Like most other fields of employment, science is changing faster now than it has ever changed before. Oceanography is preadapted to this description through a tradition of diverse, interdisciplinary approaches. One new trend in K-12 education is worth watching, and that is a reaction to the emphasis on standardized tests. A number of respected educators are suggesting that it would be better to see how students respond to questions and kinds of questions to which they have never been exposed as a better indicator of how they will perform in the brave new world of rapid change. Graduate training in science is about how to ask and answer questions that have not been asked or answered before, so perhaps science will become a useful metaphor for this kind of education.
Some students go to graduate school by default.
They enjoy science undergraduate programs and assume that graduate school will be similar but only more intense. Graduate school may be either far better or far worse for the student who enjoyed undergraduate science. What a Ph.D. brings with it is the ability and freedom to define one's own questions. Undergraduate programs generally give digested versions of others' answers, but some good ones do give experience in bona fide research. Master's programs generally give practice in answering questions defined by someone else and prepare a student for a career in doing so.