Are master’s degrees on their way out? Alternatives grow as enrollment fades

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/13/are-masters-degrees-on-their-way-out-alternatives-grow-as-enrollment-fades/

by petethomas • 11 years ago

39 52 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

HarryHirsch2• 11 years ago

In my experience, masters degrees serve as a waiting pattern to get into medical schoool and also get around immigration restrictions, especially the Master's cap. They serve these purposes rather well, the question whether anyone taking these degrees actually learns anything useful is not relevant at all.

EliRivers• 11 years ago

Anecdata; I've just finished a Masters in Maths and my mathematical ability has massively improved. Nobody doing this alongside me is going to medical school. My first masters was in physics. I don't know of anyone there going to medical school either, but it's been a few years; maybe some have.

glesica• 11 years ago

I have two masters degrees (well, one and writing a thesis for the second one) and I found them both enlightening, valuable experiences. It is, of course, important to note that I didn't pay for either of them (except in the form of opportunity costs). If I'd had to go deeply into debt I might feel differently.

Rapzid3• 11 years ago

It's a shame you need a bachelor's degree to undertake a master's program. It might be fun to do a comp-sci program at Georgia Tech, and I believe I would find it enlightening and valuable. There is just no way I'd go through the trouble of getting a bachelor's degree first.

HarryHirsch2• 11 years ago

It is, of course, important to note that I didn't pay for either of them

That's the discriminant, right there. If they pay you it's because they need someone to get some work done, and the funds to pay you come from someone willing to pay them - NSF, NIH, industrial sponsor, whatever. But if you pay them they'll just make some advanced undergrad courses a requirement for your masters, and it's a farce throughout.

maccard• 11 years ago

I've got a masters degree, taken for self fullfilment reasons. Myself, and the majority of people who took the course with me all now work as software engineers, none of us took it for immigration reasons. Two people are doing PhD programmes now. Just because you don't see the value in it doesn't mean it has no value.

erikb• 11 years ago

I'm not sure if we have this feeling in Germany already, but I'm also sure that this is the trend and that it is correct that way. I visited one of the first online courses available and it was awesome. No more sitting for hours in boring presentations when you can just skim through the video, google the important information, do the homework and be done in half the time of a normal class. You can grab the knowledge of a whole semester in a week, if you work hard. And you can choose which time you do the learning. 5am, 1pm or 11pm? Sunday morning instead of Wednesday afternoon? All no problem with online courses.

bane5• 11 years ago

I have an M.S. and work with a group of colleagues who mostly have M.S.s or PhDs.

I'd say in general, the value of an M.S./M.A. is far below that of a B.S./B.A. It's more valuable than had I gone and gotten an A.S./A.A. even though the A.S./A.A. would have been more work.

I can't say I regret getting it, because it checked some boxes for me that let me move up the corporate ladder without as much fuss. It's kind of like getting a "free" extra 2-3 years of work experience and tends to move you up a hair in seniority, but that's about it. I seem to get management tasks a little bit faster than my non-M.S./M.A. peers.

It seems to be that the next most valuable degree is a PhD, but with few exceptions, it's not nearly as valuable in industry as one might think. I'm not even sure if it's really worth it in terms of ROI, whereas I'm highly confident that a B.S./B.A. will generally earn you more than without. So in that case an M.S./M.A. is just a stepping stone towards that. And that makes the PhD even harder to justify.

The people I know who seem to do the best have both a PhD and and MBA, which aligns them well with executive and senior executive placement in high-tech industry. It doesn't really even seem to matter what the PhD is in. An alternative that also seems popular among executive recruiters is J.D. & M.B.A.

seanmcdirmid2• 11 years ago

A PhD is more of a life fulfillment thing, it's not about money. There are some jobs you can only get with a PhD, even if those jobs don't pay more than normal ones, the work can be more satisfying to those who aren't cut out for dev work.

A PhD MBA sounds...very weird.

eitally2• 11 years ago

It does sound weird, but there are quite a few joint PhD/MBA programs out there at esteemed universities (Yale, Stanford, UVA, Harvard, MIT, ...), and this (concurrent achievement) is the only scenario where it may make sense.

bane5• 11 years ago

You see a lot of people with PhDs and MBAs on the side outside of the typical HN startups space. You might be surprised at how many PhDs also have an MBA, but just don't advertise it since their other credentials are more important.

For example, it's not uncommon for a researcher to come up with some great idea at a lab somewhere, quit, form a company (with him as CEO) and license the tech away from his former employers. In order to give the investors more of a warm fuzzy feeling about the competency of the guy running the company, they'll often have him do an executive MBA program while the company is still early stages.

In megacorp-land, PhDs for senior execs are reasonably common as well, and it's desired that they also have excellent business education -- so you'll see lots of MBAs in executive resumes that they picked up somewhere during their careers.

I haven't usually seen it as part of the education progression, it's treated more like a specialized certificate or accreditation program when people are moving out of researchy roles and into business ones.

emirozer• 11 years ago

I would say that for this particular crowd(hn) mba is one time waste of a degree.

One can use the same amount of money to start a business instead of a MBA. By doing this, at worst case, you will lose the MBA money but gain far valuable information + experience compared to a degree.

Although i guess one big trade-off is that its far more stressful :)

tluyben22• 11 years ago

I guess that depends on where the MBA is from? Here (EU) some of my friends have a MBA from one of the well known business schools; they didn't learn much outside drinking a lot and playing poker, but the contacts they got from it help them making money doing hardly anything (compared to what I do anyway).

bane5• 11 years ago

My anecdotal experience so far is that it seems to hurt in early-stage startups. But it can be helpful in more established companies. I've worked with quite a few MBAs in both environments and it's usually been pretty painful in the small startups.

In one case, I worked at a small startup with a VP with an MBA and a CEO without. The CEO was brought in to pivot the company, and for the first couple years it was going really well - from -15% growth to +30-40%. He ended up getting rid of the VP for all the kinds of reasons MBAs don't do well in this kind of company.

But then the CEO decided to go get his MBA, and a year into it started making really terrible typical MBA style "let's squeeze blood from this stone" decisions and the company was vapor within a year.

zatkin• 11 years ago

What did you get your degrees in?

100timesthis• 11 years ago

I did an M.s.c and offered me a Phd, that I refused, and it was one of the best decisions in my life. Maybe because I work on research in industry doing things that I find very interesting but I really don't think that the phd would have added any value. I see my friends doing it and wasting a lot of time writing papers, spending months looking for funds (mostly postdoc) for a low pay. There probably are phds that give you an unique experience, but in general I don't see how they are worth the investiment. If someone can change my opinion on phds please do so.

therobot24• 11 years ago

I started with the same attitude - i was relatively tech savvy and felt ahead of the curve coming out of my bachelors. Even when i was working in industry it seemed like a PhD was too much time to invest in details when i thought i already grasped the big picture. I was so so wrong.

Now at the tail end of my PhD, remembering my earlier years is like looking back at a bad hair-style - how could i have been so stupid. If you view a PhD as writing papers, low pay/lobbying for funding, a few classes, and a big project then you are missing what's between the lines. The biggest thing i've gotten out of my PhD is learning how dumb i was and how dumb i am now.

A PhD is definitely not for everyone, and maybe a M.S.C. is enough. Though just as an anecdote, i'm currently at a top university (think MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc...you may be able to figure out where in my previous comments, i can't remember if i've listed it) and in every single machine learning, computer science, and engineering class i've taken the projects/papers/presentations from the masters students is largely very poor quality. I'm definitely not saying they're bad students, or whatever, most are probably overworked from taking too many classes each semester, but it was very surprising for me to see such a low level of polish (and sometimes effort) being put into their work. And if their work is any indication of what they're taking away from their M.S., then the M.S. is definitely not enough.

auxym• 11 years ago

I just graduated with an M.Sc.A.

I feel the biggest thing I got out of it was the ability to take a vague project idea, and properly make it into something tangible, by myself. Analyzing previous work, modeling, designing building and testing protos.

The specific tech skills I learned along the way are mostly moot. So, I guess it was more of the "learning to learn" thing that undergrad engineering degrees are supposed to be.

I can't say I regret it, mainly because trying out research/academia is something I wanted to do. The opportunity cost is definitely high though, around 100-120k in lost salary alone, plus the salary I'm expecting now, out of school, is likely not very much above a new B.Eng. grad. Had I gone to work out of undergrad, I'd have enough experience to get PE and pull a much nicer figure.

My only expectation is that it might help pull a job more tech/R&D oriented that is generally given to more experienced people, but even that is far from a given.

bane5• 11 years ago

I feel the biggest thing I got out of it was the ability to take a vague project idea, and properly make it into something tangible, by myself.

Yeah, I agree with that. In my program at least, the assignments were heavily structured around teamwork. And they were just large enough that one person couldn't just do the whole thing. So it really forced you to work on soft skills.

I had already been in the workforce for quite a while when I got my M.S., so I'm sure it colors my feelings about it. I had already been working on team projects, so I didn't get much out of those aspects of it. But I did learn how to work with younger people who hadn't had the same experience, and that has proven more and more valuable the older I get (and relatively the bigger the delta between me and new hires).

I could take or leave the technical and functional things I studied. I think I got a new appreciation for UML, I now merely hate it instead of loathe it. But I honestly couldn't point to any class I took that I felt I really learned something from other than the soft skills.

bonesmoses• 11 years ago

It's interesting watching this from a somewhat detached perspective. I only have a B.S., but I did it back in the late 90's. In my industry, it seems like the average level of education is an M.S. based on my coworkers. However, I garnered enough industry experience to remain essentially immune to that metric. So I feel no pressure to go back to school, yet I see that most of our incoming hires have an M.S.

Regarding a Ph.D., unless you're in an industry that needs it, it's still vast overkill. I have a couple friends who opted to be ABD to increase their career prospects. But those decisions were made 5 years ago, so it may be less relevant.

Sadly, all I have are anecdotes instead of solid numbers. It seems right, though.

tluyben22• 11 years ago

For practical work the online platforms are good, but for hard theoretical work like a master's at least should be, they are not. At least not in my experience. I have one and I would get another one and even a phd if I could now, but at the time I thought all that theoretical bullshit wouldn't do me much good in real life. It did not directly but of course it did form my brain to actually being able to solve problems and learn things I never saw before while a lot of people who 'studied online' find have problems getting into things they never saw before.

I would not mind master's and phd's going back to the academic realm though; for people who want to do research and not 'get a high paying job' as it once was.

jackgavigan• 11 years ago

..Lynda.com, which reaches more than 4 million people a year with its how-to tutorials online in everything from management skills to programming.

Now we know where Dilbert's pointy-haired boss learns his new buzzwords from!

In all seriousness, I can't help feeling that someone who, for example, learns how to program using a Lynda.com online course, is missing out on a lot of things (e.g. the underlying principles of computer science) that are taught as part of a full academic course of study (whether or not that course is taught in the traditional manner in lecture theatres, or online, using video lectures).

Given I'm not a programmer, I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on the matter.

nkozyra• 11 years ago

It depends on the individual.

There are plenty of driven people who want to know the absolute most they can, and won't stop once they're able to generate applications.

There are then plenty of others who get something to "work" and call it a day. But that's not restricted to self-learners. You can do the absolute minimum in college, too. Not to mention all of the things that you learn but don't apply after graduation, if you're taking specific classes and don't work directly in OS design or algorithms, that fades pretty quickly.

More importantly, CS programs don't spend a ton of time on the programming itself, so to some degree you have to be a self-learner even at a college-level CS program.

wongarsu• 11 years ago

All other thing being equal, the CS grad is much more likely to know the advantages and disadvantages of using a heap than a self taught programmer.

At least in my CS program you can't get away without getting a decent exposure to algorithm design and theoretical computer science. You can on the other hand easily learn programming without ever touching these subjects.

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

Lots of people long before the age of web tutorials wee self taught programmers from books that didn't focus on academic computer science, or even -- especially in the 80s and earlier -- from particular product manuals. Many of these people have been gainfully employed using their programming skills.

While academic computer science is certainly useful for programming in industry, and some parts of it are essential to some jobs, not everyone programming needs a computer science degree or equivalent coverage in less-formal education.

RonaldK• 11 years ago

Agree. Young people tend to get skills from youtube and online rather from academic institutions. But the dicipline and focus to my mind cannot be learnt online.

MollyR• 11 years ago

Some of Lynda's lectures on the Fundamentals of Computer Science are great.

I used them quite a bit in college, because my cs professors were horrible at teaching.

LordKano2• 11 years ago

I used to work with a completely self-taught programmer.

He was very good in his area of focus but once he got outside of his narrow area, the consequences of his lack of education became extremely clear.

He didn't have any understanding of how the stack operated or how I, a college student at the time, could write code that executed significantly faster than his.

andrewvc• 11 years ago

I have worked with and interviewed a ton of CS grads who couldn't tell you how the stack worked, what a linked list is, or compare the complexity of a hash lookup vs a b-tree lookup. I'd say something like 80% of the ones I've met fall in that category.

This has been pretty frustrating to me, because I am fully self taught and I know that stuff.

Additionally, your comment overlooks the fact that much of what is taught in college is really ancillary to what a programmer does most days. It's nice to know, but I'd say that most CS grads learn enough to pass tests then promptly forget it. Then, they get a job, and learn a bunch of stuff that wasn't taught in college that actually is useful.

Seems like a waste of time to me. Why teach people stuff that 90% of them forget? The only reason I learned this stuff is because I found it interesting, and I learned that while making money instead of going into debt taking on student loans.

jasode• 11 years ago

, I can't help feeling that someone who, for example, learns how to program using a Lynda.com online course, is missing out on a lot of things (e.g. the underlying principles of computer science) that are taught as part of a full academic course of study

I think you're misinterpreting the article. You're looking backwards at lynda.com, Khan Academy, etc and biased by their current incarnation of not having comprehensive CS foundation topics.

Instead, the article is looking forward and speculating that trends may be changing. One has to look at those online education alternatives as something that may gain relevance (and possibly prestige too). The journalist was using # of masters degrees as one possible indicator of this changing trend. (It's too early to tell and the journalist may be overstating the evidence.)

For example, when Harvard was started in 1600s, it was primarily a school to train ministers and clergymen. If someone said in 1675, "trends may be changing, and new schools like Harvard might teach the next generation of lawyers and businessmen", a colonial person that looked at the world as only a static snapshot would have been skeptical. He'd insist that a young man must apprentice at some workshop to learn business skills. Harvard is that weird place that makes you study the Bible in Latin forwards and backwards. But indeed, Harvard did "change" and ~200 years later, they added a law school and ~300 years later, they added a business school. Now, "Harvard Law School" and "Harvard Business School" have overtaken "Harvard Divinity School" in terms of mindshare.

We can't predict what will happen with Lynda.com and others but I'm sure they won't take 200 years to figure out how to expand their scope in hopes of making themselves more relevant. Time will tell how society responds.

Is Khan Academy, Lynda.com, etc the "Harvard of the 1600s"? If not, what's stopping it?

eitally2• 11 years ago

I look at master's degrees as advanced vocational skills certifications. A lot of people go into an MS/MA/MEng/MFA program right out of undergrad, primarily because they think they either may want a PhD or because they don't want to leave the safety of university just yet, but many more people matriculate into masters programs years after graduation when their work experience illustrates clearly that they would be well served professionally to dive deeper into a given area of study. For example, I started undergrad as a physics major but switched to history in my second semester, while continuing personal study of my hobby interest of computing/programming. I ended up getting a job as a webdev when I graduated (1999), and gradually moved into management. In 2007 when my company laid off 20% of its technical workforce and the economy was starting to tank, I made a decision to go back to school for a masters in an area actually relevant to my desired work (manufacturing systems engineering). I did and I learned a ton of useful stuff.

In these kinds of situations, it's hard to overestimate the value of a master's degree, because like others have said, besides the emerging MOOC opportunities, there aren't really any other places where someone can spend either 1-1.5yrs full time or 2-4 years part time earning an advanced credential that's globally recognized, in nearly any field.

stuff4ben• 11 years ago

As I ponder going into management, I tend to wonder if I should get an MBA or even a masters in CS. There are numerous leadership style classes at the major universities around here that I was thinking about taking as well in lieu of a full masters degree.

lectrick• 11 years ago

When looked at from a pure cost/benefit standpoint (on a salary ruler), it doesn't make much sense. But perhaps there's still an intangible benefit.

matt_morgan• 11 years ago

This article doesn't actually say anything convincing about master's-level enrollment fading. It cites one university's layoffs and that university's related press communications. Not a single number, no generalization or overall trends ...

I don't doubt it is happening but come on. Do some reporting. Link somewhere. Or change the title of your piece.

shubhamjain• 11 years ago

Are there any numbers on how many of the enrollments are from students of foreign countries because many people see M.S, as an easier way to have "Green Card" in US.

ben010783• 11 years ago

You don't get the same bang for buck out of a master's degree, but it's not clear that enrollment won't rise again when the economy slumps again. Getting a Master's Degree gets you classes, experience, connections, and it also gives you access to a lot of services, like Lynda.com. When you look at how many colleges offer free access to Lynda.com or how many colleges supply courses for Coursera, you realize that many of these services are trying to supplement college, rather than replace it entirely.

Continuing education has been necessary long before the rise of online video. I think these services will have a bigger effect on the publishing industry than the Master's Degree programs.

cabinpark• 11 years ago

Course-work based masters perhaps, but definitely not thesis-based.

My Master's degree was entirely paid for and I actually made money. I wrote a thesis that contained original research and published a paper with my supervisor on the research. This is awesome. It's a 'PhD-lite'. It showed me how to do research and whether or not I would want to continue on with a PhD.

geebee• 11 years ago

I still think a traditional, full time MS degree can be worth while, depending on how you go about it. You do need to be careful, though.

An MS can be a good way to build a portfolio, gain some skills that are hard to develop while working full time, and explore interesting ideas and options that might turn into a startup or software application. It isn't the only way, of course, but it can be a good way.

The ground rules:

1) don't go heavily into debt

If you are pursuing an academic MS, you can often get a TA position that will reduce or eliminate your tuition while paying a stipend. Alternatively, consider a highly regarded public university with relatively low tuition - for complicated reasons I won't get into here, public graduate programs in CS/Engineering tend to rank far more highly than the general undergraduate programs.

I want to emphasize the debt thing again here - if you go heavily into debt, none of this is worth it. I hear what I can only call horror stories about people going 100k into debt for an MS in things like religious studies. I'm not surprised some people are passionate about this field, and by all means, they should find a way to pursue it. But I'm amazed that the federal gov't created a special non-dischargable kind of debt that allows people to go 100K or more into debt for masters degrees with such limit career earning potential.

By contrast, 10-20k of debt with a MS from a reputable engineering school is no big deal. Really, the loss of income eclipses this, since people who can apply to MS STEM programs are usually already capable of earning a decent salary.

2) choose a program with flexible requirements.

If you get into a reputable MS program in a STEM field, odds are good you've already done mathematically rigorous and highly structured undergraduate degree. Your new program should allow you to choose courses that match your more specialized interests.

3) it's ok to take a relatively easy academic load and pursue side projects. Maybe even better.

This is where I fell down a bit. At Berkeley, I could have taken Intellectual Property through the SIMS/Law schools, product development through the MBA/Engineering schools. Instead, I dropped those courses to keep up with advanced nonlinear optimization and integer programming. Those are great courses for people who plan to be research professors in those fields, but they weren't good courses for me. I would have enjoyed myself more and gotten more out of my coursework if I'd realized what I was really there to do.

On the bright side, I did pursue a lot of side projects, mainly software applications inspired by things I was learning. If you're at a good university, there will be a lot of interesting speakers, seminars, students, projects, and other types of activities that are highly relevant to your field. Of course, it all depends on what you're there for, and if you are planning on advancing humanity's mathematical knowledge of integer optimization, this wouldn't be the right advice for you. But keep in mind, a university is actually fertile ground for interesting ideas that, oddly enough, don't really fit into something that will get you credit hours. Don't lock yourself down with coursework to the point where you can't tap into that, especially if you aren't PhD bound anyway. Plus, you may be able to convert one of these activities into a MS project.

All in all, it's still up to you to decide whether it's worth the loss of a year or more of income. It can be difficult to pursue ideas like this if you're working full time, and what you do in an MS program may put you on a much more interesting and fulfilling path long term. It's hardly the only way. If so, it can be worth it.

Just really, don't go deeply into debt. All those wonderful, interesting paths that opened up to you may not be possible if debt forces you a demanding, full time job that takes up all your time and mental energy.

zedpm• 11 years ago

I was the last student at my college to receive a master's degree in Computer Science; the program was eliminated. At the time, the movement was towards cross-discipline graduate programs, e.g. a Robotics and Intelligent Autonomous Systems degree that combined studies in AI, ML, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, etc. At the time this seemed like a smart way to get a more practical focus while herding more students into fewer graduate programs.

I wonder today if even that approach is viable, or if, as this article suggests, the new-model education will continue to take market share from traditional university programs.

Are master’s degrees on their way out? Alternatives grow as enrollment fades

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