Students look at graduate school as a way to get a full-time job. (Erika Lopez/Borderzine.com)

It seems harder today to make a college degree pay off

EL PASO – Josie Jimarez Howard imagined herself surrounded by artifacts from fascinating distant epochs as she pursued her passion for history tending to treasures in a museum after earning a degree in history from Reed College. But instead, she found herself selling modern cosmetics at Macy’s. She soon realized that the only way to get the job she wanted related to her studies was to go back to school for a graduate degree. “I think a lot of jobs teaching in the museum require a higher degree than a B.A. I looked for jobs at museums but during the Bush administration there weren’t as many.”

Howard, who had graduated in 2007, enrolled in graduate school at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2011 and is currently a teaching assistant for a freshman history class. “Honestly, it’s been hard.