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Is the Master's Degree the New Bachelor's?
Hugh Pickens writes "Laura Pappano writes that the master's degree, once derided as the consolation prize for failing to finish a Ph.D., or as a way to kill time waiting out economic downturns, is now the fastest-growing degree, with 657,000 awarded in 2009, more than double the level in the 1980s. Today nearly two in 25 people age 25 and over have a master's, about the same proportion that had a bachelor's or higher in 1960. 'Several years ago it became very clear to us that master's education was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions,' says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. 'There is definitely some devaluing of the college degree going on,' adds Eric A. Hanushek, an education economist at the Hoover Institution. 'We are going deeper into the pool of high school graduates for college attendance,' making a bachelor's no longer an adequate screening measure of achievement for employers. But some wonder if a master's is worth the extra effort. 'In some fields, such as business or engineering, a graduate degree typically boosted income by more than enough to justify the cost,' says Liz Pulliam Weston. 'In others — the liberal arts and social sciences, in particular — master's degrees didn't appear to produce much if any earnings advantage.'"
We would not be having this discussion if things were booming. Back in 2000, you could get a job if you could spell HTML. The reason M is the B is that degrees for many/most jobs serves as a WAY TO CUT DOWN THE PILE FOR HR. Nothing more, nothing less.
"making a bachelor's no longer an adequate screening measure of achievement for employers"
What many employers fail to realize is that various Bachelor's Degrees require different levels of work. Some much more than others.
A BS in Engineering or BA in History require extensive reading and research. A generic "Business Degree" requires just showing up to class.
Why, you might ask? Simple: because it screened out the lower classes such as Okies.
Back in the early 70s, the hiring officer for my first job after graduation had a sign on his wall: "A four year degree means a man is trainable." (Yes, "man." Times were different and nobody even pretended to be gender-neutral.) He explained it: "If you can put up with four years of bullshit to get a piece of paper, you can stick out the six months it'll take us to train you to be useful."
Pure screening system. The whole idea isn't that you learn anything particularly useful in college, it's that it makes it easy to reject enough candidates to keep the applicant list manageable.
Well, now more people have BS degrees and they need to screen more people out. It's just that simple.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It's been my experience in the engineering field that going straight through school to the masters degree is far less useful than getting the bachelors, working for a while and then getting the masters (or concurrently getting the masters while you're working your first job out of undergrad). The academic type can come out of a masters program and still not know squat about actually getting things done, making them basically useless. On the other hand, those of us who have gotten a bachelors, worked a while, and then gone back for the masters really do get more value.
When I see a resume pass my desk that is for someone who went straight through to a masters, I'm actually less likely to recommend them. They often don't have any better real world skills but they cost more to employ while you get them trained. In fact, they tend to be harder to train as they are so completely immersed in academia and have a hard time making the transition to the real world. On the other hand, internship experience while going straight through school does compensate quite a bit. A few terms doing real work while going to school makes all the difference.
People live longer, work longer, so why not go to school longer? Its not like the world is getting simpler, in fact quite the opposite.