Slashdot Mirror
The M.S. Degree vs. Everything Else?
salad_fingers writes "It has been said that the Bachelor's Degree is the new High School Diploma: everybody has one. It is taking a greater investment of time, money and effort on behalf of the individual to give oneself that needed edge in the professional world. I have noticed that in technical fields, specifically engineering, employees are flocking in droves to MBA programs to capitalize on the upcoming retirement of the Baby Boomers, and have largely considered pursuing a graduate degree in a technical field as a waste of time and effort. What does Slashdot see as the future of the M.S. degree versus other available and somewhat non-traditional degrees? What path should engineers pursue for maximum future employability?"
I ended up with a masters in biology education, with no intention of teaching high school science (my student teaching was that bad). Fortunately having a master's degree provides a nice foot in the door. Later on I got several Microsoft certifications, which helped me move from being a programmer to a SQL Server administrator.
There are some professions that are specific to a job, but any master's degree helps in a competitive field. Once you're in, of course, it's all about what you can do.
If everyone else has a business degree, then a technical degree will be worth more.
The answer entirely depends on deciding what you really want to do and where you want to do it. So many people bumble about thinking that getting just one more degree will bring them their dream job happiness. $50k later, they're working at Burgerville with a Masters in Fine Arts and wondering how they're going to make their student loan payment.
Do some soul searching and try to figure out what kind of job you really want to do and the kinds of industries and businesses you want to do it. If you can't get a good bead on that then you're just trusting your life to fate.
So, once you figure out what you want to do or where you want to do it, do everything you can to learn about it. Contact professionals in the field/business and arrange informational interviews. If you're still in school, try to get some kind of internship or "special project" with that business/industry - your profs are your friends here and probably know someone in industry who can help you.
For example, if you want to be a supply chain analyst for a sportswear company then you should see if any of your profs know someone at a sportswear company and see if you can do some kind of class-related project. Find out who they use for temp staff and get work there when you can.
Check to see if your school has an alumni program where you can find alumni out in the world and see if any of them are working in a field/company you're interested.
Once you get in, make contacts. Ask LOTS of questions. Find out what THEY look for when they are hiring. My current job at a place pretty much requires an MBA. The previous job I did as a temp employee didn't care what my degree was or if I even had one.
If you know you want to be a software developer for IBM, then find out what IBM looks for. They're the ones you need to impress. That answer is totally different than if you want to be a systems administrator at a university.
But, until you can answer "what do you want to do", there's not much point in going for a higher degree unless you feel like you'll be lucky.
What path should engineers pursue for maximum future employability?
Learn agriculture. Seriously, it is looking more and more likely that the post war paradise the baby boomers experienced is an anomaly in the course of human history. Better learn to survive in a post cheap oil world.
This is a little off topic and a bit of a rant, but I wanted to point out the common misconception held by the author. While an M.S. or Ph.D. generally involves a program specialized in a particular subfield, don't underestimate how much these programs can improve one's ability to do science and think critically. These are both general skills.
... these are like "people skills". ( Sorry, but I couldn't resist. :) That could be a serious point, though. What do you learn in business school? Accounting, management, marketing, ... but a critical part of good programs is networking and working with people. So, in some sense, b-school is building a more general set of people skills.
I'll put it in MBA terms
The same thing happens in M.S. and Ph.D. programs. You just learn to think better. It sounds silly, but it's real.
If you're in some little start up, neither an MS or MBA will make any difference (unless you're working AND getting the degree). As you move out into your thirties and forties, you'll probably find that the MS in what ever will provide more oportunity (than a BS) on the programmer, engineer, tech lead, scientist, senior scientist track, while the MBA will set you up for the section head, department head, site lead, etc track.
If you want to work on and create technology, go MS. If you want to manage it, go MBA.
If you wnat to know what program to do NOW, before your life responsibilities stack up, and you can hack the program, go MS. Frankly, the vast majority of MBA programs can easily be completed in your spare time, even if you've got a working spouse and a couple of kids, so you can safely put that off until you turn 30 or 35. Then, with both an MS and MBA, you'll be head and shoulders over many of your peers no matter what direction you decide to go (including doing your own thing).
Luke, help me take this mask off
Back in the USSR, people talked about "getting your Party Card." It was a validation that showed you had jumped a particular barrier to entry into the elite - didn't matter what you knew, it showed you had the Right Stuff to be allowed entry into that small group that actually got to set the agenda.
Getting an M.B.A. in our culture is like "getting your Party Card." I know, I've got one. People who only have technical degrees are journeymen and tradesmen, they know how to do something but not why. Having your M.B.A. means you've got what it takes to understand The Business, and that trumps anything technical, any time. Having an M.B.A. means that after great effort - it ain't easy - you've learned the language, you've learned the secret handshake, so you can be counted on to understand The Business - be an operator at the level where money is created and decisions are made about investing in all those engineers, operators, plumbers, and carpenters below you.
First off - I don't think it's possible to effectively manage
tech people without having strong technical skills yourself.
Your knowledge will be too superficial to make informed decisions,
and in the end you just won't be respected.
In my experience it definitely pays off in the long run to get
a graduate degree in CS, and it's easier to do it the first time you
are at school. I'm in my early 30s and am working as a
development director in a startup. I find that most of the people
i deal with, other senior tech people, CTOs, senior architects,
generally have a very strong formal education, Honours in BSc,
M.S or Phd. There are some exceptions of course, there are
many IT middle managers out there with no technology skils - but
these are the people who tend to get ignored in meetings when
the real decisions are being made. There are also a lot of people
out there with little formal education but with the smarts to
make up for it.
I see an MBA as something that makes sense to do later perhaps in
your late 20s/early 30s when you have already have some management
experience and are ready to move into a executive level.
I work for a university engineering department and we have a real problem with grad students, particularly foriegn grads, doing that. They get in the masters program without any clear idea why. They aren't interested in research, they jsut want a master's degree. They see it as just another hoop to jump through to get more money. The upshit of this is that they tend to have very fragile knowledge. They are all book smarts. You ask them a question in terms of a formula they learned and you get an answer. You ask them the very same question in terms of the real world you get a blank stare. I mean there's a lab full of peopel that do networking that can't properly work out the subnet their computer is supposed to be in, when you give them the subnet (they kept putting it as a /16 since we are in the class B part of the IP space).
I think your advice is very good: Decide what you want to do, and see if a degree (I'm talking undergrad here) really matters. For some jobs, it's manditory and it has to be in the correct field. For others, it's highly beneficial, but doens't really mater what it is. Still otehrs it helps a little bit, but no more than a year of experience and a good refrence.
For master's, unless it's something that the place you want to work for really wants, you need a personal reason to get it. A master's degree SHOULD be because you enjoy learning about something, and want to work on some orignal research for it. A master's thesis is supposed to be you going out and exploring something. Unfortunately many places (like where I work) will instead let you take a comprehensive exam which is just a hoop to jump though. If that's all you want to do, you shoudln't be getting a master's.
While an undergrad is, for the most part, just a continued somewhat specialized education, a master's is supposed to be mroe research oriented. It should be the kind of thing you do out of personal love, not professional intrest. Because, when you get down to it, what employers REALLY care about is if you can do the job they want. Having a master's degree that is backed by no skills to apply it isn't useful and even if they don't know when interviewing you, they'll figure it out.
You'll get far more jobs through experience and personal references than with a peice of paper. I can't emphasize the personal reference thing enough. Find someone who knows someone who works where you want to. Meet that person, have them give you a reference. It goes a looooong way. Really, I've only ever gotten one job cold, all the rest were because I knew someone who knew someone. Sometimes, there was no interview at all just a "This the guy? Good, you're hired." People trust the opinions of those close to them more than the trust the paper from your alma matter usually.
I've interviewed a few technical people with Masters degrees in CS who couldn't even tell me the difference between an array, a hash table and a linked list.Go for the degree if it's what you want to do (You enjoy learning, you enjoy hitting on the cute freshman girls, or whatever) but don't count on it to be the distinguishing factor between you and someone else. Though a cool thesis paper would go a long way toward convincing me that I might want to hire you (Apparently neither of the folks I interviewed went through programs that required them.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... is that the education level is almost equivlent at some schools.
The high school basic/standard curriculum that we still use today in the USA is wholly inadequate for the job market in the country. It is entirely based around strict adherence to institutional instruction. We still spend too much time teaching basics that should have been taught in grade school (grammar school/middle school/junior high). Part of the problem is in passing students along up to the next level when they are not ready to move to the next level.
What is the purpose of teaching a curriculum that was designed to produce factor workers in a nation that has so little actual manufacturing infrastructure still operational? We continue to cut the arts in school more and more, but those skills are becomming more and more important in this nation due to the fact that they teach you "how to think outside the box" which leads directly to "innovation" and "invention". We are a country dependent on our creating of "intellectual property". Following directions will not create new technologys, becuase there are no directions for making improvements. Improvements are generated by analizing and creative thinking.
The high school diploma is very close to being a useless document other then its ability to let you start taking classes in a college to start learning the skills that will allow you to get a job. We no longer need 30 million factory workers, foundry workers, miners, metal workers, and carpenters in this nation (we still need some and need highly skilled ones at that). But now what we need are 30 million inventors, scientists, researchers, engineers, programmers, designers, artists (visual, musical, and performance), and story tellers. These are what we need to be prepairing our students to become.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Here are a few clues for you:
1. Many hiring managers are not very good at determining an applicant's technical skills. Especially if HR gets involved.
2. Networking is more about finding out about positions than anything. A large number of jobs are never posted. And it's better to have a several people looking for you, than looking just on your own.
3. A person vouching for a prospective hire's skills gives the hiring manager warm fuzzies. It adds another data point that the person has the right skills, and it also pushes some of the blame on the person recommending the hire, in case things goes wrong.
4. One very important part of hiring a new person is how they will fit in the culture or the group. If they're already friends with one employee, they're likely to fit in in a similar manner.
5. So-called "soft skills" are more important in most jobs than the hard technical skills. Soft skills are all about working with and communicating with others. This is another thing that a reference can show that you are good at. (This is even harder to discern during an interview.)
6. Networking works. I didn't believe it when I was younger, either.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.