I feel like this was the obvious and also wrong decision for him. But hey, it's not my life.
People have been dramatically overstating the impact on Finke's future that one year of graduate school in a program that would accept a Communications major from U of I would have.
Stanford is a terrific brand name, and a nice thing to have on a resume in any circumstance, but you don't just walk into a job at Google with a half-finished Master's in Sociology. If that's even what Michael wants to do.