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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?"
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 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.
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 urge anyone to go to graduate school if possible. With only an undergraduate degree, you will be treated as a technician in most jobs. My Ph.D. has allowed me to largely do my own thing in 2 major corporations.
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
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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.
All I do is R&D. Fortunately, I have established myself with just my measly MSEE. Some of the PhDs here even refer to me as the "honorary PhD" and come to me for questions on things. :) They have come to learn they only have to explain something to me once, and I'm the conduit through which their abstract ideas become real hardware.
I think one needs to do the whole graduate level thing as young as possible. I got the MSEE when I was in my late 20's, and it was a drag even though my employer required less than 40 hours a week during that time. Now, at 40, I think I'd rather be captured by terrorists and have my head sawed off rather than go back to school.
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.
There are too many accredited diploma mills out there it seems.
On the other hand, a bachelor's from, say, MIT is not going to look like a diploma mill...wouldn't that be more valuable than a master's from UPhoenix?
(Assuming you get in. But there are a lot of places that aren't as hard as MIT that still are quite well known and won't look like any-old-bachelor's.)
It's called funding. Call it the difference between immediate financial disaster and slowly bleeding to death. :-)
I went back to school in my late 30s. It was an adjustment, going from A Real Job (tm) to being a starving student. My first post-grad-school job included a 50% raise on my last pre-grad-school job, but the real reason for going back to school remains very simple: I went back to school for the hell of it. And, sadly, I was in that bad place where I had enough experience to be perceived as expensive, but didn't have the degree to make it palatable to prospective employers.
...laura, B.Sc., M.A.Sc.
Almost nobody is capable of getting a graduate degree while sticking it out in a full-time job.
I disagree. I am a semester away from graduating with an MS in computer science, and have been working full time the entire way. Anyone can do it if they are motivated. Basically, I take out the partying, vacations, computer upgrade budget etc for 2 years, suck it up, get an advanced degree and get leaps and bounds over my fellow colleagues with only a B.S.
The key phrase is "suck it up." You have to realize that you'll be giving up basically 2 years of fun activities to make an investment for your future career.
I got nothin'
I have two undergraduate degrees; IT (Software Dev.) and a Science (Computational Mathematics [Numerical Analysis to the hard arses]) [from Australia, American system may be somewhat different]. I have thought about doing more study, but have since realised that, at present, I don't need to. I think it depends on a couple of things. Firstly, just how enthusiastic you are about what you do. Employers here seem to almost rate that a little higher than post-graduate study. Secondly, a couple of interviews I did recently (while browsing around to see what kind of cash the private sector was offering [was impressed, but was worried about loss of intellectual freedom]), the employers were relieved to hear that I did not have post-graduate degrees. I'm not entirely sure why. These jobs were code optimisation and parallelisation ones ... not simple tasks.
Just posting a few thoughts and experience.
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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?
A research career is far more entrepreneurial than simply having a career in the private sector. You find funding, recruit talented employees, and deliver a novel product, all bound by a vision that is entirely your own. So it's not the Socratic ideal of sitting around and debating with colleagues all day, but it's not bad. Moreover, the kind of projects you work on are of a very different character than in the private sector. Here intellectual significance is the return, not dollars; if you find this deeply appealing, grad school is for you.
It's rarely a matter of ability -- if you can get into an elite grad school, people much more experienced and probably smarter than you think quite well of you. Rather, it's a matter of focus. Undergrad for most people is a mash of general education, work in your major, sex, booze and extracurriculars, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Grad school is a chance to do it right, all the way, both to honor the subject and be useful as a researcher.
If you do a lousy job of teaching, than you are a lousy teacher. I and most of my grad school peers get consistently high marks from our tuition-paying students. We love our field, and it comes through in conveying our knowledge to others.
I'd say that credibility about your past experience is the key. I have an undergrad degree in CS with four years of real industry experience. I consciously chose to spend the time working at two small companies (less than 70 people each) which were struggling to reinvent their business model. Enter me, who knew how to make Java and .NET sing because I followed the emerging trends while I was in school. At both places, I designed and implemented solutions that significantly increased revenues and stabilized their systems. In short, I worked in the dev and solutions architect role. I reported to the CEOs in both jobs. Yes, I wasn't paid too much, and the fact that I didn't have student loans to worry about helped me. But, I ended up with a tremendous amount of real-life experience and goodwill from my colleagues and bosses.
:)
Now, I'm working at a rapidly growing mid-size financial company and my title is Solutions Architect. I'm paid over $150K and I don't have to work more than 6 hours a day. During my interview, the hiring manager had concerns about the many projects I had on my resume. But after a 20 minute walkthrough, he knew that I knew what I was talking about. I did want to go back to school and do an MS full-time, but I did the math and the opportunity cost isn't worth it financially. I'm also not interested in getting a Ph.D. and the subsequent job at Google and I've already enjoyed my share of frat parties
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
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 disagree as well. In two weeks, I will have completed my MBA after three years of working full time and going to school in the evenings. (ironically, I now find myself out of a job and the MBA salarys for jobs I'm interviewing for are less than what I used to make as a software developer). That said, it was an enormous comitment in both time and money - 2 3 hour classes per week from 6-9, plus "on average" 10 hours of work per class outside of the classroom per week. Couple that with group projects that require scheduling meetings on weekends and off times, and you pretty much kill any social life you might have had.
I went from my BA (Math) directly into a PhD program (Math); I started in 1972 and finished in 1980. Now I am a professor and life is good. My students like me (look on RateMyProfessor ... Oops, no name :-) Sorry). My research is pretty good; I've been invited for research collaborations to Italy, Germany, Australia, etc. The future for very talented Math PhDs is bright. Getting a PhD in Math should be rather difficult.
I knew a number of people in graduate school in the 1970s. Only about half finished. People who took time off (e.g. to "work") were dead; they didn't finish. The best way to obtain a PhD is to decide at age 20 or 21 that this is your goal and do it. A masters degree is much much much easier than a PhD. A person can work and get a MA or MS but only very exceptional people can get a PhD this way. (Hint: Most people who think they are exceptional aren't.)
Employment? I know PhDs in engineering who earn a good living as legal consultants. Railroad accidents, aircraft accidents, etc. It helps if you look good to a jury. I know a PhD in math who formed his own consulting firm; he created software which helps small businesses schedule workers efficiently. Of course, a Math Professor at Stony Brook formed an investment company and now is close to being a billionaire.