It should be obvious that the recent deluge of (online) Master's programs from Harvard and other well known universities is a scam.
I think most people here are technical and would pursue a degree in a technical field so here's my personal criteria of what does and does not constitute an actual worthwhile Master's degree in science / engineering: it requires heavy calculus and other advanced math.
Programs that don't do that are generally decorated with "management" titles and/or implications, for example "Master's in Engineering Management" or "Master's in Cyber Security."
An online IT degree is how I got my foot in the door. Then I saved up money and went to engineering school. Which do you guess made the biggest difference to my world outlook and career?
I don't think masters degrees are a scam. However, there are a lot of online only masters programs out there now, and I am not sure they provide the same value. More on that later,
Yes, MS are much more career targeted. That's a feature, not a detriment. In computer science undergrad, I had to take 2 religion, 4 philosophy, 2 history, and 3 language classes. None of those 11 made me a better person nor helped my career. There were 10+ other humanities classes I had to take which left me no room to do what I actually wanted to do: dual major in business and computer science. Note: there were ZERO classes I was given that had any web, cloud, or big data learning in them. I still felt restricted by the 10 courses I had to take for my computer science masters, but I routinely use what I learned in my masters at work. It was extremely beneficial/applicable. There is something to be said for context switching as well. I liked having a smaller-focused course load.
Another thing I liked / found beneficial is the dedication of my classmates. In undergrad, many students wanted to do the bare minimum and move on with their lives. A lot was about partying and sleeping in, which isn't bad, but having classmates who are passionate about the topics and dedicated to putting their best foot forward in class is nice to also have. Its nice having these two separate learning experiences. I've kept in touch with almost no one from undergrad, but lots from masters. The most valuable aspect of a masters is the students, which is why I am highly skeptical of online only masters programs.
In the end, my masters degree doubled my earnings and set my career on a whole new trajectory. Its a great way to energize or restart your career as well.
* Universities make much more money off their Masters students, most of whom are international, and pay full tuition (or someone does for them).*
It's a scam.
The Ph.D. is the real graduate degree in US schools. If you get a MS, people who know the system expect that you flunked out in quals (it's the parting gift for those that couldn't handle the work). Terminal MS degrees at serious schools are just outright selling prestige to the naïve.
A MS from MIT or Stanfurd is much, much less prestigious than a BS degree from the same school and requires less academic rigor.
This likely depends on the degree and the purpose for which you tried to obtain it.
Some online Masters degree programs are just scams preying on people's desire to improve their careers. They are successful because so many employer's won't pay or promote to certain positions without advanced degrees. So there is a real demand for degrees like MBAs.
For some degrees, the real value is the additional education you receive because of the increased complexity of the subject. Not everyone goes after these degrees for the same reason. For me, I went to grad school in physics not because I thought it would help my career, but because I wanted to learn more physics. I don't think this is the typical reason for which advanced degrees are sought anymore, but at least in some cases, like mine, master's degrees aren't scams, but a necessary part of deeper education into a specific area.
It's probably generally true of engineering degrees. While there's obviously an opportunity cost, there's usually not a big out of pocket expense other than living expenses. In my case, it wasn't so much that I really used a lot of specific things I learned getting the Master's but I still think it was a useful supplement to what I learned undergrad--the thesis in particular.
The same applies to some degree of the sciences in general but, there, you probably have to get to a PhD for the opportunities to be significantly elevated relative to a BS.
In any case, this meme about Master's degree scams is mostly directed at high-cost degrees in journalism and the like where the career opportunities aren't great with or without the degree.
In my understanding this distinction makes the degree essentially worthless.
Udacity and Georgia Tech are comparing the real master's and online master's as equivalent, but there hasn't been any evidence that employers or other universities (for PhD programs etc) would treat the online master's any better than a string of MOOC completions.
While usual bachelor and master degrees offer a "costly advertising" function, the lowered barriers should actually make the degree less attractive to employers. They could always hire self-taught engineers at a considerable discount if they wanted to.
Depends on the institution. I’m sure that there are many actual scams advertising an online Masters degree you can earn that isn’t real, but a Masters degree earned from an accredited degree-granting institution, whether in-person or online, is in fact real. Accredited universities probably would not offer an online Masters degree(that costs tens of thousands of dollars in some cases, mind you) if it did not hold the same weight as an in-person Masters degree.
If you’re worried about the job competition impact, I would suggest focusing on your in-person/on-site achievements when building your resume.
I think the title overstates it, even per it's own arguments in the article itself whose criticism is more narrow in scope. (Though criticisms on high prices do apply across the board)
What it really takes issue with are programs that amount to a professional certificate, essentially a sort of trade school for a particular industry or role within that industry.
I don't think the same criticism of quality applies to more traditional academically-oriented programs. For example an undergrad Biology major is essentially getting a wide survey of the field. At the master's level it goes into a lot more depth and you usually have some fairly specific area of focus. In short, you're acquiring a base of knowledge rather than focussing mostly on the application of that knowledge. Far different than, say, a 9-month Master's degree in cloud infrastructure that may be obsolete before you pay off the loan.
This may be the case in CS, but for EE and other engineering fields, a master's degree is definitely worth it. The expanded job opportunities and differences in starting pay are worth the tuition most of the time.
Besides, you missed my point, isn't it deceitful to be allowed to advertise an online masters as a regular one? Doesn't that do disservice to those who went ahead and got a regular one?
The enormous majority of Master’s degrees awarded in most fields are for taught Master’s that bear far more resemblance to undergraduate study than Ph.D. preparation. Unless you know someone has a degree that is only possible to get if you were admitted to a Ph.D. programme the assumption should be that it’s a cat cow. There are exceptions, like GA Tech’s OMSCS, but unless you have excellent reason to believe otherwise an MA or MS can be assumed to be a university’s cash grab.
In addition to everything else it may be, Master's degree is a public achievement. It has about 900 years of history [1]. It confers a social status (that may or may not be valued by another individual). There's nothing wrong with assigning a non-nil value to any or all of those things. If a person does, then a master's is non-fungible with a nano-degree.
The other thing a Master's is more likely to provide than a nano-degree is a network of other students and the program's professors. And of course the Stanford and Georgia Tech alumni networks are meaningfully stronger than Udacity's. [2]
The third rail is an on-campus graduate education. I mean if your working at a startup and what you really want is to learn, then on campus is more of what you really want. And it opens up many many more educational options. Specific professors. Specific topics. All over the world. [3]
I think these online technical degrees are just the next iteration beyond those one-year MS/MEng degrees that started popping up around 2000. This was back when "financial engineering" was the buzzword... that worked out well, didn't it?
I'm sure some firms will really like these degrees, but if you're a company (like Google, for example) insisting on a specialized degree, why not aim for PhD level? The income differential is marginal. In Chicago, PhD quants for funds generally start out around $140-150k. I'd argue those ppl are going to be more productive researchers/data scientists than what can be produced by an online program, due largely to value of a research oriented degree versus a skills oriented degree like this one. Even if there is a project component, it isn't the same as writing a thesis. I did an M.Eng way back, trust me: it just isn't the same as banging your head against a research topic for a couple years.
Also, for what it is worth, I found the target audience for one-year financial engineering degrees (Goldman Sach, etc) didn't respect the degrees as much as PhDs & MS w/thesis. They generally regarded it as a 5th year of university.
Criticism aside, I'm sure this is a great skill builder and ML is fun thing to learn. Not for $60k, though.
I like how they're still marketing that McK data science report. "Hadoop everything"
The biggest cheapening of Master's degrees is in education, where many school districts provide reimbursement and fairly significant pay raises for teachers who get masters. Which has led to a large number of garbage paint-by-number programs to service that demand. My mother got one while I was in high school, from a well respected regional university, and the level of the coursework was laughable.
I think most people here are technical and would pursue a degree in a technical field so here's my personal criteria of what does and does not constitute an actual worthwhile Master's degree in science / engineering: it requires heavy calculus and other advanced math.
Programs that don't do that are generally decorated with "management" titles and/or implications, for example "Master's in Engineering Management" or "Master's in Cyber Security."
An online IT degree is how I got my foot in the door. Then I saved up money and went to engineering school. Which do you guess made the biggest difference to my world outlook and career?
Buyer beware.
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