A millennial with a doctoral degree and over $250k in student-loan debt says she's been looking for a job for 4 years. She wishes she prioritized work experience over education.

• A millennial with a doctoral degree and more than $250,000 in student-loan debt says she can't find a job.
• She's looking for business roles while working as a nurse to help pay the bills.
• She says she wishes she prioritized work experience over her graduate degrees.

Over the past decade, A. Rasberry has placed a great deal of value on higher education. She's now come to regret it.

Rasberry earned a bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in business management from Saint Leo University in Florida. However, she says she's struggled to find a job in her field of study over the past four years. She also has more than $250,000 in student-loan debt, according to a document viewed by Business Insider.

Since earning her doctorate, Rasberry has applied for various business-management roles but had little success. She said she'd been forced to expand her job search and explore a new career in nursing to help her make ends meet.

"I thought education was the road to financial freedom, but I was wrong," the 38-year-old, who lives in Virginia, told Business Insider via email. She asked for partial anonymity, using only the first initial of her first name and her last name, because of privacy concerns.

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Rasberry's search for work has spanned a wide range of economic conditions in the US, from the early days of the pandemic, through what turned into a major boom time for job seekers, to a present situation in which the unemployment rate and layoff rate remain low compared with historical levels but in which employers have nevertheless scaled back on hiring compared with a few years ago.

Rasberry shared why she thinks her job search has been so challenging, how she made her career pivot, and her top piece of advice for people pursuing higher education.

'Most organizations prefer experience over education'

After receiving her doctoral degree, Rasberry said one of the first jobs she pursued was an adjunct professor position. However, after speaking with people in the education field, she decided to change course.

"I would have to go back to school to take more courses to support a teaching career," she said, adding that she was told she'd specifically need more education-related credits.

As a result, Rasberry said, she decided to give up on teaching and focus on finding other roles in her area of study: business management.

But her job search has been challenging. Rasberry said she hasn't landed many interviews, and when she has — and has been turned down — she's had a hard time figuring out what went wrong. She said she's expanded her job search to non-managerial bookkeeping, accounting, tutoring, and human resources roles but that she hasn't had much luck with these either.

Rasberry thinks the biggest obstacle in her job search is her lack of work experience.

While pursuing her degrees, she gained some entry-level work experience in banking, human resources, and bookkeeping roles. However, she said this experience might be insufficient in the eyes of employers.

"I am over qualified for most entry-level positions, but I am under qualified for management or leadership positions," she said. "Ultimately, my degree has been both a blessing and a curse."

Rasberry's top piece of advice for people who pursue higher education is to do your homework. She said she wishes she'd spent more time evaluating her school's job placement programs, internship partnerships, and the employment rates of recent graduates across different fields before she pursued her degrees.

In December 2023, Saint Leo University was placed on probation after a commission determined that it wasn't in compliance with financial responsibility standards. However, the university told BI that its accreditation remains in effect and that it's working to address all areas of concern.

Rasberry also recommended taking time to think about the value of a college degree and the best ways to use it to land a job.

"I learned most organizations prefer experience over education," she said. "Had I known that I would not have spent so many years in college."

Nursing is helping to pay the bills during her job search

Rasberry said that in recent years, she'd worked various part-time jobs to pay the bills.

"It feels next to impossible to work a single job and earn enough money to cover essentials like rent, fuel, electricity, etc. in the state of Virginia," she said. One analysis found Virginia was the 13th-most expensive state when it comes to overall cost of living.

She said she's completing a training program to work remotely for TurboTax as a tax expert. At the same time, she's also exploring a new career: nursing. Rasberry said that for roughly the past year, she'd been working as much as 80 hours a week as a nurse.

"I am new to nursing, but I find it rewarding, and I like the shift flexibility," she said.

Rasberry found a nursing role that provided free training and certification. While she isn't a registered nurse, she said this allowed her to work in an entry-level capacity at her employer. She said the downside was that this certification wouldn't carry over to any other employers — limiting her opportunities in the industry. This is among the reasons she hasn't stopped applying for business-related jobs.

Another reason is that she doesn't think she's paid particularly well — she said she was earning $21.50 an hour. Despite the long hours, she said the low pay is why she doesn't view nursing as a full-time job.

"It doesn't come with full time pay," she said.

Rasberry said that in recent months, she'd begun focusing more on looking for remote roles such as the TurboTax opportunity. She said working remotely would make it easier to keep her nursing job, reduce her commuting costs, and care for her dog.

Over the past month, Rasberry finally had some luck in the job market. She said she landed a remote plan consultant position in the nursing field that pays about $70,000 a year — equivalent to an hourly rate of more than $30 an hour.

While she views this as a positive development, she said she'd "absolutely" continue searching for higher-paying roles in her field of study.

"When I'm not working, I'm online, putting in applications for employment," she said.

Correction: October 7, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the type of degree Rasberry earned. She earned a doctorate in business administration, not a Ph.D.