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There's also sunk cost fallacy at work. People get into something like Education, then spend a semester in a teaching practicum or something and hate it. But t

There's also sunk cost fallacy at work. People get into something like Education, then spend a semester in a teaching practicum or something and hate it. But they've invested years into it so they forge ahead. Not sure how that would translate into a Master's degree though. Maybe post-secondary inertia. You get the Bachelor's, then still don't know what you want to do so you just forge ahead with more school.

WorldMaker 5y ago
There's also "degree inflation" to take into account. There are so many people in the labor force with university degrees that it stops being a differentiator in the marketplace so job descriptions update to a new differentiator and start requiring post-grad degrees. Soon after entire school districts require a Masters degree to even start the interview process. Then that becomes enough of a norm that Universities pick up on that and make it a part of their positioning/marketing/"good advice" to students: you need at least a Masters if you want a job, so you should plan for a Masters. Targeted schools start to appear such as 5-year Masters programs designed to build so much inertia (taking Masters courses alongside junior/senior undergrad courses) and indeed sunk cost that the Masters seems like the natural outcome rather than the optional "next step". (Disclaimer: my own graduate degree was probably an expensive mistake that sometimes I regret and sometimes I'm quite proud of even if the job market doesn't care. My experience is not entirely related to the Masters of Education snowball described above, but I can see that snowball having happened from the outside a bit easier knowing what my own experience was.)