For many undergraduates in their final year at university, the prospect of graduation is looming dangerously close. Some are excited about the prospect of hitting the job market, armed with a well-crafted CV and a wealth of extracurricular experience at their fingertips. But with close to a million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 currently unemployed in the UK, and as parents begin cleaning up old bedrooms for the return of their qualified kids, the majority will feel shut out by an austere economic climate that never quite underwent that expected recovery.

Yet there is hope for millennials stuck in this limbo. Postgraduate degrees have become a popular alternative to mowing the lawn for your parents, as they offer another year of personal development and further study, a chance to enhance the skills adopted at undergraduate level, and hopefully an improvement in employability and future pay prospects.

Price is an important factor when considering a postgrad degree, with fees varying considerably depending on the institution and the course. The cheapest course for an English MA last year was at Leeds Trinity University College, with tuition fees starting from £2,000 for home and EU students. In contrast, Exeter University’s MA in English costs around £18,500. For MSc courses such as medicine, the fees increase substantially. The University of Oxford’s Medical School charges fees of£5,970-£30,488 for home and EU students, while the figures for overseas students start at £16,788. In Cambridge, the most expensive Master’s degree is the Master of Business Administration at the Judge Business School, where the fee for home and EU students is £49,000. In contrast, the University of Wales, Trinity St David asks for just £3,930 for an MBA degree.

While the cost of a masters is not to be ignored, students willing to shop around may find grants they can get their hands on.  In Cambridge, funding is commonly provided by The Gates Scholars scheme, the Cambridge Trust, UK Research Councils, department and college awards. From 2017, the Conservative government is planning to introduce student loans for graduate students as well. This fact might lead to more students taking up postgraduate study, but it might also lead to a decrease in grant funding as the Conservative government’s argument of ‘fairness’ to the taxpayer discourages already strained scholarship funds from continuing to offer as much help. This would certainly be unfortunate since student indebtedness, already a problem that is taking a significant toll on young people on both sides of the Atlantic, might be further exacerbated.

Yet perhaps the most important question is whether a postgraduate degree will get you that dream job.

Overall, statistics suggest that people with master's qualifications are more likely to find work than those with undergraduate degrees only, and they are likely to earn a slightly higher wage. On average, the salary boon resulting from having a Master’s degree is around £3,000 on the annual starting salary for entry level graduates six months after finishing their course. As one’s career progresses further, the pay gap widens. Increasingly, people with more advanced degrees are preferred for senior management positions and other roles of responsibility within businesses and public institutions.

Earnings premiums rise particularly dramatically with additional education in such fields as the social sciences, physical sciences, and biology, when experience is disregarded. This is probably because entry-level jobs for candidates in those areas with just a bachelor's degree tend to be scarce, unlike in fields like engineering, where demand has been consistently high. There is no way to become a practicing medic with just a bachelor's in biology, and nor should there be.

A graduate holding an arts degree who goes back to get a Masters in Fine Arts is unlikely, on average, to get the same pay premium as a computer scientist getting a PhD over their undergraduate degree in Computer Science. But after a few years, the advanced degree should give the Master in Fine Arts a handsome percentage lead over the Bachelor in Fine Arts.

In addition, having a postgraduate qualification makes it likelier to find a job in the first place. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 86.6% of postgraduates who graduated in 2011/12 were working in professional positions six months after graduating, compared with only 64% of first degree graduates graduating in 2011/12.

Any financial boost, however, is likely to vary according to a student's subject area. There are sectors where, in order to meet the appropriate professional level, a prospective applicant is required to have a postgraduate degree: a PhD is almost always required to become an academic, and a postgraduate course in law (and a ‘pupillage’) is required to become a barrister, even for law students. The premium for holding a postgraduate degree in engineering or a PhD in a subject you would like to teach at university is higher that the premium you will get if you apply to a more generalist or unrelated job, where you will be competing against undergraduate degree holders.

It is almost certain that a postgraduate degree can be beneficial for those who feel their future lies in academia and for those who are passionate about a specific field of knowledge and would like to be at the cutting edge of it. The financial burden may appear an unnecessary risk, and the prospect of obtaining another loan might seem, to put it mildly intimidating. But if you are determined to follow a highly technical or academic career, then a postgraduate degree might open many doors. There is always the option of finding a job for a few years, getting a measure of financial stability, maturity and experience, and then donning the robes again to obtain another qualification. For those not lucky enough to find a suitable job after their undergrad years, another degree will invariably be the more prudent and productive option if they could afford it, compared to returning home unemployed to their parents or taking up a job for which they might be overqualified. As the opportunities to finance such a degree will hopefully increase in coming years (although grants might slowly decline) and as the job market becomes increasingly hungry for specialised, advanced knowledge, a postgraduate degree has favourable investment potential which should not hastily be dismissed.