GOING TO graduate school was a no-brainer for Amanda Browne. Working as an office manager at a large corporation, the then 37-year-old had been told a master's degree in electronic publishing could help her move up. She could continue working while taking late-evening classes at New York University. Her grandmother offered to pay tuition.

But barely into her second semester, her grandmother lost her pension, and Browne had to take on $28,000 in student loans. Shortly after, she was laid off.

Rather than improving her job prospects, the master's degree left Browne in job-hunting limbo. She lacked the experience for management-level jobs, but was overqualified for entry-level ones. "I went to two interviews where the lady just looked at me and said, 'Sweetheart, if you had come in without the master's, we would have thought about it.'"

With the job she finally landed a $30,000-a-year temp position at the Department of Education with no health or retirement benefits Browne couldn t even make a dent in her student-loan debt. Ironically, she may have been able to avoid that debt altogether -- she could have easily landed her current job without the master's degree.

Many college graduates and working adults believe in the money-making powers of advanced degrees. And generally speaking, the statistics clearly support that: The median annual salary for a person with a graduate or professional degree is about 30% higher than the median salary for people with bachelor s degrees, according to the U.S. Census.

But what these statistics won't tell you and graduate schools certainly won't bring up in their admissions brochures are the stories of countless graduates whose advanced-degree diplomas have left them worse off financially than when they started.

"I have some clients who are nearing retirement age and are still paying off student loans," says June Walbert, a certified financial planner (CFP) with USAA, a financial-services company that caters to military personnel. "In many cases, these people are sorry they took on that debt because it's lasted their whole lives."

Graduate school, after all, comes at a cost. It s not uncommon for graduate students to borrow well over $40,000. To be fair, that s probably not too onerous for those who pursue degrees in high-paying professions from top-notch institutions. For example, the average law student may graduate with more than twice that amount in debt, and go on to earn more than $100,000 on average.