Grad School Sanity Check

[athiker10]

As you can see by my post count, I am very very new to this forum. Also pretty new to the idea of FI/ERE, although I've always been a saver. I was accepted to an MPA program through my local state university. With just grants/tuition assistance (disincluding scholarships I've applied for and won't get-added bonus if I do), I'm reducing total cost for two years from $32,000 to $24,000. However, they also offer a graduate assistance ship which, if combined with the grants and assistance from work would bring the total cost out of pocket to somewhere around $14,500 (which I already have saved and it would be easier to keep an e-fund).

Downsides-I'm already working full time while going to school and it would add an extra 4.5 hours a week of work. So 35 hours of work (hour for lunch) + 5 hours of classes + 4.5 hours of assistantship work=~45 hours a week disincluding travel time and studying/reading/writing for grad school.

I'm just trying to work out if I can add the assistantship on (if I get it) as it would make school even more affordable. Basically Time/Money quandary.

What would you do? I"m leaning towards gunning for the assistantship as it means I can continue to save for buying a  condo or house or something in the next 2-3 years as well.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

Will this substantially help your career? What are you already going to school for?

[little_brown_dog]

Depends - what else do you have going on in your life? An additional 5 hours of work a week may be totally fine for a single person with no other major responsibilities outside work and school, but it could be a huge burden on someone who is also responsible for caring for family members, someone who is suffering from an illness, or a person who otherwise has additional constraints on their time/energy/etc.

[FIREby35]

I agree with athiker10. If you are a "classic" student (i.e. young, single, no major health or other issues) then my advice it work it hard. Do everything you can to graduate with no debt. I did that for undergrad and law school. It was tough. But, it is paying spades. My gut is, your future self will appreciate the hard work.
Good luck.

[stoic_saver]

I'd ask current students on the Graduate Assistantship how much work it actually entails. I'm finishing up grad school now and most students in my program are either Research Assistants or Teaching Assistants, although with 10 hour or 20 hour per week appointments. In reality our professors don't have that much work for us, so we rarely have weeks where we work our full hours. I know plenty of similar stories from grad students across many different programs.

Assuming you aren't doing the Assistantship over the summer, I think it works out to about $27 an hour, which is a pretty good wage for a grad student. Unless you feel so overwhelmed that you couldn't imagine factoring in 4-5 hours a week into your schedule, I'd go for it.

[AnEDO]

Will it affect your ability to absorb the knowledge that you're working so hard to get?  If its just the piece of paper you need to get to where you want, this may not be as big a consideration.  If you will rely heavily on the learned knowledge for your future endeavors, you may want to think about how extra work may affect the quality of your education.

[athiker10]

AnEDO, that is a good point and definitely worth considering. It's unclear what the actual job description is. I will build on knowledge and skills I already have as well as learning new, so it could affect that.

If the job description is clear that I could do some of this remotely (ie correspondence via email, etc), I can just do this over my hour lunch break at work (which much as I would like to fool myself, I probably wouldn't be doing school work anyways). In my personal life, I'm child-free and unmarried. My partner is super supportive and has basically said he wants me to do whatever it takes to fulfill this dream, even if it means seeing him less/devoting less time to the relationship.

In terms of the program itself, it'll help boost my salary (with a new job) by probably 10-20k/year at first and it could double at some point, which would be GREAT to save half/more of my salary.

These have all been really great questions and are really helpful in thinking about the pros and cons. I really appreciate it and if anyone else has thoughts, I'd love to hear it.

[Miss Piggy]

I would take the assistantship. I have three master's degrees (why? why? why?), but two of them were free because of graduate assistantships. Yeah, you'll be pretty darn busy, but I think it will be worth it to have so much less debt upon graduating.