The vast majority of people I speak to who are doing jobs I'm interested in have at LEAST a Masters. Many have PhDs. In the UK, I'm looking at about $30K TOTAL for a Masters if I got absolutely no funding. And it only takes a year. I would likely have to do a little bit of work before that, but the difference in cost is minimal. That would bring my personal total SL debt up to about $50K. A lot, but, it's not ever going away unless I get a job I can live with long-term.
Your student loan debt will go away eventually even if you got a job flipping burgers, because your options are not (a) job you can live with long-term vs. (b) no job at all. You obviously will have to work at some sort of job to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, and that same job will also pay down your student loans--more or less quickly depending on how well the job pays (google "income-based repayment").
So really
your options are, (a) a job you really like; (b) a job you can live with; or (c) a job you don't like. Have you made lists of jobs that fit in categories (a) or (b)? There is more than one such job; there is more than one path to a job you really like or a job you can live with. So just briefly, try brainstorming and seeing what you come up with. Nothing you come up with is binding or requires you to make a decision about anything; the point is just to see what you come up with. I realize you've "done some soul searching," but if that soul-searching was limited to "should I get a degree in Chinese archaeology" or "should I become an archeologist" or anything along those lines, it was not deep or broad enough. You can do better than that. I'm very eager and interested to see what you come up with.
Employment of anthropologists and archeologists is projected to grow 19 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than the average for all occupations. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/anthropologists-and-archeologists.htm This assumes at least a Masters degree. While it's true there aren't a TON of jobs, there are relatively few professional working archaeologists who go on to do higher education work. (Relatively, remember. Many remain "shovel bums" doing the grunt-work type stuff seasonally or only getting certificates.)
I really do hear and understand your enthusiasm for this, and I would share your enthusiasm IF it had a clear basis in reality--in other words if you could reasonably expect an MA to get you a job in this field that pays, say, at least $10k/yr more than you could earn right now. But your approach to this really suggests that you don't want to hear ANYTHING negative about it--for instance, you included the quote about how employment is projected to grow 19%, but you left out this, the very next sentence at that web page: "However, because it is a small occupation,
the fast growth will result in only about 1,400 new jobs over the 10-year period. Jobseekers will likely face
very strong competition."
That's
only 140 new jobs per year in the entire United States, in the ENTIRE field of archaeology AND anthropology. How many of those jobs do you think are looking for (or would even consider) a person with an MA in Chinese archaeology?
And by the way, while I'll take your word for it that "relatively few professional working archaeologists... go on to do higher education work,"
there are 192 colleges in the US that grant MA's in archaeology (
http://www.gradschools.com/search-programs/archaeology). There are also 323 colleges that grant MA's in anthropology (
http://www.gradschools.com/search-programs/anthropology). They graduate new students every year. Even if they only graduated one student each (which of course isn't the case--grad school cohorts are bare minimum 5-10 students), that would still be more arch and anthro MA graduates each year (515) than there are arch and anthro jobs (140, and that number also includes the jobs only available to people with PhD's).
And now let's go question by question...
I'm getting the impression that your knowledge about the actual job you would have is very hazy. It's really, really a bad idea to go to grad school when you don't actually know what your job would be. So:
1 - Who would your employer be? That is, who hires archaeologists specializing in China?
1. Like most people, I don't have a job lined up for after I graduate. Companies don't necessarily hire archaeologists for their specialties, they hire them for their experience and expertise in general. As you get more experience you get to choose more. (And it takes a degree to have a significant amount of expertise.) I see that as an acceptable degree of risk.
I may have misspoken--I wasn't asking about employment you may have had lined up. I was asking what employers hire people with MA's in Chinese archaeology. You mention "companies," for instance.
What companies (as opposed to universities, museums etc.) hire people with MA's in Chinese archaeology? Or even, what companies hire people with MA's in archaeology, period?
Just as an example of the type of information that could be part of the answer to my question, these are the academic jobs available in 2012-13 for people with PhD's in archeology:
http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Archaeology_Jobs_2012-2013Those, BTW, are the jobs in every speciality, not just Chinese archaeology. A lot of them are actually in anthropology so the folks with archaeology PhD's would be competing with the anthro PhD's for those jobs. This is not a pertinent example, since you are only talking about getting an MA and thus wouldn't be in the running for any of these jobs, but I'm just posting that as an example of the kind of information that you would need to have in order to start getting a clear idea of what the job market is like.
Another example, more pertinent: the jobs and grants page of the Society for East Asian Archeology.
http://www.seaa-web.org/not-job.htmAgain, all the university jobs require PhD's and thus aren't something you could get with an MA, but there are some non-university jobs on that list. I think an important thing to notice about that list is that it is:
(1) WORLDWIDE (the jobs aren't just in North America),
(2) not limited to a single year (this is the jobs from about 2008-12) and...
(3) not very long.
In other words, there are not many jobs in this field available, many of them would require you to make your life outside the US, and most of them require a degree you're not talking about getting, namely the PhD.
2 - What is required to get those jobs? That is, what degrees, what language skills, what experience?
2. The jobs I see posted on industry-specific job boards require different things based on the type of job. For basic grunt-work type digging, anyone can do it after having done a field school (which I have done). This maxes out at about $30K/year if you're lucky and you never get to run a project. The next level up requires years of experience (at ~$30K) and you basically work for construction companies helping them meet regulations etc. This can pay pretty well but the work is not that interesting and often bureaucratic/rushed. Then there's the Masters/PhD level work, where you have more control, more income, and more interesting work.
Do construction companies hire people with degrees in CHINESE archaeology to help them comply with regulations? More to the point, do construction companies in the US or UK hire such people? I ask that second question because my impression is you'd rather make your life in the US or UK than in China, and also because there's not much in the way of construction regulations in China that actually get enforced, so I would be surprised if such jobs even existed in China (much less if they hired foreigners for those jobs, much less if they paid anything a westerner would consider a living wage).
Also, you haven't answered the question of specifically what jobs are available to people with an MA in archaeology. While I understand that in theory people with Masters/PhD level expertise may tend to have "more control and more interesting work" than those with only a BA or similar qualification, what I'm urging you to home in on is this: IN PRACTICE, i.e. in everyday reality, what specific jobs could you get with an MA (or for that matter PhD) in Chinese archaeology? And are those jobs plentiful enough that you can reasonably expect to get one of them if you have the degree in hand? (It doesn't sound like it, since you pointed to a link that said there are projected to be only 1400 new jobs over a ten-year period, which is a far smaller number than the number of people who will be graduating with MA's in archeology over that same period.) And are the jobs that
in reality exist actually more interesting and better paid than what you could get now (in any field for which you're qualified or could become qualified)?
3 - Where in the country or world are those jobs based?
3. There are jobs all over the continental US, Hawaii, Alaska, and globally. Contrary to what Argyle says, many of the best jobs are based in the US (from what working archaeologists tell me), working for the government or for universities. It's true that some of the VERY best are in the EU. Relocating to the UK is a viable option since my S.O. is a UK citizen and has family there, etc.
There are jobs for people with MA's in
Chinese archeology--or for people with MA's in archeology with a geographic specialization that is unrelated to the place where the job is located (e.g. an Asian arch person doing digs in England)--in all those places? Can you point to any job postings, or to the web pages of people doing those jobs? Do you know how plentiful such jobs are? For instance, do you know how many applicants each job posting tends to have? Even if you had a PhD, for instance, you would likely be competing against hundreds of people for every open position--and there are very few open positions.
My concern with your approach to this is the contrast between your generalized optimism ("there are jobs all over the world, so working archaeologists tell me")
and the absence of specific facts (job postings, job boards, web pages of people who have such jobs and whose qualifications are along the lines of what you're talking about--i.e. a masters in either Chinese archaeology or in any other geographic/cultural area that isn't related to where the job is located--e.g. someone with a master's in Native American archaeology who's working on European dig sites).
Basically it sounds, from where I'm sitting (and of course I could be wrong), like you want X to be true and so you are banking (literally--tens of thousands of bucks) on statements from various people that X is true, instead of actually doing the research to learn whether X is true. College professors who've been professors for a decade or more are notorious for giving terrible advice about the job market in their field, because it's been a long time since they were on the market. There are still plenty of English literature professors encouraging students to get PhD's in English literature, which is one of the degrees least likely to lead to a college prof job on the face of the earth.
4 - How much do those jobs pay?
4. The median annual wage for anthropologists and archeologists was $57,420 in May 2012.
Uh... sure, and the median wage for lawyers is $113,530 (
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/lawyers.htm). However, "median" means that fully HALF the people in that job earn less than that figure, and there is nothing in a "median" figure that can possibly tell you how wide the spread is or where in that spread the particular TYPE of lawyer job you might be considering going into falls. I know plenty of lawyers who are earning $35k-$45k/year, full time, a decade or more out of law school. And then I also know lawyers who are earning millions.
So if I were giving advice to someone thinking about a law degree, I would
ask what specific type of law job they wanted to do, and then I would suggest they
look up salaries for that specific job. For instance, do they want to be a prosecutor? Ok then--go look up job postings for prosecutors; google salaries for state and federal prosecutors... NOW you have some real information. And that information, BTW, will tell the aspiring lawyer that they won't be earning anywhere near $113k a year.
That's what I'm suggesting you do. You already know there are people with your current qualifications earning $30k a year. A bit of research will tell you that entry-level salaries for people with PhD's in archaeology who get academic jobs are on the order of maybe $50k a year... call it $40k-$60k to cover the range (and then remember that hundreds of people are competing for each of those jobs). With a bit more research, you should also be able to find out what salaries are available for people doing
the specific kind of job you want. What is that salary?