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Go For a Masters, Or Not?
mx12 writes "I'm currently an undergrad in computer engineering and have been thinking about getting my masters. I have a year left in school. Most of my professors seem to think that getting a masters is a great idea, but I wanted to hear from people out in the working world. Is a masters in computer engineering better than two years of experience at a company?"
Normally I'd say "get a job", but there's not as many of those going around as there used to be. (Damn banks and their irresponsible lending.) What are the employment prospects where you are? Doing a masters is more productive than being unemployed, and much better on the CV....
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I am pretty torn on this question...
On the one hand, it will never again be as easy to learn as it is now. The older you get and the more time passes between having been in school and then doing it again, the harder it will be. Not only to find the motivation (unless you really do like school), but also to get your brain into learning mode again. Not to think about actually fitting school into your budget, especially if you already have family.
On the other hand, I'd expect you lack experience on what kind of jobs are out there for you and which of them suits you best. If what you like to do best falls into your current degree, then getting a higher degree will make it harder for you to find employment in this field. Wacky companies aside, it is usually not a good idea to hire people with too high degrees for a certain job. Bored people are just as detrimental to your overall success as people who are overworked.
Frankly, without having any idea what you actually LIKE to do with your life, this question is a pretty tough one. As unhelpful as it may be, you should try to match your education with the profession and amount of responsibility you target. The closer you get, the easier things shall be for you.
A taught Masters (eg two more years of lectures) is a waste of time compared to two years experience, but a research Masters (two years of independent research under a mentor) is a good opportunity to make a name for yourself in a computing niche. The research one is more difficult, more expensive because you'll need to get to the right conferences and 'market' yourself, and only worthwhile if there's an aspect of computing that fascinates you more than it interests other people.
But...
The economy is shot. There's a chance that you won't be able to get a solid two years of work experience. If ever there was a time to not be in work for a while and take some time to improve your skills and get some "me time" where you're doing what you want to do this is it. If you do a Masters when you finish you'll be entering a work environment where there are lots of people who've graduated with you and then been unemployed for a large proportion of the past 2 years. You'll have an advantage over them.
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I'm not a professor, I do computer support for an engineering department so I see an academic environment, but I'm not an academic. That said:
Don't get a masters just for the sake of getting one. You will not get yourself any sort of real leg up. The reason to get a masters is because you want to do research. If there is something that interests you, something you want to study, particularly a research professor you'd like to work under, then it is a good idea. Education for its own sake is never a bad thing. However to just get a masters just to try and get a better job, nah not a good idea.
We have all kinds of students like that in the department where I work. They are hoop jumpers. They see a masters as just another hoop to jump through. However they don't really learn anything from it. They don't do any research, just take a comprehensive exam, and still go out in to the world with a ton of theoretical knowledge and no ability to actually apply it.
What you see is the opposite of what you'd think: The bad students go on, the good ones don't. The top students go and get a job. The bottom students go on to get a masters since they can't find a good job. However the problem isn't education.
Also, if your company wants you to get a masters, they'll send you back. My cousin did this. Got his bachelors and went to work for Boeing. After a few years they said "Hey, you are doing well on this, how about go get your masters?" So he did.
Now the one confounding factor right now might be the crappy job market. If you can't get a job, then maybe staying in school makes more sense. That's a question of finances, and I can't answer it for you since I don't know your situation. However if the option is no job living in poverty or full scholarship living as a student, well then it isn't hard to figure out which you should do.
So, reasons to get your masters:
1) You have something you are really interested in researching, or you know a professor who you are really interested in working with. You are getting it because you want to learn more and enrich yourself.
2) You have a good financial incentive to get it, like a scholarship, and poor financial incentive to go work.
3) You are working in a field that requires a masters. Computer engineering isn't generally one of those, but there are some exceptions. There are some subfields that a masters or PhD is necessary. If you wanted to be a professor that would be an example.
Now these are NOT reasons to get a masters:
1) You want a better job. Probably not really going to help you. It might, and I emphasize might, get you a better entry level position, but work experience counts way more than education after that. So you might find that in 5 years, you were better off getting more work experience than education.
2) You want to put off working because you aren't sure what you want to do. Bad idea. Only way you will know what you like is to try it. So get the job, and if it doesn't work out get another. Don't use school to avoid work, because that doesn't solve anything since work is coming at some point.
3) You "need it to compete." No, you don't. Most CE people don't go on to get a masters. It really isn't needed. If you find yourself unable to compete, the problem is likely not a lack of education, but something else. I mean if you are the sort of person with no problem solving skills (something engineering requires) no amount of school will teach that.
So I can't say if it is the right decision for you since I don't know you or your situation. All I can say is that it is the right decision, so long as it is made for the right reason(s).
Try for a research masters degree on some topic you find interesting, and try to find a way to monetize it. :-))
Create a small company that you own if necessary (take care of not being carried away bankrupcy is no fun
And either do some consulting,or try to monetize whatever you have developped.
So on your CV you'll have the Master AND the Experience...
At any rate, having the master's degree will make your life much easier, particularly when you'll be a "senior"...
(it might seem counter intuitive that a diploma that you've done or not 25 or 30 years ago has any impact on your career, but in reality not having it means needing twice the "support" from insiders...)
unless you're absolutely sure that you'll be running your own company when you're 45..50..
(and actually no you cannot be sure....)
I did an MSc directly after my BSc. I believe it was time well spent. When it came to looking for a job I found that the MSc got me several interviews, it also meant being offered the maximum salary for a new graduate.
In computer science jobs, a masters might get you a couple of thousand per year higher pay, but you've lived at a lower salary for a year (or two) and could have been up to that higher starting salary with normal pay rises by the time you start there with your masters. For total lifetime earnings in computer science, I doubt it will help.
On the other hand, I don't think it hurts that much either, and it's a chance to do a more in-depth study of your chosen field. It's also an opportunity to see the different views on the subject at a different university, meet interesting new people (including future professional contacts), and enjoy learning for its own sake. Once you're on a non-academic payroll, you will start needing a reason to study interesting subjects during daylight hours.
In short, I agree with wjh31: if you like to study, it's a good way to spend some time. If you just want to earn more money, get a job with prospects, work hard, and get promoted.
CS is an area were tool life cycle is very short. If you are not carefull, and don't have the theoretical grounds, you can soon have a lot of experience in an obsolete field, were you would have keep working.
MSc acquired knoledge can help to avoid this. However take care with MSc topic: select something you want to do. Don't think on it as
the work of a life, but as the start of a life.
I have gone for the MSc ;) .
Get real work experience first, then get your masters. Not intern/co-op stuff, but some real world work experience.
I'm have a BSME, concentration in controls. If I went to masters program straight out of by BS, I wouldn't have known what I didn't know nor what I wanted to learn.
I've worked for 2.5 years so far at a company and love all the work that I do. But there's definitely a 'glass ceiling' of knowledge that I want to get past. I'm looking at going back in 2010 for my masters.
At the same time, 95% of the people I work with are perfectly content with their position and the work they do. You maybe too. Get out in the real world, see what you know and what you don't and then make the decision after a year or two in the real world. After 2 years you may come to the conclusion that 2 years in the work force taught you everything you wanted to know about CO and you'll have saved yourself 2 years of your life.
This is right on, for programming jobs, anyway. I can tell you that while a masters might get your resume through HR (along with 150 others), it isn't going to mean squat to the people *actually* hiring you. I've hired many, many people and not once did I even think about a masters degree. The only hiring managers I knew who favored people with masters degrees were absolute twits (and there weren't even very many of them).
Another thing to keep in mind -- 2 years of academics is 2 years of not getting paid. It takes a pretty big salary differential to overcome that loss.
In some fields, but not in CS. A masters doesn't get you more money. What gets you more money is experience, especially experience in the field you're looking for work in, and the ability to negotiate. There's just no point to extra years of school in CS, you learn on the job or through self study everything you'd learn in the masters courses.
Note that the OP has a Computer Engineering degree, rather than CS. As a Computer Engineer myself, I will say that there really is a lot you are able to do with a Masters that you can not do with a Bachelors + experience. Mostly because you can't get the experience without the Masters. One example is microcontroller and chip design. The big chip design firms won't hire a BS, no matter what.
So it's really about what you want to do, and when you want to get your degree. I have a educational reimbursement program at my company, which will allow me to get my Masters 100% paid for and a raise when I complete it. This is a good option if you want to take a short break from the classes, and make some money first. Really, it all depends on if you want to go into a field requiring a Master immediately, or find a company willing to train you. From personal experience, though, most EEs and CpEs I know end up with a Masters at some point.
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I cannot speak to CS, but in electrical engineering having a Masters doesn't mean anything. My boss all-but-laughed when I asked for a raise and then told me, "Having that masters degree doesn't mean anything here." The only thing a M.S. gains you is an extra bullet point on your resume, such that they will hire you instead of the B.S. candidate, but don't expect to earn any more money.
Employers are interested in skills, not extra college sheepskin. They want to know what you can DO and how fast it can get done.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I beg to disagree. Being a Computer Engineer with a Master's and some work experience, I can tell you that the pay is definitely better starting over a Bachelor's. I ended up with ~15k more with the MS (the recruiter messed up and put me through with a BS salary first and fixed it). What typically happens is your company starts you at a higher job "rank" than the BS new hires. That automatically puts you on a new salary scale (in my case it ended up be 15k higher as a rank 2 engineer). Eventually your BS peers can catch up with promotions and raises, since you are on the same overall progression track, but you are still starting off higher on the scale.
I do agree there are ceilings though without a MS. Many of the positions require a "experience" level before you can be moved into them. My company for example, requires X years to be considered for a promotion with a BS and X-Y years to be considered for the same promotion with a MS.
I have two suggestions. First, right now try to enroll in a dual-degree program if your department offers one. That is how I'm currently finishing my Master's. These programs allow you to do both degrees at the same time. For instance, I was taking graduate level classes in my third year of study. They usually take a little longer than your typical BS but nowhere as long as a true MS program.
My second suggestion is to let your company pay for more education when you land a full time job. Most companies offer to pay for their employees to take more classes. Some companies even offer "leadership programs" where in the course of the program you will earn a Master's.
Overall, it's really up to you. You just spend a few years working on your BS. Can you handle more schooling? Would writing a thesis interest you?
If you plan is to do true systems engineering (chip design, manufacturing design, etc) or work in high tech aspects of IT, then a masters in both CS and math should be persued, with minors in physics or drafting/engineering design as appropriate. Get an internship as soon as one is available. You should internt not less than 2 years with a fortune 500 company if possible.
If your intent is to work in IT, forget the masters... Start taking every certification test you can as fast as you can pass them NOW, while you are still in school. Start with CompTIA, then do your basic M$ and Cisco stuff, then some Unix/Linux certifications, then go back and finish off M$'s and Cisco's more advanced certifications.
Also, GET A JOB IN IT or an internship in the industry NOW!
Everyone posting here is right, ESPECIALLY in the first 5 years, experience means everything. Don't be fooled, the certifgications and degrees are still important (HR is told to look for certain things; MCSE, A+, etc). If you don't have the paper, they won;t even look at your application, but your pay grade is almost exclusively based on your field experience, how relevent that experience is to the job you are applying for, and how well you interview.
You'll probably be lucky to get $30K your first year out. You'll add $5K to that changing jobs 12-24 mnonths later. By year 5, with the right effort and certifications you can make analyst level in IT and be making $60K plus easy. It you're taking the IT track, keep your hands on SERVERS, not phones (stay off the helpdesk). Experience in IT is not measuered by years on the job, it;s measuered in years of hands on specific technologies. My current job asked me to detail my number of years of experience in 17 different IT aspects (Windows servers, AD, Cisco, DOD STIG, Linux, VMWare, Visio, Network Security, and more).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
you learn on the job or through self study everything you'd learn in the masters courses.
3 years ago i would have agreed with you, but then i paused my decade-long programming career to start my masters/phd. and i have to tell you, it's a misconception that couldn't be more wrong. the theory-side of CS i have learned (just from my master's classes no less) puts to shame the programmer i was at the end of my last full-time gig.
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Never finished my college.
But I'm 27 and I have 11 years of experience in the field. You do the math.
That's why I work for HP and have a salary that tops my ex-classmates who actually graduated.
I've seen college degrees (and degrees that follow) make all the difference in the world, but in other professions.
I'm also highly nerdy, but with a really good set of social skills, which make me highly qualified to interact with customers, which by the way, is the quintessential skill in business.
Some GP said that if you're looking to differentiate yourself in a world of recession where everyone has an undergrad diploma. I disagree. To differentiate yourself, simply be great at what you do. And, in order to do that, you need to love it.
My mother was already working, I had 16, my bro 9, and she was pregnant with twins when she decided to start on her masters. If you love this field you've chosen, you'll get a job AND get to work on your masters, feel tired all the time, get little sleep and probably some white hair, but in the end you'll simply make it and be glad you did.
That doesn't sound terribly different from my business school experience. But there were also good professors who consulted so that they could stay active in the field.
My (teacher) wife has continued her education well past her Master's degree and there is a surprising amount of interaction between the colleges and the schools. Most of the education at her level has been focused around a bunch of teachers exchanging ideas about what works while guided by a professor who helps them synthesize all the different ideas into new ideas and techniques. A lot of the classes have actually been taught by college professors in the students' own classrooms. (They would rotate each week.)
So while I agree with you, I also think you might be painting with too broad a brush.
You can earn a master's degree part time while you work. If you work for the right company, they will even pay your tuition. This is what I did when I graduated from undergrad. I got a job with a large defense contractor, then got a master's degree in 2 years of part time work (2 courses per semester, one course over the summer). The time commitment was tough (I had to give up most of my hobbies), but it was worth it. The master's degree cost me nothing (my company payed the school about 15k per year, though). On top of that, the top-tier school that I attended to get my master's had a "simplified" admission program for employees of my company -- I basically didn't have to apply at all. I'm not sure I would have even been accepted at this school if I had to apply and compete with other folks (my grades in undergrad were not stellar).
If I stayed at the same company after my degree, I wouldn't have gotten a raise due to my additional academic credentials. However, I started applying for a new job after I finished my degree and I got several offers at the next higher pay grade due to my degree. I ended up taking a job at a R&D center -- a place where I wouldn't even have gotten a job offer if I didn't have a graduate degree. So, yes, you can get higher pay or a better job due to having an advanced degree, but you may have to leave your current job to get it.
BTW, I am a programmer/software engineer and both of my degrees are in computer science. There are tons of companies/organizations out there that value programmers with advanced degrees.
I'm a little confused. "The experience of focusing on one problem and becoming a world expert on" would seem to apply to a PhD program and not a Masters program. The Masters is basically just a bunch of classes generally not that different from undergrad classes except that they tend to have bigger projects in each class.
Then the end game of the program seems to be a project (bigger in scope than undergrad), a thesis (less common but still around), or you just take extra classes (not all places have this).
With no experience a masters may hurt you in a recession though, because who would you rather hire? The undergrad with no experience, or the masters with no experience who will be expecting more money than the undergrad?
This is the HR barrier. The ultimate challenge in formating a resume is to get through the HR barrier. Sometimes I swear if the job description says "electrical engineer" if you dont have "Electrical Engineering" in your education section, you're screwed, even if you have 10 years experience as an electrical engineer.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Alternatively, after you get your bachelor's and get a job see if your company will pay for your master's. Many companies will do "tuition reimbursement" as long as its a relevant degree field and you make good grades. Its a lot of work but trust me, its worth it, and you should get it done now before you get married and have kids.
I'm torn on this. I just completed an M.S. in CS while working full-time as a developer, and now that it's all over, I'm not sure how I feel about the decision I made to do the two concurrently. On one hand, the expensive parts of school were free (before my in-state residency kicked in and I paid my own much cheaper way). I've been getting a pretty good paycheck which has funded an engagement ring, much of a wedding, and a couple of years of my fiancee's college education. Now that I'm done, I have a graduate degree with 3 years experience instead of a graduate degree with 1 year. In theory this will help with my current job hunt. Even though the economy is down, I've got a couple of promising leads that I strongly doubt I would have without both the work experience and the graduate degree. While those leads are pretty much hot air until they turn into interviews / offers, I got them with only a couple of weeks looking around and so I believe I'm in a better spot than I was after college.
HOWEVER, I feel like I didn't get as much out of my degree as I wanted. I didn't have the time to spend really digging into courses that challenged me (namely a theory of computation course). I had to pass on a number of courses that would have been interesting, but couldn't be made to work with my professional schedule. I wasn't able to go to department colloquia or talks because they were during work hours. I had a funded summer research project that I wasn't able to take as far as I wanted because research is not something you can do "after hours". For the same reason, I had to abandon my thesis after a literature review because there wasn't any way I was going to be able to put out good work, and I thought it better to just graduate with a comprehensive exam to get the damned thing over with. I don't regret that decision, but I regret not changing the circumstances that led to it. As I look back, I realize that the time in school was far more rewarding to me.
On mornings when I just didn't want to get out of bed (sucky weather, didn't sleep well), it wasn't my job that made me get up. What got me out of bed was the thought of learning something new, of figuring out how some small part of the computer science world worked. Now, in one hand I've got an M.S. that I'm only superficially proud of because it does not represent the full extent of my abilities. In the other hand, I've got excellent performance reviews for a job I have no pride in and a bunch of clueless co-workers and managers who are congratulating me for "finally finishing college".
I guess the point of this Slashdot-confession post is that working full-time and doing an M.S. concurrently is not a decision to be undertaken lightly. I'm not talking about a lack of social life, as that's a relatively easy problem to solve. The problem is prioritization. Something will have to play second fiddle, and YOU are the ultimate arbiter of what needs to give if you do this. Otherwise, you'll wind up half-assing one or the other, and you may not like where that leaves you. Good luck, though - I wish you well!
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When it comes down to "brass tax", degrees (or certifications) don't mean anything. I've known plenty of [insert certification of the day] that knew their stuff and just as many that didn't. I've also known plenty of people without [insert certification of the day] that were good (and plenty that weren't). I think, because of the type of people this field attracts, that's the general feeling......we'd rather be surrounded by people that know their stuff and don't really care about degrees and certs. Certs are for the non-tech people, not the tech people.
And I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned Education Reimbursement as an option. Get the experience and let the company pay for your Masters. Where I've worked, completing the degree got you a bump in pay to go along with it.
Where do you work that self-interest aligns with the corporate interest, and people take the CEOs "vision" seriously? Where I work it is all fiefdom-building.
This is why I - an engineer costing my employer $250/hour - am doing IT work. Someone in corporate thinks the company will save money by laying off IT workers. Instead, it usually works out like this:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You might want to teach high school through the whole PhD. Teaching assistants make dirt, and while high school teacher is not the path to wealth and fame generally speaking, at least you can live off of it. Teaching jobs at diploma mill colleges like U of Phoenix (that'll hire people with only a masters) tend to be period by period (for whatever period the school uses. Semesters, quarters, six week sessions, whatever), so you never know from one period to the next if you'll have a job. They tend to be better as supplemental income than a "job". Plus most districts will pay you more with a masters so you'll get a raise for the time between that and your PhD. I'd like to think that the years you spend teaching high school will also help you find a professorship more quickly, but in reality that probably depends on the schools you apply to. Smaller liberal arts colleges will probably look favorably on the experience, bigger schools will just want to know what you have published.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Also they get a lot of respect from most people below 18 and virtually all people above 18...
You're joking right? Students give teachers ~0 respect, and as for the adults the saying goes "If you can, do; if you can't, teach"
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
The saying is "brass tacks", and comes from the textile industry. In the 1800's, there were few accurate rulers for long distances, so the merchants used brass tacks spaced on their counter-tops, hammered into the boards at measured intervals. Plus: certify it when they're hammered in, so they make a good standard that the merchant isn't ripping you off, plus you can't adjust them without visual evidence. The customer would look at the bolts of fabric, choose a style, then they would "get down to brass tacks" to determine how much to cut, and you only get to cut once. Today, the saying relates to getting serious about the topic at hand.
Incidentally, thanks to Wikipedia, we now know that the tape measure wasn't invented until the 1860s, and wasn't in widespread use until the 1940s.
I started out as a high school science teacher. In the state I got my teachers license I had to have two majors, one in the discipline I was too teach and the other in education. The education component was total and utter bullshit and I learned absolutely nothing from it. What I needed to learn about how to teach a class of 9th and 10th graders was taught to me by my mentor when I student taught. What she taught me was in complete contradiction to what the education classes taught. The methods and philosophy the education classes taught were so ineffective that they were laughable, the methods and philosophy taught to me by my mentor allowed me to teach effectively. I left high school teaching, earned a PhD and now teach and do research at a major university. The university has a "Center for Teaching Excellence", that new faculty must participate in. The center run by the education department teaches the same bovine excrement that the education department pushed when I was a student teacher and is just as ineffective now as it was then. 35 years of teaching with multiple teacher of the year awards has taught me that the old saw "those who can do, those who cann't teach" only applies to those actually believe the education department bullshit. How is it that a science, math engineering faculty member can barely manage mentoring two PhD students, but an education faculty member can GRADUATE 15 education PhD's a year? The answer is simple an education degree meaningless.
"it's a lot harder"
That's a bit of an understatement. The teachers' contracts (and in some cases the law) specify how many children can be in each class. The population specifies how many children there are. The government specifies how many of them are entitled to a public education.
Teachers get laid off, but it's basically impossible to have the sort of massive 15%-25% layoffs that you get in the corporate world. The administration is somewhat exposed, but the rest of the system not so much.
Also (as was pointed out earlier) they can't outsource their science teachers. They can't decide to get out of the math education business.
They can't just fire all the tenured teachers a la Circuit City and hire new graduates. They can't even decide to lower the standards and hire teachers without degrees because that's spelled out in the contract as well.
Firings happen, but whereas I can get fired for no reason at all, teachers can't. Neither can janitors, for that matter. (Unless they hire an outside firm, but the school districts in RI don't do that.)
I can't speak for the severance package, so I won't. It's pretty unlikely to come up. But the phrase "little salary" is not remotely true in RI. A teacher with 10 years' experience in a public school system will make 70-80k, with 16 weeks of vacation. I'm not saying they don't earn it or deserve it, and I realize that unlike those of us in the private sector teachers will never have the opportunity to get rich (not through teaching, at least). But they make a good living.
Labor unions and government-run institutions are less effective combined than either of them are on their own.