83 | Should You Go Back to School or Get Another Credential?

0:00 Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. Today, I want to answer a question that I get probably once a month in my email or just talking to people, which is, do you think that I need an advanced degree? Sometimes this is people who have a master's degree in nutrition or herbs, and they're wondering, do you think I should get a doctorate? Sometimes it's people who have done a different type of training in the field, but don't have a graduate degree and are wondering, do you think I need to go back and get a master's? Whatever it is, a lot of people ask for my opinion on professional degrees and whether they're worth it.

0:43 So let me share some thoughts on this matter. Before I go any further, let me just say that there isn't a right answer. I cannot tell you yes or no, because it depends on your goals, your financial situation, your clients. I mean, there's so many factors that come into play. So I just want to give you some things to think about if you are in the position of making this decision. Let me start by saying that, honestly, even though I have two master's degrees and a doctorate, I don't think that a degree is necessary to do really good work as an herbalist or a nutritionist. In some cases, a degree can be a signal to the public that you have put in the time and the investment and that you have some basic level of training.

1:29 In the field of nutrition, a degree can open up a pathway to licensure. In the nutrition field, oftentimes having a master's in nutrition or beyond will allow you to sit for the CNS exam, which allows you to become licensed in many, but not all states. And if you are looking to become licensed for insurance purposes or for legitimacy or whatever else, then that may be a requirement or something that you, that's really important to you. For the most part, though, the things that make you a good clinician, there are ways to learn it outside of traditional academic structures. It is extremely expensive in most cases to get an advanced degree.

2:14 A lot of times, funding is not available as readily. You may have to take out loans. You may have to go through some financial hardship in order to make it happen. And when that's happening, I do start to question, like, is this really worth it? In completely full disclosure, my doctorate that I have, doctorate in clinical nutrition. I did that not too long ago. Gosh, I think I got it in the 2020, if I'm not mistaken. And the primary reason I did that was because I had been a university professor for at least more than 10 years when I started the program, and thus I did not have to pay for it.

2:55 I, you know, that was a perk of the university where I was working, is that as a full-time employee who'd been there for more than 10 years, I was allowed to take classes for free. I did have to pay for it in time. And, you know, there was other ways that I paid for it. But financially, actually, I had to pay taxes on it. It's taxed as income. But anyway, for the most part, I was not paying. I wasn't paying much for that degree. Would it have been worth it to me if I had paid full price? Probably not. Not that it wasn't a wonderful education. I'm certainly not saying that. But to me, having the doctorate as opposed to just having a master's degree, and I'm putting just in heavy air quotes there, it really hasn't made a difference to me at all.

3:36 I don't really like to be called Dr. Camille. I don't really advertise myself as having a doctorate. Sometimes, you know, I'll use the letters after my name in certain professional contexts. But it really hasn't, as far as I know, it has not changed anything or opened up my world in any specific way. However, I did already have two master's degrees and had been working as a university professor for quite a long time. And that may not be everyone's case. So anyway, that's just my perspective on it. I think I had the clinical training I needed prior to getting a doctorate. It certainly expanded my horizons in some ways.

4:17 I learned some things that I didn't already know. I was around some wonderful people, all that sort of thing. But I don't think it was worth $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 or $50,000 to me in my circumstance. Now, another factor is some of us just like to be in school. Some of us find the formal structure to be helpful. It kind of gives us something to a framework to work within and the outside eyes to help provide feedback is just the way that some people thrive and learn a lot. Honestly, if time and money were a factor, I would probably be in school for the rest of my life because I appreciate hearing from other people and learning in a way that holds me accountable with external structure.

5:03 And I've come to realize, okay, practically speaking, for what I want to do, it's not necessary. So take that into account. If your goal is like, I just love learning, I love the structure, I have time, and money is not really much of an issue. I know some people have, for example, VA benefits that cover going back to school or you've retired and money isn't really that much of a big deal or you have a partner or some other source of income where it's just not going to be a major financial situation to go back to school and it's something that you love. Amazing. I think that's great and I encourage people to do that because there is so much that we can learn in these contexts.

5:43 But I also think there's so many ways to learn. There are so many resources out there available that we can learn from. So if your goal is, I just want to keep learning. You can do that for much more efficiently in other ways, right? You can learn from top experts in pretty much any field on YouTube and through Coursera and through much lower price courses that individual people are offering through various platforms and networks and things like that. So if you're like, oh, no, I just want to learn more about mast cell activation syndrome or something, you don't need a whole degree for that.

6:25 You can look out who are the experts in this field, who really knows what they're talking about, how can I learn from them? You can piece together a really, really solid education outside of a degree framework for a much more affordable price. Because remember, when you are paying for an academic credential, you are paying for the entire infrastructure. There's bureaucracy, there's buildings, there's registrars. And I'm not saying it's worth it or not worth it, but a lot of that, the reason it's so expensive to do this is because it does take a lot of admin and infrastructure to make these universities run. And you can skip through that if the degree is not important to you. And maybe it is, maybe it isn't. And so anyway, those are some general thoughts.

7:11 Some other things to think about are if you find yourself constantly wanting to go back to school, I want you to really ask yourself, is there ever going to be a time when you feel like you're ready? Because at a certain point, learning more is not really going to be helpful. Like once you know how to think through things, once you know how to research and evaluate and make your own decisions based on what you're finding, which, you know, that does take years and it's great to do that in an academic context if that's how you learn best. But at a certain point, you're procrastinate learning, which I'm not sure that's a word. But at a certain point, you're just. Putting things off because you're not trusting in yourself. And again, not everybody has to take what they learned and apply it.

7:58 There's a lot of value and, you know, it's an entertainment for some people to just keep learning and for personal reflection and growth, which is amazing. But if your heart feels called to be a clinician or to be a researcher or to, you know, open a store or whatever it is where you think this is why I need to go to school, and you just keep going to programs without doing the thing, it may be that you're avoiding the thing for some reason that needs a deeper exploration, because getting more credentials is not going to help you feel more confident if you're not already confident in the first place. Okay, so there is certainly a time when we do not know enough and we should not be out there saying that we're clinicians.

8:39 That is a thing. But if you have been through extensive, multiple training programs, and you're wondering, do I need a degree? And do I need a second degree or a third degree or a fourth degree? There comes a time when more training is not the answer. Okay, so we need to think about, is there a way that you can implement? Is this a situation where it would be helpful to go through therapy? Is this a situation where it would be helpful to get a mentor so that you can actually do the thing and have somebody there by your side while you're doing it instead of just learning about it? Or, you know, what's going to be to take the next step into actually doing the thing? Okay. Another aspect of this that I want to talk about just briefly, because we're getting a little long here, aren't we?

9:24 Another thing I want to talk about, though, is do clients care about the credential? Right? So... Depends on what you want to do and who your clients are. Certainly, for example, if you're like, oh, it feels really important to me to be able to take insurance because that makes my work accessible and I want to have something that reaches more people, then yes, maybe you do need to go back to school in order to get a license of some sort, whether it's some sort of counseling or mental health program or become a licensed nutritionist or whatever it is. If taking insurance is important to you, then those are some pathways to pursue. And that is, in a sense, a way that a client might care about your credentialing is, oh, okay, if you take insurance or not, that's a big thing for them.

10:10 But generally speaking, clients don't really know, and a lot of them don't particularly care, about the difference between, say, a CNS and an RD. And they may a little bit, or a clinical herbalist and what people might call a master herbalist or whatever it is. Clients just want to know that you are trained and you're safe. And there's ways to demonstrate that if you are trained and you are practicing safely, there's ways to demonstrate that that don't necessarily involve credentials behind your name. So you can say, you know, I've done this training. Here's how many years it is. Here's, you know, what I've been doing all this time, etc.

10:53 Just think about if you were a client and you were like, is this some wackadoodle who, you know, studied for three weeks on the internet and now hung up a shingle? Or is this somebody that I can trust with my health situation? How would a client know about that? What would you feel comfortable with? And, you know, what does that look like? How can you think about that and explain your work in that context? It's perfectly okay to say, I'm a practitioner in training. I'm new, being supervised. I would love to work with you and just know that even though I'm new, I've got people to help me with your case. So you'll have two sets of eyes instead of one or four instead of one or whatever it is. You're welcome to do that.

11:35 But the letters behind your name aren't the most important thing, I guess is what I want to say. So should you go back to school and get a degree of some sort? The answer is maybe. You know, if you think that a degree is needed for the next step. Then think about it. Weigh the cost. Is it likely if it's going to cost you $30,000 to get a master's degree, are you going to get $30,000 worth of value out of that? That's just something you got to think about. How long is it going to take you to make up $30,000 once you start getting out there into the clinic, into the clinical world, or whatever else it is that you're going to do? Just ask yourself that.

12:19 One last thing that I will say is a lot of people say, oh, I want to be a professor and therefore I need a degree, I need at least a master's degree in order to do that. And that is true. In order to work at a university as a faculty member, you are pretty much required to at bare minimum have a master's degree in the field that you want to work in. And a lot of times a doctorate is preferred. But I want to just tell you this in order for people to have a very realistic understanding of this. The field of academia is extremely overcrowded. When I was working at the university as a professor full-time, I would often be on hiring committees.

13:03 And we would have sometimes hundreds of applicants for a single position that was, you know, half for any opening, it's extremely challenging to get any kind of salaried position at a university. So I'm not saying you can't do it or don't do it, but I just want you to be realistic about the odds. It's not as hard to get an adjunct position, but the pay is, quite frankly, horrendous. And it's very tenuous. It's sort of at will. Do they need you? Do they not need you? You can't.

13:47 I would think very carefully about getting degrees only because you think you want to be work at a university as a faculty member at some point. Because while it again, while it is possible, it is not easy and it is not likely just from a numbers perspective. I don't know you. I don't know your specific situation. But those those jobs are just really, really hard to get. And a lot of people don't realize, they don't realize that, that, you know, there's just a lot more people being trained and getting graduate degrees, master's degrees, doctorate degrees than there are positions. And lots and lots of people want the positions that are open because it is a dream a lot of people have. So, okay, I hope this was helpful. If you have other questions about how to think about advanced degrees or considerations, I would love to hear them.

14:35 Or if you have other questions you'd like to submit for me to chat about on the podcast, please go to intheclinic.com and leave a message. And I'd be happy to answer your question as well. All right. If you are not already on my practitioner notes, which I send out every Thursday, you can go to intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com and sign up to get them there. I'd love to send you the next one that goes out. And I'll talk to you soon.