Slashdot Mirror
Is Graduate School Useful in Today's World?
An anonymous reader wonders: "gradschoolstory.com has an entry on the Top 10 Reasons to go to Graduate School in the Modern World. Why did Slashdot readers go to graduate school and what did they get out of it?"
a graduate degree!
Assuming they graduated from said graduate school...
(end of post)
nt
Interesting contacts, a job closer to my interests, and higher pay. Not so bad a combination, I think.
That was my #1 reason. I wasn't really happy doing general business consulting after my undergrad, so I quit to get a Master's degree and get myself into the entertainment industry. I moved myself across the U.S. to do so, and I've got to say I haven't regretted doing so.
I have a year left in my program, but I'm confident that I'm going to get a job where I want. Programming video games is a little more specific than other industry changes, perhaps, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting some skills and practical experience doing things I haven't ever done before. A lot of people said to me, "Don't go back to school, just program some games yourself!" That's hard to do when you've got a full-time job and a commute, so I decided going back to school was the best thing to do in my case.
School is expensive, but having a job that you love doing is worth any amount of money.
Well, the door was open...
Yes. An MBA is especially useful should you ever want to run for President of the United States. Also, if you want to avoid the draft and run for VP, graduate school might be for you!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I wore scruffy clothes and thought mind blowing thoughts. I ended up with some great stories and nothing of any value for my resume. This happened to 90% of the folks who entered with me. All of us had to go reinvent themselves and take jobs that they could have gotten without a PhD. All of us work alongside people with bachelor's degrees and one even works for a man who dropped out of his undergraduate college to study calligraphy. Unless you have a real desire to study one particular subject, I think you should run as fast as you can away from graduate school. It's great fun if you're already sure of what you want to study. But if you're going to tread water, do it in an office where they pay you a real salary. The universities are filled with professors who make $200k/year, presidents who make $1m and grad students who make $10k. Plus, it's a terrible ponzi scheme. Remember that the professors need warm bodies to do the work that brings in the grants. They don't get paid until you get there. But once you graduate, you become competition. So they want you to check in and never leave to be a success.
My $0.02 anyway.
This space intentionally left blank.
# very late so;
--verbose
#if useless use;
>/dev/null 2>&1
I'm considering doing a post-graduate degree (which is what I think your talking about), I have to agree with a previous poster, for me it would just be to get the letters MA to use after my name (whilst not feeling as silly as the people who use BA but not as good as the people who get phd). I have a year free so it's no real loss and I can probably get it for free. I don't think that it would be as valuable as a years experience in an internship, also, if your going to have to pay a lot for it then you'll need to look at how much more money you can make when compared to how much it'll cost...
Also, it's not just for the money you might make, it might be fun if you like that sort of thing.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
A lot more debt and a bigger head?
Graduate school is definitely an asset in the software engineering industry. At my company, people in positions with the most responsibility, such as software architects and managers, primarily have graduate degrees. Software architects, who are tasked with coming up with a framework under which 10-50 engineers develop within, typically have PhDs in Computer Science or Mathematics. First-level people managers typically have a masters in Computer Science, or occasionally an MBA. Second-level people managers, known as directors here and many other places, nearly always have an MBA.
I've been doing quite well at my company with a simple bachelors in Computer Science, but it will take me much longer to become an architect without a graduate degree in CS. It would also be very difficult to obtain director status without an MBA. I'm not saying it's impossible for me to obtain these roles, but having an advanced degree gives one substantial credibility, even if it is undeserved.
my blog
They wouldn't let me in *cries* :(.
Haiku for you!
Frankly, it's stamping a block on a form, but if you want to advance, well, a Grad degree is the defacto union card. . .
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Somebody has to do basic research. Somebody has to teach the next generation. Both of these require advanced studies, of which graduate school is the standard means. If you're smart enough and dedicated enough and masochistic enough to hack a PhD, go for it.
With a masters degree on the other hand you will have specialized somewhat and be ready for independent work in your field, whereas with a bachelors you will be well prepared for entry level work.
Another reason is that with the economy perpetually on the verge of collapse, your investment in a masters degree will stand you in good stead when competing for nearly any job.
To answer your secondary question, I went to graduate school because I was afraid of the real world. I don't recommend that reason. It turns out nobody out here has much more clue than I do.
I would have to go for #7 and #8 in the list:
I'm a software engineer and study masters part-time during the evenings. I do this mainly to study interesting CS topics that I wasn't given the chance to do in my undergrad. Also, real-life projects sometimes don't require as much creativity. I find that in the industry your creativity would revolve around the "how" rather than the "what". For most software engineers in software houses, requirements have already been laid out for them by clients. I would like to get involved in projects that I find interesting regardless of whether the world would like to use it or not.
I do understand that people do masters for various reasons. I would say a good 50% do them solely for career advancement and for bragging rights after they get their degree. That's not to say I won't be proud to have done graduate studies but I would say 70% of me is doing it out of interest while the rest for my career. I would have to say though that most software engineers probably don't need (technical) graduate degrees unless they'd like to eventually end up in hardcore research (in universities or for companies like IBM).
To answer the thread question, I don't think graduate studies in a technical field like CS or engineering is very useful in a technical job if you've got a good undergrad. However if you want to branch out to other fields or get into management then something like a masters in bioinformatics or MBA would be useful.
I have learned many things in the whole grad school career.
I'm not sure all that was in the curriculum, and that's not even the exhaustive list. The first retort will be, "Sheesh, that's just life! I don't have to go to grad school to deal with all that!" Ah, but you do have to go to grad school to get the degree, online-V|agra-diploma-factories notwithstanding.
Her TA pays for the whole $40,000 year of grad school and $8,000. You need a Masters in History to teach history in college. It's cheaper than her coming home.
I received an undergrad in Physics and Comp Sci from a liberal arts college, so I thought I was pretty well rounded. I then went into various development, network management, and eventually IT leadership positions. I started pursuing my MBA thinking it was basically going to be busy work to prove to others that I am ready to move to the next level (a leadership position outside if IT). Some of it is busy work, but there is real value to much of the content, even though I've been a do-er and a leader in corporate America for a number of years. I'm about half way through earning my degree, and I've already learned a lot that will help me attain and be successful at the next level.
I am currently considering to go back for a Ph.D in biology.I enjoy my job in QC department in biotech butI just want to know more about bilogy. School is still the best way to learn more. I do not think i would earn more by going for a graduated degree but it should provide a better job security and border my career choices.
I wanted to keep going to school. 'nuff said.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm doing a PhD in robotics solely because when I left my undergrad degree there were no jobs for someone with my skillset and qualifications. Sure, I made the mistake of not looking for work before I actually completed, but I was driven to spend all my time studying to get that last high distinction. I'm using my post-grad as a form of on the job training in UAV design and control - the kind of work that's impossible to get as a graduate unless you've got years of experience. It's thrown me in the deep end and I've had to swim, lest I sink. Now I'm planning to use my experience, ideas and a bit of technology I've made along the way to begin a startup making flying things - it's exciting. I receommend a PhD to anyone with the marks who's hopeleslly driven to succeed but doesn't know the next step after their degree. Whatever you do, though, don't start a degree without some idea of where you want to go. I said "flying robots" and that was barely specific enough. If you can't say "I want to do X, Y, and Z", then keep thinking about it. Oh, and you'll only ever accomplish W, btw, so make sure it's enough to write up with!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
In conjunction with #9: If you're good at what you do, you can count on being invited to travel around the world to conferences and seminars, you get a lot of extremely generous student discounts. For travel, computer hardware and software, and most importantly, on professional memberships and conferences. The price difference between a professional membership and a student membership (e.g. ACM, USENIX, Apple Developer, etc.) is almost staggering --and they are practically the same packages. The price difference between students and professionals at many tutorials and training sessions is again, staggering. For example at USENIX, a tutorial session at the upcoming Security '06 conference in Vancouver: if you are a professional, a one day tutorial cost $645. For students, only $220. The price of attending conferences and seminars these days is ridiculously high. Some are very good to go to, and you learn a tremendous amount, including the networking. This is one thing that I really miss since graduating from grad school two years ago.
In Hindu tradition, a person's life from age 5 through 25 is supposed to be spent in the pursuit of education.
The people who thought this up must have had some motive :)
They did however impose celibacy on the Brahmachari. The idea's obviously not going to be popular now.
'tis but a scratch.
Being an undergraduate, I'm wondering - how does one afford to go to Graduate school and quiting their job? Do they go to Graduate School while working? how does this work?
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I attended graduate school at Yale University. I got to learn from some truly great teachers, and have that experience to rely on for the rest of my life. I also benefit from being able to send my resume to just about any company and get an interview - I've never had a problem getting a job.
Especially for Piled high and Deeps, the destination is never guaranteed, so you'd better enjoy the journey.
There are some jobs that require an advanced degree to advance. Primary and secondary teachers in many districts are given a mandatory raise when they get their masters or (very rarely) doctorat. Other jobs do not allow people to advance into higher management without such a degree. I think it really depends on what specifically you want to do. Call around, check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics and decide if you want to or can do it.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I'm about ~50% through my PhD.
In my field -- I research VLSI CAD algorithms for semiconductor development (and will be working for a major FPGA manufacturer when I graduate) -- people simply don't get jobs without having a PhD. (Well, some people do, but they tend to be the exception, not the norm; and people without PhDs tend to get stuck working on the GUIs or writing test scripts more than new development.)
The differences in payscale (in my field) can be quite drastic, too -- typical yearly salaries are ~$65k for a bachelor's, ~$85-95 for a master's, ~$105-110 for a PhD. I'm not suggesting that it was more economically feasible for me to take the ~4 years to get my PhD, but it sure is nice to think that my salary has a wider "upward" potential than someone without.
And, in the scheme of things, doing a PhD is fun. My wife goes to work; I stay home. And sleep. Wake up. Write code (usually in my housecoat). I'm always "at work" (in that if I'm not coding, then I'm at least always thinking about what I need to do). But it's comfortable. Sometimes, maybe, a bit lonely. But flexible. When I'm done this PhD, I know that I'll look back on these days fondly.
There are too many accredited diploma mills out there it seems. Sad to say but it's getting harder to differentiate between candidates, so many companies are requiring further study. Is that the right thing to do? I don't know, but it they're definitely going in that direction.
If you really want a good start in any engineering field, I'd suggest a MSc.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I graduated with 44K (CAD) in debt and not a single job offer in site here in Canada. In a post 9/11 world, US employers didn't want me either. In South Korea, however, they practically trip over themselves to offer me a lot more cash than I could possibly hope to make back home, esp. considering the paid accommodations.
Is it worth it? Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. It'll definitely pay off ten to fifteen years from now, if not tomorrow, but it was still a rewarding experience.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
... a graduate degree is a great thing. It opens doors to jobs which simply would be shut otherwise (e.g: DARPA now only hires Ph.D.s to be program managers) and you can expect a healthy salary premium for those jobs. That said, it takes a particular kind of personality to do well in grad school and to excel at those jobs which require graduate level degrees. If you're in it just for the money, do an MBA, because you are likely to be miserable (and, incidentally, also make the people in your classes miserable) otherwise. Expect to put in 5 to 8 hours of projects and studying in per hour of lecture if you're serious about succeeding. If you aren't comfortable working with theory and concepts at a highly abstract level, you also need to seriously reconsider your motivation for pursuing a graduate degree. If you lack the intellectual curiosity and discipline to seek answers out for yourself, you have no place in grad school. The program that I went through hit the theory hard very early on (mostly as a way of weeding out candidates, the department's philosophy was generally to let most people in and let the core classes separate the wheat from the chaff) and the projects were designed to really emphasize the interface between theory and practice.
In summary: if you're the sort that does well in an R&D environment, then a graduate degree is going to open a lot of doors. Otherwise, you're going to want to steer clear.
Got an MSEE that my employer paid for. Got a raise out of it, but little else. Most of what I use on a day to day basis is from application notes, manuals published by industry component makers like Xilinx and Cypress Semiconductor, IEEE papers and my own library of books.
My employer offered to send me to get a PhD, but the reward to annoyance ratio was prohibitive. I think my exact response was "Ha ha ha ha ha! You're kidding, right?" I dunno... I just have no buring desire to be called "Doctor". I think it's pretentious.
Instead I spent the time designing equipment that won me company awards, and much more respect than some piece of paper. :-)
I disagree with both the parent and the response. First, I don't care what graduate school you go to, 90% of the people don't drop out. If you were looking at graduate schools, and you saw a 90% attrition rate, would you ever consider attending? No, not at all. The parent post is right in that professors do need warm bodies to do their bidding, and they will try to keep you under their thumbs for as long as possible. However, it serves their best interests to let you graduate, or else no prospective graduate student in their right mind will matriculate to that school or join that research group, especially the smart ones! In the same way that top tier (Ivy League included) schools are accused of padding grades, graduations are also padded to make their school look good. Second, competent professors are filthy rich, especially in the more technology specific fields. I don't disagree with edremy's salary assessments; he seems fully accurate on that count. However, in any field that involves the discovery of new things/processes (biology, chemistry, physics), income from patents are going to match or exceed income for even the mediocre professors. The reason for this is they get cuts off whatever patents their graduate students may stumble upon. When you consider how many students a professor has in the lifetime of a patent, you can see that it would be fairly easy for a prof to be sitting on a few patents at a time for the duration of his career with a relatively small percentage of his graduate students ever producing a patent. If you don't believe my logic/rationalization, check out where your advisors live and ask yourself if they can do that on an income under $100k a year.
how useful is undergrad?
ask any caltech student, they'll tell you that they didn't learn the skill needed for their job, they learned "how to learn." the degree seems to carry a lot of weight no matter where you go for job interviews. in any rapidly developing profession, what you learned in college is either 10 years out of date, or will be in 3 years...
i find the 2nd reason to be particularly true.
Flame away, you know it's true.
A better question might be, "Is an undergraduate education useful," or "Will you learn anything useful in undergrad?"
> If you really think the majority of professors make $200k, you're nuts. At the school where I work, incoming assistant profs make ~$40k, associate profs with tenure about $55k and the full professors clear about $90k.
Clearly it depends on the school and the professor's field, but those numbers are way low for computer science.
Check out the Taulbee Survey. Scroll down to Table 34, examine the median and mean for tenure track salaries, and take note of the fact that that's a 9-month salary for someone who just put their foot on the stair.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I spent a year leading the grad student government at my school and spent an insane amount of time talking with students, administrators and faculty about graduate education. From that point of view, graduate school is getting a PhD. Masters and professional students serve two purposes: fund raising and an outlet for failed/burned out Ph.D. students. If you're not paying tuition and you're getting a master's, someone somewhere thinks you'll end up getting a doctorate. The difference in research and learning between a 2 year master's and a 6 year doctorate is huge. Getting a master's degree is a continuation of your bachelor's work. Getting a PhD redefines your life. It can be good, it can be bad, but it forces you to see what you are capable of.
If you're not exited by the chance to do research, if you wouldn't work in the best lab for (insert your favorite area of research here) for free, grad school may not be for you. Universally, if you do not love your subject, you will not finish. No matter how important or cool your research is, no one is going to care about it. Sure, at the end, someone may be interested, but you're not going to get a lot of attention even from friends and family while in the middle of the project. Your boss may not care about it. Many people drop out of grad school not because it is too hard, but because it's too long. Family emergencies, health problems, getting older, poverty and boredom are all killers in grad school. Anything that can distract you at a crucial moment can lead to someone else publishing that great paper that would have finished your dissertation.
That's not say it's all bad. There are reasons to be here. It's a bit difficult (not quite impossible) to get into science without a PhD. Certainly, being invited to work on things like fusion and nanotechnology is better than begging for it. If what motivates you is science, technology and shaping the future, then go to graduate school. It's an opportunity to work on what you think really matters. For example, many people today think we're too dependant on oil, graduate school is one opportunity to actually do something about it. If what motivates you is money, fame, personal freedom, video games, sports, politics, or anything like that, maybe it's not for you.
Another interesting thing about grad school is the age of the people here. At my school, the average grad student is 30 (there are 5000 of us, so that's not just a few old-timers). Either we've been in grad school forever, or we've been out to the world and discovered that it's not all we'd hoped for. Grad school is a place where you really can get out as much as you put in. Working for the right people can lead you to opportunities to do things you were told were impossible in college. It's a place where you can work on things you've only read about in science fiction. It's a place where you really can get a lot done, and you can see the frantic pace of progress first hand. It's also a place that can chew you up, spit you out, openly treat you like a second class citizen and ruin your life.
> How many really require a graduate degree? Not that I said "to do," not "to get." The B.A. is slowly supplanting the Diploma as the "price of entry" into the workforce, and the M.A. is becoming the new B.A
I've worked at a place where there was an obvious glass ceiling separating the degree holders from the non-degree-holders. The field of the degree didn't matter. Even though it was an IT department, a BA in art history was sufficient to put you above the ceiling.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I skipped grad school because:
1. My focus was comp sci and CS is not an old enough discipline to have a useful postgraduate program. Let me put that another way: Not enough is understand yet in the discipline for there to be more than four years worth of material to teach.
2. The bubble was just kicking in to gear (late '95) and I wanted in on the ground floor. I figured if I was wrong about grad school I could always go back after riding the bubble to its end.
Do I regret it? Absolutely not. I rode the bubble just like I planned, I started a couple of businesses and and spent all but 10 months of the last decade doing work I love to do.
Will I go back to school? At some point I plan to get a law degree. I still don't see any value in a MSCS of a PhD CS. Quite the contrary: the few folks I've encountered with an MSCS (generally from Podunk U) have been blithering idiots.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I went for two reasons.
First, I read the course descriptions of the Masters program, and drooled. Most of my peers recoiled in horror. I say, go with your gut on that one. You're not going to have a chance to get that education as easily.
The second one won't apply to you. I had to decide in 1999 whether to try to get a job or go into a post-grad program, before the pop. However, I fully expected it to occur, and I figured after two years things should have settled down. As it turns out I was wrong and it was still pretty tough going even in 2002, but I wouldn't have been any better off outside of school. At least they paid me to go.
As for whether it will be useful outside of school, I am a firm believer that if you start from the assumption that your schooling was worthless, you will never even realize how wrong you are; you'll encounter certain hard problems, and waste time hacking out partial solutions when you could have actually solved the problem better and in less time if you used your schooling. Having a Master's level education ups the problems you can attack with confidence even further. However, if you are stuck in the "school is useless" ideation, then for goodness' sake don't waste another two years of your life in it. You need some real experience to evaluate your position better. You might end up coming to the same decision that more school isn't for you, but you'll be making that decision on a much firmer basis.
1. You get to meet and work with people who are pretty clear about what they want.
I do that now. Why do I need graduate school for this?
2. The rest of the world suddenly takes you more seriously.
I just negotiated and won approval for a $600k project. The people I care about already take me seriously.
3. You can use graduate school as an ideal environment for beginning work on a startup.
Or you can spend some time working for startups and parter on the next project with people who have experience and credentials starting a company, not just wild ideas.
4. You can use graduate school as a pivot to change your career.
If it took you that long to figure out you picked the wrong career.
5. You get to pick your choice of work and your work hours.
I do that now.
6. You can get involved in projects that can actually impact the real world.
You can do that in the work force and be well paid for it.
7. You can get involved in projects that have absolutely no impact on the real world. You can work on things simply because they're interesting and fun. You often get paid to do this.
And then you can become a professor/researcher at the school and continue to get paid piddling amounts for someone with your talents. Which might be okay if you had free choice in what you wanted to investigate, but you don't have free choice. You have to write proposals and sell your ideas to various committees and sponsors and fight your way through some vicious office politics on the way. So in the end you don't work on what you want to, but instead settle for what you can get approved.
8. You can do things that you missed out on in your undergraduate school. It's a second chance.
If you need a second chance. But if grad students are folks who needed a second chance to get it right, what does that say about their abilities?
9. If you're good at what you do, you can count on being invited to travel around the world to conferences and seminars.
If you like public speaking. Personally, I'm an introvert.
10. You get to be the TA this time around.
Because I always wanted to be the guy who got paid piddling amounts of money to do a lousy job of teaching students, all of whom clearly understand that I'm doing a lousy job.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Thanks! I did it because it was a perk for serving time in the USN. Since it cost me nothing but time, I couldn't lose. Anyone who was in the military should have at least a bachelors...if not an MS.
I went straight into graduate school, spent 8 1/4 years and finally got the PhD in physics. That got me my job at Fermilab where I basically went into computers while designing the Acnet control system. The computer work has continued to this day (currently on the Computer Security Team). I am an Applied Scientist at the laboratory but have not found the time/energy to do much (any) research work. I keep talking about joining an experiment but there is that ToDo list and the fact that I like to sleep on occasion...
Still, I think of myself as a physicist currently working on computer support and other computing aspects.
If I had to do it again... I still think I would do it but try to get out in less than 8 years.
I'd also get back into research part-time after a few years away (I was a bit burned out after
the thesis was done).
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
For me it's a really wonderful thing. I'm going to be starting my fourth year this fall.
:)
Financially, I have a research assistantship which pays me well enough that, if I were single, I could afford an apartment, car, and the occasional computer. Since I'm married to a CPA, and we live fairly cheaply, we've been able to build up a good amount of money over the last few years and might even have enough to buy a house when I finish. I'm sure I could make more in industry, but I wouldn't even consider it because of the work and the freedom. (NOTE: if you aren't in CS, the money might not be so good. As someone once advised a math-oriented friend of mine, "do what you want, and call it computer science.")
Some of the classes were really rewarding, and others were not so useful. I finished with all the coursework in 2.5 years, and being done has given me a lot of time to focus on my research. I work a lot. I used to play a lot of computer games, but now I mostly work instead. It's not hard to get motivated about my awesomely cool dissertation project, which I'll be proposing soon.
We have a group that works on the same kind of projects, and I get to hear what other people are working on and present my work on occasion in our weekly meetings. I have written some papers and gotten to present them at conferences, and this has let me meet a lot of people from industry. I've gotten to take summer internships in industry and in a national laboratory, and passed up a repeat internship this summer to focus on my own work. I get the feeling that, when I am done, I'll be able to choose wherever I want to work from the companies that deal with my topic.
I make my own hours, I have tons of freedom. My adviser is not much like a "boss" -- it's almost like he's working for me. His focus is on how he can help me, and how he can challenge me to make my research better. He doesn't bother me with deadlines or grunt work. I'm surrounded by smart people, and that's really wonderful. I can use the campus gym and enjoy the campus culture and, er... scenery. I'm encouraged to publish about my work and make it free software.
I didn't mind working for a company during my internships. I'm sort of anti-corporate politically, but I didn't find anything in it to be "soul-crushing". Certainly in the corporate world you had to focus on their projects, and on how you could contribute to them. I think academics get to follow interesting tangents more easily, and aren't really "managed" as much. But really I have no complaints -- I was pretty free to do what I wanted, and I liked my job during the summer. But I will say that, for whatever reason, I was really happy when it was over. I literally ran to my car when I left on my last day, and sang on the drive back home.
I don't think it's for everyone. You need to be... passionate about what you are interested in, and devoted to it, and willing to do a lot of work and stick with it. You have to be willing to give up the bigger salary, etc. And you need to be really self motivated and optimistic. If that sounds good, and you're bright, I can't think of anything that's better. Maybe starting your own company, but then you have to do something useful.
I went to grad school (for a PhD that I didn't finish) for a few reasons.
The job market sucked when I finished my BS in Computer Science. Delaying my job hunt by 3 years helped that a lot.
My undergrad track record wasn't great. I think I finished with a 3.1 GPA. Going to grad school let me reset my GPA meter and get a fresh start.
And the number one reason I went to grad school? It's also the reason I left. I thought it was what I wanted. I thought that getting a PhD and a tenure-track teaching position was what I wanted to do. It took me three years to realize that I didn't want that at all. Don't get me wrong. I loved teaching. I loved learning. I loved doing research. I enjoyed writing up significant pieces of work. What I hated was constantly being pushed to publish any piece of crap that I could, just to get my publication count up. I saw what crap publications other students in our research group cranked out. I mean, the work was usually solid, but the same research would get published six times just by shuffling the results into different contexts. You can see this if you look at most professors' publication lists. You'll see essentially the same titles and the same core authors, just with different journals or conferences and some different sub-authors.
I really wouldn't recommend that anyone undertake a PhD unless they really understand what they're going to do with it. Teaching at a private non-research university that focuses on actually educating undergrads might have been a great position for me. It was really frowned upon by my big-wig research professors though.
A master's degree is marginally useful. I believe larger companies give more value to a master's than small companies. I generally see no difference between my co-workers that have a BS in computer science and those that have a MS. I couldn't tell you one relevant thing they learned that's made a difference.
I work with a guy that dropped out after nearly completing a BS and I almost finished my PhD (at the same school) and there really isn't that much difference between what we can apply from school. He's been working almost four years longer than I have. We essentially have the same position and pay.
The only real difference is that he's debt-free and I have $70,000 in student loans.
While the Taulbee Survey has very reliable information, it polls only CS departments which grant PhD degrees. CS faculty who teach at four-year colleges and universities, who spend more time teaching and less time bringing in their body weight in gold grant monies, earn substantially less than Taulbee numbers.
Better to
>> one even works for a man who dropped out of his undergraduate college to study calligraphy
Steve Jobs?
This may be a stupid question, but what about health insurance?
I will be graduating with a B.S. in Computer Science in December and I get my health insurance through my
job in retail sales. I want to go to graduate school because I want to do research and I want to teach.
But if I leave my job I lose my health insurance.
Are there thousands upon thousands of grad students out there without health insurance or is it paid
for/provided by the Universities?
--
It was a pool party for the cool kids at my school.
-- 42 --
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...mod parent UP. The man speaks the truth.
I'm working on my phd in a department related to Cultural Studies and I'm going to school because I like going to school and I want to be a professor. I can't imagine getting a phd or masters just to go do something unrelated to education. I think it would incredibly frustrating to wait up until an extra 6 years to start your real job.
As it is, I'm kind of already doing what I'm going to do for the rest of my life: teaching, writing, grading, reading. The only difference is that my reading has been in classes instead of on my own and most of my writing has been for classes not publication. However, they do encourage us to go to conferences and get published (I don't want to even try to get a job until I get something published in English (I have an article published in a language I can't even speak, so that is something, but a publication in English that potential employers could read would be better). The only thing that is really missing is stupid committee meetings.
The real question is, "Is it worth it to you?" I went into my masters not exactly sure what I was going to focus on. But I came into my phd program knowing exactly what I wanted to write my diss on and I think that helped immensely. I don't know about other disciplines but in the Humanities, you better like to read. When I got back to grad school after taking a year off between my masters and phd, for the first few months I had occasional eye spasms from reading so much. Reading around 3 theory heavy books a week in addition to grading student papers can drive you crazy. there is ALWAYS something you should be doing. Half of what you learn in grad school is how to deal with the stress of always having more to do than you have time. Like Bob Seger sang, "Deadlines and commitments. What to leave in, what to leave out."
However, I must say that for me it beats the Hell out of a 9 to 5 job with a time clock or a job where I'm expected to shave and wear a tie every day. After doing this for nearly 6 years, however, I will say that I am tired of being poor and taking out student loans. When half of my students have much newer vehicles than me, and have xbox 360s, it can be a bit frustrating.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I went to high school, did electronics there which included quite some datacomm, computer systems, programming. I planned on working a year, then go back to school, I never went back.
My last year of high school was so annoying, I lost all feeling for school. I learned absolutely nothing interesting except for some math nor did I learn anything new not about electronics nor computers. Then I went on one of those trips to a university where some 2nd & 3rd year students were showing of their projects. I even explained a student how to solve a particular electronics problem they were running into, they were 3 years "ahead" of me and couldn't figure out how to use an opamp as current source (they had a set amount of components and had to build a certain thing out of it within certain specifications, they had 1 opamp still available in the chip but didn't know how to get enough current for the LED... euhm, you got an opamp available there...)
Granted, I have done quite some self study, I am the typical skinny geek, too busy to eat (chips) and staying up late soldering crap or fixing everybody else's computer. I had my first "computer" when I was 8 and I grew up on Z80, Atari, Commodore and I always liked reading, tinkering and scientific stuff. The fact is, if you like what you want to do, especially in the less-precise careers, then you will just do it. You won't need to go to school for it, but you will be so interested that you will learn yourself before you graduate high school. If however you want a career with lots of money, high status, feel free, go to school and feel unhappy for the rest of your life.
I for one am 4 years out of high school, have a 50k income without bonusses, all possible benefits included (I just started working at this job, this is considered entry-level) as a Unix Systems Administrator implementing Sarbanes-Oxley on some of the machines AND I am happy. OK, I have to drive everyday to work for 45 min. but I am free to come and go as I please (as long as I do 40h/week), I don't have (or I don't care about) a manager that is yelling stupid stuff he doesn't know anything about because I know they can't go without me, and if they could, I could get another job in a snap. I have a great resume and people are calling me EVERY DAY for short-term projects, jobs and other with great benefits. As for the geekiness, I have a girlfriend, an ex-wife and 4 other ex-girlfriends, a kid and I have been living away from my mother for quite some time.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I'm in the middle of getting my Masters in Computational Engineering and Science ( http://ices.utexas.edu/ )...
;-) and decide for yourself if it's a good idea for _your_ future.
My main reason for going back after my undergraduate was for the money. With the job I have higher education is a must... most of the people that work there have PhD's.... and they pay for it too... When I get back I will get a hefty (think 5 digits) raise just for getting my Masters... and if I end up getting a PhD it will go up by about the same amount again... (Not too mention they pay me while I'm at school and pay for my school and send me to whatever college I want to go to... yeah it's a pretty good deal!)
Some people claim that there's no money in a Masters or PhD... but it all depends on what you're doing. If you're going to work in IT then there probably isn't much point in a graduate degree... in fact everything that I've heard from my buddies seems to suggest that just getting a graduate degree will make it more difficult to get an IT job (people don't want to pay for someone with a masters when they probably didn't need it for the job anyway). But on the other hand if you're working on the forefront of technology or any other industry then it pays to get a graduate degree and learn how to do research.
Learning how to read academic papers and turn them into useful products (be that code, financial reports, model airplanes... whatever) is a valuable asset, and something that you really get to hone in graduate school. I also think that the experience of working on a research team is invaluable. You get thrown in with a bunch of people with different reasons for being there, different backgrounds, different work styles and different attitudes... and you have to make it work... which is a very applicable skill to the "real world".
Of course, the other reason to get graduate degrees is to stay in academia. Academia isn't for me (I like to actually make end products that have direct impacts), but I am surrounded by people who make it their entire lives. It can be rewarding if you work hard at it (and man they do!), but like I say... it's just not for everyone.
So weigh the benefits and the detractors (you mean I have to _back_ to school!?!? like sit in classes again!??!?!! bah!
Friedmud
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
3 UW9g7RMwCbBMqL
Hash: SHA1
I have a different perspective: I decided to work, keeping in mind that I would later do grad school. My reasons:
- - working gives you a new view on the world, so that you have a better idea of what you want to do and where you want your schooling to go
- - working gives you an income that gives you a lot more flexibility, such as in being able to afford grad school
- - if you just graduated, you're young. You're smart. Go for full-time work and part-time grad school --you can hack it, and now's your chance to achieve. Don't wait till you have two kids and a mortgage
- - your company might just pay for grad school, even if only partly
At least, you should look for a job and use grad school as a fall-back plan. I did go through part-time (and later full-time) grad school as above, and I was not impressed by the ivory tower that the academicians lived in. It brought home one saying that I had heard: "Grad school is the snooze button in the alarm clock of life."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFEuHAoB8iUW0haVSkRAlUkAKCLzsdXVrpNmXkauqXpw
TNSzir8OWoB10e11Yo9Je24=
=FbOo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
You may be interested to learn that in many jurisdictions (notably Canada and the USA), the most common education for physicians is just a professional degree (the M.D.) and the most common education for lawyers is also a professional degree such as a J.D. or an B.C.L. / LL.B. / LL.L. Both fields have graduate degrees as well as these basic degrees, e.g., LL.M. and LL.D specifically for law, or a Ph.D. in a medical field for an M.D.
You don't need a graduate degree to practice in either field, nor does either of those professional degree streams normally require that applicants already hold another degree. (Admittedly, because competition for entry into medicine and law programmes can be fierce, it is usually very desireable to have or almost have an undergraduate degree.)
In my experience, it seems to be very dependent on multiple factors, namely the undergrad degree you've got, and the graduate degree you're considering. When I graduated from school with my undergrad degree in International Business, I had a few friends who immediately went into grad school. Some for international affairs, but also a few getting an MBA. While you do some applications that are different, I think its not nearly as effective as some people seem to think, at least at that stage. And taking that a step further, then you become a person who is 25, with an MBA, and NO EXPERIENCE. I've seen some of these people in the work force, and from what I've heard, people are reluctant to work with them, because it seems to come, in many cases, with a lot of arrogance without much experience to back it up. Now, there are definitely situations where it would help. If you're looking to do a graduate degree that is complimentary to your undergrad, or allows you to specialize it further, that's great. Its more just an issue of people need to really decide what they're looking for in a degree, and then choose what is the best time to do it.
- Social Networks
- Biostatistics
- Behavioural Economics
- etc...
Yes, you can get courses that touch on these topics in your undergrad, but I have yet to see such courses explore these topics in-depth. I can't wait until I can dedicate my time to such weird but interesting subjects, and that's why I can't wait until grad school.I'd be interested to hear what others have to say about this -- for those of you who have a wide range of interests, did grad school do the job?
This particular die-hard capitalist, along with several others, have as much disdain for the regard in which graduate/postgraduate degrees are held as you do.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
There's a great resource here that will tell you everything you need to know!
You raise a great point. Let me use myself as a real-world example.
I dropped out of H.S. and got a job at age 16. It was 1996, and the job market was very forgiving. I was able to enter a major corporation and slide up a few rungs before anyone even noticed my lack of schoolin'. I had virtually no debt, and thus, every paycheck was putting me further and further into the black.
Cue 2002: suddenly I was under-educated for my own job, and so, went $30,000 in debt to afford a college education. However, I really wanted to make something of myself so I lived plunged in with both feet. I started a small retail company to pay the bills, and was able to get my 4-years done in about 3.
Now in 2006 I have been out of school for a bit more than a year, and most job offers I see are for LESS than my 1998, HS dropout pay. The irony is, I learned far more running my own buisness than I did in school. As a result, I'm in no hurry to return to my cube. Of course, I might prefer the stability of a "real job", but not at these current wages being offered.
I'm not "unwilling" to work, I'm unwilling to work for less than I am worth. And I am no hater of capatalism; thanks to the glory of capatalism I made more money day-trading yesterday than I did freelancing.
barack to the future?
If you look at it as a way of getting a better job, you might be in for a disappointment. If you look at it as a way of gaining insight and understanding, then you'll probably get a lot out of it.
All I can say is that a Master's degree has promised me the megabucks. Hell, my thesis was focused in combinatorics, which, while fascinating to me, seems virtually inapplicable to the majority of industry these days, but I got calls back left and right when I applied for positions and they didn't seem remotely put off by my technological shortcomings. Distributing 20 applications in a week yielded me five interviews, which I strongly believe is far higher than the standard. I accepted a position back home in Canada (I was living in the US, and had tons of interest), finally, and was hired as a "Senior Software Engineer", superior to other members of my programming team who had been there for 5+ years and were given positions as junior / intermediate software engineers. In the end, I decided to go back to do my PhD, but I can definitely say that I feel I had a strong advantage in IT.
You are so ingorant and speculative.
You claim:
Because I always wanted to be the guy who got paid piddling amounts of money to do a lousy job of teaching students, all of whom clearly understand that I'm doing a lousy job.
This is beyond stupid. I get paid $32 / hour for my TA responsibilities at the grad level. How is that at all piddling? And for your information, I teach my students quite well, and find TAing to be a significant training excerise towards one day teaching my own students.
I'm on my first year of Ph.D course, and there is another good reason other than ones mentioned here.
In Korea, everybody men must be on millitary service for a certain period (24 months for army, a little longer for navy or air force). However, with a MS degree on many engineering/science degrees, there are many alternative ways to do the millitary service.
Research positions on goverment agencies related to defence, corporates related to defence, research positions on universities, et cetra. Well paid, do interesting work, (at least more interesting than patrolling around the DMZ) developing more skills on your field, plus, you can continue your Ph.D course while on millitary service.
The only downside of this is that you can only stay in Korea, need a MS, and have a longer service period (3 years). Another downside is the risk - the number of seats are quite limited, and if you fail to get the position, or worse, fail to get your MS degree, you eventually get forced to join the army, no matter what kind of plans you had.
Yes, I'm doing my military service as a research staff in a university.
Is it me, or does a measly 50k salary after four years (a BS EE can make 60K+ and bonuses initially) in a dead-end job (try and climb your company ladder without a degree) and 5 failed relationships just not sound appealing? Sure some people can be rather successful with just a high-school diploma, but by far, most people need a higher degree to get anywhere. And I have no idea where you are making the assumption that going to more school == unhappiness; you unfortunately experienced that but these generalizations don't work...
Undergraduate Math / Computer Science, Masters Quantitative Finance. Not an unheard of combination, but rare, with the attendant increase in compensation you'd expect.
Now I'm finishing an MBA, General Management with a focus in IT Outsourcing. So that's another perspective to add to the mix.
I chanaged jobs about six months ago for a 15% increase in pay, and now that I'm one class away from finishing my MBA I'm about to change jobs - again - this time for about a 23% increase in pay.
So Graduate School does indeed add value. I did both Masters while working and they were royal pains in the ass, no life at all. So if you can I'd reccomend taking a graduate degree full time. If not, that's another positive aspect that you can pitch to prospetive employers (solid time management skills, focus).
A message from our sponsor
I got my PhD (Physics) at a mid-level school out in the west, and I would have to say that it has affected my career in ways that is difficult to define. Within two years of getting my sheepskin I was doing completely unrelated stuff, and now all that people notice is that I've got a PhD and must be smart. I have been able to convert this to hard currency in the career market (whether I'm really smart or not is another thing).
Meanwhile, I would also note that a bunch of us who washed out of the PhD program and only got masters did well. In fact, to a man, everyone of them went on to be wildly successful. The PhD was only incrementally more helpful than the Master's, but the Master's was a huge step over the B.S. People with only a B.S. tend to wind up as technicians and auto mechanics in today's world.
It's about more than money, my friend. My PhD gave me a life beyond an income. I get to spend my days with people who care about their work at a level you won't find in the MBA ghetto. Co-eds, too, and grad students to do my bidding. I can play Eve-Online whenever I want and people call me "doctor". You can't buy that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I got my Master's at UCSB, and it was very relevant, yet very different than undergrad. The #1 thing I got from it was the abilty to think and operate independantly. I can do research, and I can form an opinion off of a sound basis, and I am respected in my current job for that reason. "I think we should do it this way" carries a lot less weight than "all evidence suggests that this way will give us the best chance of success." Don't think of it as more school, think of it as a chance to do your own thing AT a school. You have to make it your own.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Yes, you all talking about pros and cons with some degree in real world. But how about motivation _after_ you had/have an expirience working with professors or working on some college or faculty? Or maybe live in country where education in some field is very very hard? (yes, two last question looks a little bit unrelated, but I will explain them). Currently, I am undergrad in mathematics and CS, and my primary reasons for starting it was CS with math background. Also I am employee on faculy as sys admin, where I got a chance to closely work and talk with teachers and professors in any way. But, during my job period (started four years ago), my studying completely halted (I stucked on second year).
:)). Sounds nice, isn't. But is not :). I am sick of all CS (many people after years spent in it know why), and also sick of all degrees they have. Why second? Well, many of them are profesors with respectfull degree, but reasoning of many of them is mosltly equal reasoning of an 10 year old child... (I am asking how they got that degree...). Of course, there are exceptions, people who are realy smart there, but that is only 20%. So, would any have any kind of motivation to study further on that place? (am already hearing: "change a faculty", but hell no! As I said, there are 20% exceptions, and is really worth to be there).
:). Want to dig more in math. There is also job which expirience kills motivation (but has oposite side, with it I have a chance to become assistant or something like, but just need to finish that godamn degree). So, any ideas about this (maybe confusing) issue :)? Someting usefull to push last two years to the end?
I do not regred that, since I got experience of real world (during current faculty job, I had a chance to work with few local big companies), so I got respectfull CV. Also I had a chance to be a consultant for CS professors on algorithms/(few languages) field (not to be consultant with them, but for them
And to mention about hard fields. Here (central/eastern europe) some fields like math are godamn hard. Only pure theory. On first year, we studied more than someone will ever during his grad period. But that has a price, since math theorists from this part of world are realy respected. On other hand, this hardiness focused me more on math and to be honest, I like it more now, than before.
So, to sum all, got sick of CS, but, still really like it
I knew a lot more than my fellow students (and even TAs and lecturers) in some areas, but absolutely nothing in others.
Most importantly, a lot of the things I didn't know directly impinged on the things I thought I knew well; without a full understanding of the areas around them, the knowledge could not be fully exploited.
The most important outcome of a degree is not the knowledge or the understanding you gain, it's the understanding of your own ignorance. Without the correct framework in which to place what you do know, you can't effectively learn.
A degree is very different to a school education; at school, you are taught, at university you are given the tools to teach yourself.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A graduate degree can be helpful to those already holding ambition to do something. It's not, however, the meal ticket that many people seem to think it is. Since I received mine 3 years ago, my salary and job freedom have improved quite a bit, however I think that is due more to the skills and ambition I bring to the job than it is to the paper. I would not discourage anyone from earning a better education, but the degree can only amplify the tools you bring to the job market - it isn't a tool in itself.
-- Winston Churchill
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
And I was paid roughly the same in my first job after my bachelor's degree ten years ago... Except I was paid on salary, not part time, and I got paid vacation and benefits to too. And it was ten years ago.
As for how well you teach your students, it sounds like you're on track to become a professor. If that's your goal then you're doing the right thing and you shouldn't let me dissuade you. Teaching was not among my goals.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
They say that the number two job in the US is Software Engineer, but I was already that. The number one job is College Professor, so the only way to move up was to get a Ph.D. :)
Yeah, you sound just like a close relative of mine. Just wait till you're over 40 without a degree and the economy tightens up during one of its downturns. Your skills won't matter.
The degree is only partially about learning. It's also about whether you have the stamina and maturity to slog through four years of bullshit, and it acts as a filter for the drones in human resources. This is also why you see people with degrees outside their discipline being "credited" for having a degree even if it's in underwater basketweaving. No degree? Do not pass step one.. throw the resume out. Seriously, I've worked for a couple of major companies who will summarily disqualify you for a position no matter your experience unless you have the degree. One of them in particular has been a blast to work for so no, not all firms enganging in this are undesireable with respect to employment.
I got out of the US Army with one year of school in component level electronics repair, with some additional coursework in UNIX and NT systems administration. I quickly found a job. I also quickly found out that in some companies, I could never rise above titles like "Senior Development Technician" or "Engineering Technician". I got the hint and went back to school while working as a Solaris jockey.
The bottom line is: you don't have to do it now if you're happy. You don't have to do it next week. But at some point in the future getting a degree would not be a bad thing. Your current employer doesn't care about your lack of degree, and that's great! Take advantage of it. But where I'm from this is definitely not the norm.
See, even if you get a BS in Engineering Technology (you seem like an applied sort of guy), don't look at this as "wow, those guys are idiots".. look at it is "wow.. I'm ahead of the power curve and I've got technology street smarts they don't have". This is exactly what I did. It's a riot. And believe it or not, you will learn a few things you've not seen before. You'll just kick the shit out of the coursework while you're doing it.
The value of an MBA, or any degree, should be measured relative to the worth of the education obtained in the same amount of time doing actual work. I know far too many experts on paper who can barely find their own butt with both hands. Granted, there's probably no path through life that will turn a knucklehead into a genius. Nevertheless, there's really no instrinsic value in most liberal arts degrees whatsoever, other than the value bestowed by our obsequious tradition ridden society. The value accorded an MBA is akin to the value accorded a politition who says they go to church. The value is a social artiface, and nothing more. An MBA is a grown up way of playing make-pretend.
Could you tell us a little more about the business you set up and some of the things that you learned?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Useful? Useful for what? Making money? No.
Grad school is a blast. I don't care about money; I live comfortably on my salary as a TA and technical editor/manager of a major project in my field. I teach 1/1 and get a four-month vacation every year. I go to work at 2 pm and come home at 3:30. I don't take classes. I work hard on my dissertation, but I don't let it consume my life. Essentially, I get paid to initiate and pursue research projects of my own design, without answering to anyone.
Academia is a great gig if (a) you have a sense of humor about it and (b) you value the culture--the physical and intellectual environment, the spirit of curiosity. No, it's not for everyone, and it's a liability if you want to run out into the world and start making a lot of money. But, contra the bitching of disgruntled students and professors in the Chronicle of Higher Education, grad school can be both fun and challenging. I'm not sure whether it's "useful in today's world"--or what that even means--but if you can find a school and a department with the right culture, it's a great experience.
You're precisely correct in that the baccalaureate degree has long since become the secondary diploma of just a few decades ago. The zeitgeist is not that everyone should have the opportunity to go to college, but more or less explicitly that everyone deserves a college degree. And, of course, that cheapens the value of the degree, and every subsequent degree one might or does earn. I've been on both sides of the lectern in universities and colleges in recent years, and the sense of lazy entitlement is just astonishing. And the schools are responding in the way they can: MBAs are handed out like candy; at the (private, ostensibly not-for-profit) university where my wife taught, faculty were expected to recruit from their communities. Students, oddly, rarely failed anything, irrespective of their performance. Pretty disgusting. The answer? People need to stop going to graduate school, but more importantly, graduate schools need to stop accepting so many of their applicants.* The degree is being, as Alaren said above, utterly washed out and sapped of its real "buying power", if you will. (* This is much less true in the technical fields, somewhat less in the sciences, though they're catching up, but very very true in the social sciences and especially the liberal arts.)
When I finished my undergrad, I had something like a barely B- average from engineering, in a discipline that is now called computer engineering before that discipline had a name. After a 25 year career that spanned the technical (eg. mainframe systems programming, datacentre operations management, etc.) and the non-technical (eg. sales, marketing, management, but not as the PHB), I was burned out. Couldn't stand the corporate world, and, quite frankly, had quite enough of the IT business, because I kept seeing the old patterns in the latest and greatest. (For example, how many of you realized that IBM was the first major open source software company way back in the 1970s and early 1980s?)
So I decided to start on a path of an MA to PhD in a completely different field, drawing on a full career's worth of experience and intimate knowledge of some of the significant problems facing, in my specific case, the workplace. (My grad school GPA is 4.0 for combined master's and PhD coursework.) I'm about half-way through the PhD now, developing a new theory of organization (visit my weblog if you're interested), and can honestly tell you that it is among the best experiences of my life. Now, at mid-life, I feel completely rejuvenated, excited and passionate about what I am doing and the prospects for what I can yet accomplish in my life. Unlike my age-peers who have spent a lifetime as professors, entering grad school directly after their undergrad and worked their way up the academic corporate ladder, I face the students I now teach (and will teach in the future) with excitement and enthusiasm, tempered by a wealth of life experience, not to mention subject matter knowledge drawn from both theory and practice. Many of my professors are contemplating what to do in their retirement. Me? I've got a second life.
My $0.02: Wait for grad school until you find a significant problem that's worth solving, and about which you are so passionate that you cannot wake up in the morning without thinking about it. Then go, and contribute something useful and meaningful to the world.
Four years of pain. Oh, and massive debt.
Obviously the pay at smaller schools will be on a lower scale. You can easily find out the pay at your local state sponsored universities as someone has probably made a FOIA request for the info. Our university even places a complete list in the library, although it is not well publicized and usually hidden away in some dark archive of the library basement. And of course the adjuncts and other non-tenures don't get paid squat. But any tenured research professor is almost guaranteed to be bringing in some serious 6-figure cash. They're basically equivalent to commissioned salespeople, they close the deals, and get a fat cut of the cash, albeit in a less direct manner than in non-academic roles.
If you are in a post grad program and you're routinely being taught by less than these types of profs, then odds are, you are one of the above referenced 90% or so who are just cheap labor providing useless research results that will be just used by your extremely wealthy professors to score their next big grant, and so on.
Does anyone else fear that someday, the only export of America will be paperwork, and pencil pushers? Lawyers, managers, marketing, wheeling-dealing paperwork.
It seems like everyone I meet these days feels like they aren't making enough money, and they want to get into the paper pushing business, so they can buy bigger houses, faster cars, and vapid relationships. So, they go off and spend a big huge pile of money so learn the secret behind making $50k more a year by the addition of initials to their business cards.
Let me posit this: If graduate degrees, and college degrees in general, really make people smarter/faster/better/more virile, etc, like so many have claimed them to do, then why, please tell me *why,* they do such a terrible job of running the world?
Just look out and behold what's happening these days. Every senator, congressman, MP, business titan, military commander, banker, and judge has a graduate degree, and look at the choices they make!
It's a vicious circle-- people want to change and repair a broken system, a system that's devouring the planet and its population at an unprecedented rate, so they pay a huge amount of money for the system to educate them!
Think about it. You want people to spend 4 years in college, than an additional what 2 or 4 years for something thats NOT Law or Medicine? And why? Just because you can't find the job you want with an undergrad degree? Why are other people with undergrad degrees able to find good jobs then? What makes them better at it than you? I think its absolutely gonzo nutjobbish to suggest that having an undergrad degree isn't enough. There are folks out there without any degrees at all who are making it so anyone with an undergrad ought to be able to do just about anything they want. Getting a graduate degree should be something you do because you want to not because you feel you have to. Personally I would be damn near suicidal if I knew I went to school until I was 25-28 just to become a slightly higher paid WORKER. All that time in school post college (or post high school) could have been spent founding and building your own company.
Also what if the gamble fails. What if grad school doesn't lead to a better career. How are you supposed to shoulder the costs of college + grad school loans then? Bankruptcy laws were recently changed to forbid people from shedding their educational loans paybacks.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Yeh, you know it's funny how these things work out - I don't like to job hop but didn't really like the position I held last year. I'd been there three years and was making plans to leave Q1 2006. I had been talking to a couple academics I became aware of through the University where I teach at part time. They'd started a high profile biz, were/are kicking ass in the market, but didn't want to pay a signing bonus and I wasn't gonna leave money (my 2005 bonus) on the table. So after much discussion we both agreed to wait until 2006. But then lo and behold, late 4Q 2005 I got caught up in a "restructuring". Shit happens, fair enough.
So net/net I ended up leaving that job about one month earlier than planned with far more money than I needed to pay off my mortgage. Current job doesn't thrill me too much either and while I wasn't really looking to leave some guys I used to work with at one of the big investment banks convinced me otherwise. And so it goes.
Mind you, I haven't negotiated hard for either of those jobs - more or less just accepted offers put on the table, so the value of Graduate degrees in the market is clear to me, at least based on my admittedly personal experience.
I haven't had to work for about ten years now so I'm really just looking for something fun / interesting to do. That was most of the reason I took an MBA and I'm more than a little surprised at how much additional money two Masters commands in the market.
A message from our sponsor
Yumpin' Yimminy, I know the Yudge, I'll get him out.
===============
Groan.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
in today's accreditation obsessed society the letters-and where you got them- after your name matter a lot (probably way too much but that is the way it is), as mentioned above the phd/mba etc will help get you your chance...... in my job (university professor, perhaps the best job) a phd is the bare minimum qualification.... there will always be folks like Jobs & Gates who do spectacularly well without degrees but they are they are the exceptions (Miles Davis went to Juilliard, John Coltrane went to Ornstein, Bill Evans went to Mannes etc)
nThen I went on one of those trips to a university where some 2nd & 3rd year students were showing of their projects. I even explained a student how to solve a particular electronics problem they were runing into, they were 3 years "ahead" of me and couldn't figure out how to use an opamp as current source (they had a set amount of components and had to build a certain thing out of it within certain specifications, they had 1 opamp still available in the chip but didn't know how to get enough current for the LED... euhm, you got an opamp available there...)
:P). No one can make you take advantage of it and people can certainly get along without it, but I would say your success story is a combination of talent and luck that most people do not have.
I had the pleasure of participating in a summer REU with a sixteen-year-old that knew graduate-level mathematics. He could probably run circles around all of us besides an exceptionally bright fourth-year. That doesn't make us all boobs for getting the degree. At a university what you're really paying for is access to the professors, an academically motivated environment, and proof that you're willing to work in your degree (and if you're bright enough, you're not even paying for it
Sounds like your degree was much better than mine. I was in the same boat as you re: A Levels - I got 3 Bs and a C, and it was a very tough time. I left very cynical and disillusioned - thanks partly to the feeling that I'd been forced to study subjects I found boring and irrelevant merely to jump through hoops and get to university.
At university I thought things would be a lot better. Unfortunately it got worse. All the stereotypes about academics I'd blown off as just that - stereotypes - turned out to be true. They were disinterested, taught largely irrelevant material and redefined "fundamentals" to mean whatever they happened to be researching at the time. Given that 100% of the class (this was at Durham so a pretty good university) have left to find jobs, I'd define "fundamentals" to be how to write quality software. Their idea of what was important to learn was things like the deatils of clausal logic (3 times).
It was, basically, a disaster for all involved. The whole education system from 16+ is based on a very poorly thought out set of assumptions around education IMHO and badly needs to be redesigned from scratch. Right now the system focusses on entirely the wrong things and the constant debates over "dumbing down" and grade inflation are one obvious symptom.
I'll have to see if Google has it cached.
You think you teach your students quite well, but do you really know that? How much teacher training have you been put through? How much independent assessment of your teaching ability is there? The answer for both questions at most universities is "none" and quite frankly it often shows.
I'm not saying you are a bad teacher - I don't know you at all. But a lot of the teachers I had at university level were extremely bad at their job (this was a very well respected university) and clearly either didn't know it or didn't care. In the UK at least the only formal assessment of universities by an external authority is the Research Assessment Exercise which is exactly what it says. Teaching is not assessed or accountable at all, and the results are predictable.
Getting a PhD in science is like being hazed into a fraternity. It sucks while you're doing it, but if you pick well and are sure you'll be satisfied on the other side, it'll be worth it.
Here's the real scoop on degrees. Currently about 29% of adults in America over 25 years of age hold a baccalaureate, but only 6% hold an advanced degree. Compare, and contrast this to the situation 45 years ago. "By 1960, 42 percent of males, 25 years old and over, still had completed no more than the eighth grade, but 40 percent had completed high school and 10 percent had completed 4 years of college"-- http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/index.asp?file=OtherResour ces/ResourcePublications.asp&PageId=146
So today the percentage of adult Americans that hold a baccalaureate is about 29%, whereas in 1960 it was 10%. IOTW, today about 1 in 3 adult americans holds a baccalaureate, but in 1960 less than 1 in 10 did. (Note that the 1960 statistics were for men, whereas the figures for today are for both men and women.) It is reasonable to assume then that in 1960 the percentage of adult American that held a baccalaureate was comparable to the percentage of adult Americans that hold and advanced degree today.
As for H.S. diplomas given that only about 40% of adult males held H.S. diplomas in 1960 then it would be reasonable hold that the percentage of adult Americans that hold a baccalaureate today is at least roughly equivalent to the percentage of adult American that held H.S. diplomas in 1960.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
I'm doing a PhD in Engineering and have a family, my wife is also doing her PhD in Engineering, and we have a three year old and three months old... and oh yeah, forgot about my full time job :) and somehow still able to read slashdot.
:)
I'm not going to lie and say it is easy, or even manageable... it is freaking hard... but it boils down to this: if you love what you do, you don't mind sacrificing other things for it, including sleep. But you have to prioritize.
If you think of going back to school the same way I think about visiting my dentist (too many root canals), DON'T DO IT! need I say more!
On the other hand, if you truly enjoy what you do at school, you'll love it and gladly give up other stuff for it. AGAIN you need to get your priorities straight: Family 1st, Work 2nd, School somewhere in there, and lastly Sleep. Sometimes I get it all mixed up, but I try my best, and keep on telling my self it will eventually be over. And guess what... it is almost over
Research that interests me.
With just a BS I was or MS I would be stuck being someone's technician.
With my PhD I'm able to do research that interests me. I'm still 2 years out from finishing. Not bad though considering I worked a full time job and finished my BS, then worked another job, then went back for a straight PhD program.
I like academia, I'll probably end up at another university in an extension position, or working for the USDA in some position. Both of those appeal to me more and give me more lattitude than having a BS in Soil and Crop Management. That qualified me to drive a spray rig and do crop scouting. With a PhD the work gets much more interesting and rewarding.
In my view this is the belief/attitude of people who will, frankly, lead small lives and do small things with their lives. And while I'm being frank, it also seems to me the quintessence of most people I've known in MBA programs.
Go to a good library and just look at all the biographies. They will include inventors, explorers, famous politicians, exceptional athletes, and stars. Occasionally they will include famous CEO's of really large corporations who did not start the company (think Jack Welch here).
Now whether athletes, politicians, and (especially) "stars" are generally worthy of the adulation they receive, they did not lead ordinary lives -- where the interesting parts were the after 5 and weekend parts. Even more so the scientists, inventors, (true) innovators, explorers. These are/were *interesting* people, people who "made a difference" to others, people who led *purposeful* lives that sure as hell were not confined to their off hours.
And many more than will ever have biographies written of them do so every day -- leading "fun" (not bouncing off the walls lauging like a kid at Disneyworld kind of fun, but fun in a deeper sense), personally meaningful, interesting, useful lives.
Sorry to rant, but the notion of leading a life where your most productive hours and energies are squandered in some "uninteresting" pursuit, is repugnant. The only thing worse, perhaps, is that someone would be *inured* to life enough that this wold be OK.
I see this error message after I click the link:
/archives/15 was not found on this server.
Not Found
The requested URL
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Free advice that's actually worth something: get as much schooling done as you can all at once. It's hard to quit your job, sell a house and a car, and move into a tiny two-bedroom apartment. (You can believe me, because I did it, and it was only supreme desperation that made it possible - along with my wife's support, which not everybody can count on.) That's pretty much what's required. Almost nobody is capable of getting a graduate degree while sticking it out in a full-time job.
All in all, it depends on what you're doing. If you're only getting a MBA, you can probably continue to work full time. Heck, I know a number of people who have had their tuition paid for by their full time employer.
That said, there is no way on god's green earth I could have worked full time while attending grad school. I was in a fairly intense graphic and industrial design program. 9 units would generally result in 70 hour weeks. Every week felt like undergrad finals. It was normal for me to pull one or two all nighters every week.
Moreover, nothing annoyed me more then being sneered at by some moron with and MBA who didn't understand why I was broke, tired, taking forever, and had absolutely no life.
Some post graduate degrees are easy to attain, some will make you wish you were in boot camp instead.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It proves you can merely and only that all you can do is memorize things in books and is also a putrid form of economic discrimination. My best luck has been turning the tables and sending the morons with degrees packing, because they have degrees, in favor of the person with true talent and a spark in their eyes showing desire to grow and keep learning. THAT shows hard work and dedication instead of what Mommy & Daddy can buy and you can recite line for line with no creative thought process at all.
College...pfffftt. Wake the fuck up already and just go to the Library or Bookstore or Google.
I know people who took 7 years to get a 4 year degree and their greatest aspiration now is to work for a gas company checking meters because it is the best they can get an offer on; yet they think they are soooo superior with their fancy piece of expensive paper and their paper club.
Fools.
I started a humanities Ph.D. program after two years working for a government law office. I've spoken with many graduate students, law students, and lawyers who took time off between college and graduate school. None of them regretted taking time between college and grad school. Many of the lawyers and law students I know who went straight to law school wish they had worked first.
Some reasons to work before graduate school:
Yep, I have a bonafide graduate degree. MBA in marketing ... If I had chosen a graduate degree in my field, I might have gotten *some* use out of it ...
I have a BS and MS in CS. The MS was more of the same, more in depth, and some research in a very specialized topic, a niche. If your career is in that niche the MS CS may be useful. I don't regret it, the research was in the area of my choosing and I really enjoyed it. Plus my employer picked up the tab. However, in general the MBA will make a better add-on to the BS CS. I know many of you are flinching as your read this, PHB images floating through your heads. I did exactly the same when I was finishing my BS. I was talking about what to do next with a lab partner, mentioned I wasn't sure about an MS, he shocked me by saying that if he goes to grad school it would be for an MBA. I thought he was nuts at the time, now I realize he was right.
Having a basic understanding of business, how it works and what it needs, is important. Technical knowledge is *not* enough, you have to develop an understanding of management and business if you hope to be a decision maker rather than an implementor of the decisions of others. An MBA is not the only route to develop this necessary understanding, but it is a fairly quick one and a readily accepted one.
Lots of geeks complain about the poor decisions made by management and execs. Some complaints are bogus, the geeks not being aware of other non-technical issues. Some complaints are entire legitimate and management/execs are ignoring the technical issues. How to fix this, more geeks getting MBAs IMHO.
I just graduated from college after spending 2 1/2 years studying CS and then dropping out and going to a liberal arts college for another two years. And I'm so glad I did. The most important thing about college IMHO (and that I wasn't getting studying CS) is an education that would surprise me, and teach me things I didn't even realize I wanted to know (because I had never heard of them before!). It's not about getting a better job (at least it wasn't in my case). It's about realizing that the world is greater than you know.
Well, after Googling for "Iowa State Salaries", I found this page from the Des Moines Register that lists the salaries of all employees for the State of Iowa, including professors at the public colleges.
The interface isn't the greatest, but you can find out a lot of information about salaries. You'll find that coaches are the highest paid state employees followed by the professors at the medical school (M.D.s) and university presidents. You have to go fairly far down the list to find professors from computer science. The department chair for CS makes US$142,667 with US$3,245.88 in travel assistance for the year.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Memorize things in books? I musta missed that when I designed my own research project. That wasn't in a book for me to memorize.
Sounds like someone has a chip on their shoulder since they didn't go to school. No, I'm not rich, my parents are a dairy farmer and a teacher. I'm paying my own way.
Really irks me how many people have an attitude like you do. Just because I've decided to spend 30+ years in school isn't anything to you. I didn't do it so I'd be "better than you". I did it so I could do what I wanted to do. Without it, I can't, I'd be doing someone elses research.
I've done everything from retail to software to websites to financial services. I suffer from a perpetual identity crisis, so I like to try new things often, just for the fun of trying new things. Here are some handy tips for would-be entrepreneurs:
barack to the future?
I forgot the most important thing: never be afraid to pick up the phone and propose a business deal. The worst thing they can do to you is say "no" and wonder out loud if you are crazy. So what?
Note: the above is doubly true when it come to asking women for dates.
barack to the future?
I'm a registered nurse, and I built the first nursing Web site at a famous teaching hospital in the mid 1990s, using Pico on the UNIX command line. I thought a nurse with IT knowledge would be valued, so I enrolled in an IS/business program. It hasn't done much for me. I finished in 2000 just as things crashed. On the few interviews I had, they told me I wasn't established in IT, if they were IT folks, and if they were nurses, that I wasn't in Nursing Management already so I wasn't qualified. I got another career in Nursing management, and get calls for director positions, but they don't have anything to do with IT; the business component seems more valued, something like an MBA.
1. When you pick your grad school, consider one that is in a city where a lot of related companies reside. Some of the classmates you see in your courses may be only part time students, and take advantage of the opportunity to find out more about the company he/she works for. Silicon Valley would be nice.
2. I did a thesis based masters in Canada and I have to say (through a lot of feedback from my friends) that Canadian profs like to keep their students for longer than they initially tell you. (Most of them are slave drivers, but that's discussion for another day). If you decide to do a thesis masters, try to find an internship/co-op position. When you're tired of your research and start to find it unchallenging, you still have your co-op job that'll really brighten up your CV.
3. A lot of jobs require masters or phds nowadays. If you're in electrical engineering, doing anything in rf/mixed-signal or EDA would require this. If you choose to be a software developer or digital designer, most companies don't ask for that.
4. CHOOSE YOUR PROFESSOR WISELY! This really depends on your personality as well. Some would hate ones that schedule meetings every week and nag them all the time. Other would would really want to have a prof that is proactive and has good research topics. Mine was neither and this can be VERY frustrating.
5. Funding. That's an obvious one.
6. For some of us, this may be the last time to be working on something you'd really want to be doing. Chances are your full time job may not be related to what you'll be working on during your degree.
my blog
I thought about and planned on getting a Masters in some branch of mechanical engineering right after my BS degree, but during my last year, I realized I needed to just finish my BS and get a job. I had had enough. So I get my job at a medium sized aerospace company and several years pass. My supervisor recommends getting an MS (and not a PhD, unless I had a personal interest) in a technical field and lets me know that the lack of one will limit my career choices at the company. The company pays for tuition if I keep working fulltime. I take the deal. It takes me three years to get a Masters in Material Science (emphasizing meturllagy, fatigue, fracture mechanics, and composites) working full time. During that same time, I got married, bought a house, and had the first of my children.
It was difficult at times, but I'm glad I did it. Frankly, to do my job well takes more background knowledge than a BS will cover. We now recommend that all of our incoming structures analysts get a Masters if they don't hire in with one. It is a massive plus that my company will pay for school and be flexible with schedules, etc.
The path I took was get a basic degree in engineering, get a job at a firm with good benefits, find out what I like doing and am good at in the industry, and then use the company's resources to make myself more valuable to the company now that I have a clue. I will say, that academically, grad school wasn't difficult after working as an structures analyst in industry. I made much better grads in grad school than as an undergrad. The biggest problem was just fitting it all in. But working full time and getting a technical masters or an MBA is entirely possible, even with a family. Even if tuition hadn't been covered, it really wasn't all that expensive. I wouldn't have needed a loan, for instance, based on my pre-masters salary.
Basically, you just have to knuckle down and do it.
I will complete grad school this fall - total of 5 semesters. I'm studying Aerospace Engineering, thesis track. I have a wife and a 14 year old. I work fulltime (which is great - they pay for classes :) ). I use all my vacation hours - we saw the shuttle launch took a week for that, and we visit relatives alot (we live a good ways from the grandparents). I have a great relationship with my wife and son. Grad school doesn't mean sacrificing the world. It means aligning your interests. I cut back on my video games and other hobbies. I took my "me-time" and used it to improve myself. I haven't sacrificed my other relationships with my wife or son. From 5pm-bedtime is baby time and after that the next hour or so is wife time, then I study. Weekends are prettymuch free to enjoy. I also take lunchbreaks and instead of going out to lunch, pack a lunch and review notes. You wouldn't believe how much information you can digest over that hour (and how much money you can save).
If you are doing a thesis - here is how I did it. Two classes a semester for four semesters. One class the last semester. Your Masters in less than 2 years.
I'll graduate this christmas, assuming I don't fail class this fall with a GPA sufficient to be automatically admitted into the PhD program here at UAH.
In my profession (GIS), people with masters typically get paid more. I don't have a graduate degree.
When I started a Masters program I thought I wanted to teach. I discovered that was not the case, I didn't like grad school, I didn't like the department, and the guy I wanted to study under (the whole reason I chose the program that I did) went on sabbatical the first year, then ended up moving to a different university altogether. I ended up picking a research topic that was really not my cup-o-tea (yeah, had to do a thesis). As my program stands, I am all but thesis and that's just fine. I got the educational background I wanted and made some connections, and now I'm in a pretty good place in my career. I am now thinking of a professional degree, mainly because the focus is on things I really want to learn and because the program is aimed at improving the skills of the student, and has little if anything to do with advancing knowledge within the profession.
Lessons learned:
1. Don't pick a program based on a single personality. As I mentioned, I foolishly placed all my eggs in one basket in the hopes of studying under one particular prof, only to see those hopes dashed. And if you absolutely have to study some crazy esoteric topic under the only person in the known universe who also studies that topic, establish a relationship before you commit time and money to a program. I made some cursory contact with the prof before going to school--enough that he at least remembered speaking with me on the phone the first time we met face-to-face.
2. Not everyone has a thesis in them. I don't think I do. I can write reports and proposals fine, but coming up with 50 pages of background and 25 pages of actual research and discussion... nope. If you abhor the thought of researching and writing a thesis, think of getting into a professional program. Even some academic programs don't require a thesis. But, if there's a chance you want to continue into a doctoral program, be aware that non-thesis programs are considered terminal programs.
3. If you are in a program that requires a thesis, don't listen to the profs when they tell you that you need to pick a thesis topic in your first year. Yeah, that's a good idea, but don't sweat it if don't. I know a number of people in my program that changed topics every year. If you have a thesis in you, and a good set of advisors, then it will come to you in time.
4. If you attend a program that also offers doctorates, then you are a middle-sized fish in a very big pond. Yes, you have the ear of the profs more often than the undergrads, but the profs are going to put a lot more energy into their doctoral students.
5. Most important lesson: I can't stand the social sciences.
Universities will become obsolete except for certain big science lab work. All theory and a certain amount of lab science can be learned
through open course ware and online notes, and readily available materials that can be gotten for free or a tiny fraction of the cost of
attending an English-speaking university.
This may not effect the value of grad degrees immediately, but expect to see numerous technically competent Indian, Chinese, Latin American etc.
workers in the not-so-distant future who are mostly or entirely self-taught. This will change perceptions about the usefulness of graduate degrees.
College has destroyed my self-confidence, and I expect grad school to do much worse things to me. In high school, I was actively competitive in academics and fought hard for my position. In college, I'm getting Cs in almost every class I take. This is a combination of my own wavering self-confidence and effort and an inability to find something I truly enjoy doing. I jumped from CS to math and back to CS. CS ruined my GPA because I thought it was what I wanted to do and wasn't; math ruined my GPA because I wanted to do it but it was too hard (!); now I'm back at CS not because I 'rediscovered' it, but because I don't have the time or money to find something better.
So, here's how things stand. In a year or two I will have to start investigating grad schools in depth. Because I'm graduating in 2007 in CS, which I take no interest in anymore, I get to continue it in grad school. Am I right in thinking that because this is the major I happened to finish with, this is what I get to work with for the rest of my life?
Furthermore, because of the destruction math and CS did to my GPA (2.8), most undergrad schools that fought to have me four years ago won't even consider my existence anymore. Therefore, because I am indecisive in college, the excellence of my grad school and my place in life will be lower.
I'm sure I'm making quick logical jumps, and that the major you take doesn't necessarily dictate your future, blah blah blah, but it durned well makes an impact on it, no?
Yes, I feel confident about my future. And loved. *sigh* Rant over.
From the point of view of a young'un...
... I haven't decided which are more important yet, and probably won't ever be able to):
I'm 21 and I'll graduate in May with a BS in Computer Science, and my mind has pretty much been made up since I graduated high school that I will continue to a minumum of MS... and probably PhD beyond that (I say probably just so I don't have to deal in absolutes and later eat my words : )
My reasons, which have largely been listed earlier in thread are as follows (in NO PATRICULAR ORDER
1) I have an inquiring mind, I want to learn as much as possible
2) Money - Common view is that: more education = more $$
3) I love college, I graduate in 2 semesters and I'm already dreading "the real world" - college is just too damn fun. Where else can you find a 90% (warning: statistic made up just now) concentration of young, mostly (at least partially) intellectual, people? It is a stimulating environment, both intellectually and socially. Not to mention the beer...
4) If a PhD is accomplished I can drink tea with my pinky finger extended while making people call me "Doctor"
--Okay, #4 was rife with sarcasm but a little part of me would like recognition for the time/money/etc invested in my continuing education.
noobcake or noobmuffin? It is the same price...
I forgot the most important thing: never be afraid to pick up the phone and propose a business deal. The worst thing they can do to you is say "no" and wonder out loud if you are crazy. So what?
Note: the above is doubly true when it come to asking women for dates.
I call BS. The last woman I asked "How much?" was an undercover cop and arrested me for soliciting!
When I graduated with a B.S., I had a 2.4 GPA. Nobody was interested. I wasn't particuarly interested in the dregs that didn't hang up on me either. My 2.4 was because I don't test well -- I would get a D on a test where my friends would get As, and then the next year we'd be pulling information from previous years and I'd regurgitate it like it was yesterday and they'd still be looking for their books. Maybe I'm generating excuses for myself. I don't know at this point. Anyway, I heard that Masters at my school didn't have exams. The classes were largely project oriented and "exams" were distributed throughout the year and actually catered to the oratorical responses that I could handle.
I received my M.E. from a private engineering school (the oldest in the country, actually), and it set me back a pretty penny. I came out with a 3.5 GPA and got my dream job. The salary paid for the degree in 2 years, judging from my peers who graduated at the same time (factoring in the year it took for school, it may have been more like 6 years). After that, the salary gap starts to close because graduate degrees are only a membership card after a few years. What I learned wasn't really so much the engineering (which was interesting, but not closely relevant to my employment because of the gap between abstracted academia and practicing on bleeding edge technologies). Instead of taking a research project and thesis (M.S.), I took 2 MBA classes (M.E.) -- and let me tell you, what I learned there has already paid for the Masters again. Understanding the time value of money, mortgage tables and the like has been very useful.
Getting a graduate degree really paid off for me.
I did some analysis and talked to some alums and never found a payoff for PhD.
that got spanked off of k5 a while back? You're still about the stupidest individual on whatever forums you frequent, even when you change forums.