6 reasons you shouldn't go back to school

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You may be looking for a new challenge, you may be bored of your job and want to switch career, you may want to enhance your job prospects, or you may just want to quench your thirst for knowledge.

No doubt, there are many good reasons for going back to school.

But, wait — before you consign yourself to poring over books in dark libraries all day long to churn out abstract essays of questionable value or choose to suffer the pain of reckoning with your intellectual limits, expressed through test scores, and alongside people, what, 10 years younger than you? — consider that, while going back to school might be the conventional choice, it might not actually be the best one.

In fact, there are a number of compelling personal, professional,  and economic reasons not to go back to school, and a number of compelling thinkers and writers ready to tell you why. So as you weigh your options, take a look at these six reasons why not to go back to school.

1. Not only is business school extremely expensive, chances are it won't pay off.

The Master of Business Administration, or MBA, is a popular schooling-second-rounder's choice because it's typically associated with great future job prospects and pay. But is it really your ticket to success?

Well, business school is expensive, that's for certain. The top 15 MBA programs charge up to $53,208 per year for tuition. That's not even including fees, loan interest, or living expenses! What if we factor those into the equation, plus the opportunity cost of lost wages too? Turns out there are eight different US business schools where the cost of an MBA exceeds $300,000.

"Wait," you might think, "surely not all business schools are that pricey!" True, however, any student who holds an MBA has an average debt of $41,687 (again, without accounting for additional expenses).

But aren't all good things expensive/difficult/arduous to attain? Maybe this what the educational experience is worth? Short answer: nope.

It's been proven that, in the long term, an MBA does nothing for your career. If it did, a master of business administration degree should correlate with measures of success, like an increased salary, or promotions to higher level positions.

Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington conducted an extensive study into the matter. Analyzing 40 years' worth of data, they found that there is no correlation between long-term career success and possessing an MBA, whether you graduated with flying colors or just scraped a passing grade.

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2. The value of college education is contestable.

It's not just business school where the investment in future prospects may not pay off. You might think that, if given the choice, no employer in their right mind would choose someone without a college degree. But many employers are not looking for college graduates. What they are looking for instead are the specific skills needed for specific roles, and for people with good experience.

The fact is that college degrees are losing their value, and it's not always true that people with a degree will have higher lifetime earnings. While college degrees have proven their value since World War II, the trend has shifted. College degrees once guaranteed higher lifetime earnings due to moderate loan debt, easy employability and an annual increase in the value of a college degree. But those times are over: as more people with similar credentials flood the job market and the cost of education rises, higher competition and generally low wages mean that repaying college debt isn't easy.

What's more, degrees aren't the only kind of credential and are even becoming less necessary, while other credentials, such as portfolios and recommendations, are becoming increasingly important. Keeping up with your networking and knowing who's hiring can help you land a job as much as a degree can.

Of course, anticipated financial payoff isn't the only reason people go back to school. A degree program imparts valuable knowledge — knowledge that you cannot gain otherwise, you might think. But that's wrong too.

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3. Independent learning is more satisfying than traditional schooling.

When you go to school, teachers issue demands and then reward you with high marks for grades, tests and "correct" answers, and you eventually get a degree. This method can hardly be considered personally rewarding.

In fact, for many, these rewards are demotivating, and cause people to lose their passion and curiosity at school. The rigid structures and expectations, combined with the competition for artificially scarce rewards (grades), stifles and confines our curiosity.

The rewards offered at school are forms of external motivation. Your grades, praise for getting "correct" answers, and a degree are all rewards that come from the outside.

However, we are far more motivated by intrinsic motivation, when we do things because the reward is the task itself. If you’ve ever just felt good admiring your achievement or mastery over something, then you’ve experienced intrinsic motivation.

While the traditional school systems barely offer opportunity for intrinsic motivation, self-organized independent learning initiatives — from online courses do, and the benefits of this learning style are amazing. In fact, learning what you want to learn leads to better and faster achievements as well as a longer period of engagement.