorate mathematics.

Costs

1. Financial (*): They pay you a stipend for teaching and wave tuition. Sometimes there's university supported housing as well. It's not a lot, but it's definitely enough to live on and you don't take on debt.
2. Time (****): Graduate school is at least a 4 (usually 5) year fulltime commitment. We were expected to do at least 56 hours a week. During your first year and during qualifying exams it could often be more. However, it was fairly flexible as to when and where that time was spent.
3. Opportunity Costs (**): While you're in grad school, you're not working at a job getting money and rank. You've also limited your other options (travel, major hobbies, etc.)
4. Commitment (**): Once you get over a year in, you really have to see it through in order to see much return. It's a major commitment and needs to supersede a lot of other commitments. (This partly overlaps with time and opportunity costs.)
   
5. Mindshare(*): You spend a lot of time thinking about your work and it takes up a lot of mindspace.
6. Miscellaneous (*): Being consider overqualified for some jobs, hyperspecilization, spam from the university, stress, etc.
   

Total Costs: 11

Benefits

1. Employment Opportunities (****): There are many jobs that are only open to you if you have a Ph.D.
2. Salary Increase (***): Having a Ph.D. tends to start you off with a higher salary and the available jobs often pay more as well.
3. Status (**): Having "Dr." in front of your name does mean something to some people.
   
4. New Skills and Information (***): You've learned a lot, particularly with regards to research (and perhaps teaching).
5. Confidence (*): Having completed a doctoral thesis can be a confidence builder.
6. Networking (*): You meet a lot of people in your field and have many networking opportunities.
7. Resources, Publications & Seminars (*): You acquire a lot of texts and notes that are good resources for your field. You have the opportunity (and expectation) to publish your work and give talks on it. This provides long term benefits in your field.
8. Miscellaneous (*): You don't have to decided what you want to do with your life, you avoid the real world, etc.
   

Total Benefits: 16

ROI =16/11=45%

Personally, I feel this ROI calculation is a little silly, because it is so volatile and subjective. At first I didn't have a miscellaneous costs category and had the skills benefit at 4. This gave me a 17/10=70% ROI. Very slight changes totally skew this number. It might be okay for a personal assessment on if gradschool might be personally worth it to me (and giving very personal ratings to everything), but for anything else I think you can get the number to be nearly anything you want.