Graduate Degrees

[Honor]

Internet friends, I'm curious - what graduate degrees do you think have a good bang for their buck these days? It seems like the market for JDs is shot in all but a few areas, like...real estate. I think getting an MD is still a pretty risk-averse option because adcoms do a decent job of weeding out people who are unlikely to want or be able to finish the long road. (Although I am hearing that more and more students are having trouble being placed into residencies after med school, but the rates are still low compared to say, law school grads who can't find full-time legal jobs.) I hear mixed things about MBA programs. Two fields I hear consistently good things about are computer science and engineering - that the degrees lead to jobs easily and that graduate degrees are worth it. Throw in your two cents - I have been a student for so long, and I'm a newbie to the big bad world of work. I'd love to hear what your experiences have been and what your perceptions are!

 

[Honor]

I read an article the other day which noted that half of STEM jobs are filled by people who don't have STEM degrees. Here it is: The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.

Given that my degrees are in psychology and I have a job as a computer programmer, this is actually me now. You have to know your way around a computer to pull it off, of course.

Also, if you want to pull down some serious $, a masters in CS will do the trick.

Wow, that is a cool story! How in the world did you get a CS job with a psychology degree? Yes, I've heard that about CS degrees!

 

[Honor]

I read http://slashdot.org every day for 10 years?

No shit!

 

[Coriolis]

Wow, that is a cool story! How in the world did you get a CS job with a psychology degree? Yes, I've heard that about CS degrees!

CS jobs seem to be as much if not more about skills as degrees. There are professional certifications you can get that don't depend on major at all, just knowledge and passing tests, and sometimes experience.

One benefit of most STEM graduate degrees is that you don't have to pay for them - the school pays you, as a research or teaching assistant. The pay is paltry, but enough to live on and better than finishing with even more student debt. STEM degrees are still in high demand, especially with government and their contractors where U.S. citizenship is often required.

 

[FDG]

Sorry for asking but - do you think you can equally pull off all of the listed careers easily? (I could never be a programmer or surgeon, for example)

 

[Honor]

Sorry for asking but - do you think you can equally pull off all of the listed careers easily? (I could never be a programmer or surgeon, for example)

Me personally or people in general? I'm not asking about this to apply it to myself as career advice, I was just asking because I'm curious about the state of high education in general right now.

 

[Honor]

CS jobs seem to be as much if not more about skills as degrees. There are professional certifications you can get that don't depend on major at all, just knowledge and passing tests, and sometimes experience.

One benefit of most STEM graduate degrees is that you don't have to pay for them - the school pays you, as a research or teaching assistant. The pay is paltry, but enough to live on and better than finishing with even more student debt. STEM degrees are still in high demand, especially with government and their contractors where U.S. citizenship is often required.

Really? Of course PhDs are funded, but I don't know of any funded terminal master's degree programs. I'd love to hear if you have specific examples.

 

[The Great One]

Internet friends, I'm curious - what graduate degrees do you think have a good bang for their buck these days? It seems like the market for JDs is shot in all but a few areas, like...real estate. I think getting an MD is still a pretty risk-averse option because adcoms do a decent job of weeding out people who are unlikely to want or be able to finish the long road. (Although I am hearing that more and more students are having trouble being placed into residencies after med school, but the rates are still low compared to say, law school grads who can't find full-time legal jobs.) I hear mixed things about MBA programs. Two fields I hear consistently good things about are computer science and engineering - that the degrees lead to jobs easily and that graduate degrees are worth it. Throw in your two cents - I have been a student for so long, and I'm a newbie to the big bad world of work. I'd love to hear what your experiences have been and what your perceptions are!

I'd hold off on the medical field if I were you. Obama care might fuck that up. For instance, I know two hospitals in my town that are already cutting jobs because the new Obama care laws are going to lose them money and they need to make budget cuts. Computer science jobs are good, and if you really want a SUPER SAFE degree, then go Electrical Engineering. You can do so much with that degree. You may want to enroll in a graduate certificate program before taking that road though. Graduate certificate programs help to ease you from one program into another, and you may want this with EE because it has a lot of pre-requisites: Up to calculus 3, physics 2, linear algebra, differental equations, stats, and I think chemistry.

 

[The Great One]

Wow, that is a cool story! How in the world did you get a CS job with a psychology degree? Yes, I've heard that about CS degrees!

You can get a few of the basic CS jobs if you just know certain programming languages: Java, Visual Basic, C++, Javascript, Python, etc. Java, VB, and C++ are probably the best to learn though.

 

[Honor]

I'd hold off on the medical field if I were you. Obama care might fuck that up. For instance, I know two hospitals in my town that are already cutting jobs because the new Obama care laws are going to lose them money and they need to make budget cuts. Computer science jobs are good, and if you really want a SUPER SAFE degree, then go Electrical Engineering. You can do so much with that degree. You may want to enroll in a graduate certificate program before taking that road though. Graduate certificate programs help to ease you from one program into another, and you may want this with EE because it has a lot of pre-requisites: Up to calculus 3, physics 2, linear algebra, differental equations, stats, and I think chemistry.

You are absolutely right. I should have said medicine is okay right now but long-term it's pretty shot as far as physician salaries. Plus, the ratio of number of hours worked to salary isn't great for many types of physicians now anyway - and it's about to get a lot worse when the Affordable Health Care Act kicks in.

 

[The Great One]

You are absolutely right. I should have said medicine is okay right now but long-term it's pretty shot as far as physician salaries. Plus, the ratio of number of hours worked to salary isn't great for many types of physicians now anyway - and it's about to get a lot worse when the Affordable Health Care Act kicks in.

What did you get your bachelor's in?

 

[Coriolis]

Really? Of course PhDs are funded, but I don't know of any funded terminal master's degree programs. I'd love to hear if you have specific examples.

I did such a master's program (physics), and was funded first year as a teaching assistant, and second year as a research assistant. The students I work with now are similarly funded, both for masters, whether terminal or not, and PhD. They are in either physics or electrical engineering. In my experience, this is the norm for these fields.

I'd hold off on the medical field if I were you. Obama care might fuck that up. For instance, I know two hospitals in my town that are already cutting jobs because the new Obama care laws are going to lose them money and they need to make budget cuts.

On the other hand, more people are going to have medical insurance, and therefore more people will be consuming medical services. I have read projections that the demand for doctors and other medical providers will quickly outstrip demand, so these careers might become both more lucrative and more manageable for those who pursue them.

 

[Honor]

I did such a master's program (physics), and was funded first year as a teaching assistant, and second year as a research assistant. The students I work with now are similarly funded, both for masters, whether terminal or not, and PhD. They are in either physics or electrical engineering. In my experience, this is the norm for these fields.


On the other hand, more people are going to have medical insurance, and therefore more people will be consuming medical services. I have read projections that the demand for doctors and other medical providers will quickly outstrip demand, so these careers might become both more lucrative and more manageable for those who pursue them.

It's a very complex matter, the effect the Affordable Health Care Act will have on the healthcare system and perhaps someone with more expertise will chime in but this does not seem likely to happen. Basically, the doctors I talk to explain it like this: they are already forced by hospital management to see a ton of patients in a short amount of time. When universal healthcare kicks in, they will have to see more patients but their salaries are not going to go up. The new system is modeled after Medicaid; doctors are already struggling to be reimbursed for those patients because of tactics the fed uses to make sure they don't have to spend a lot for those people. Lots of info about this in the NY Times recently.

Google "RVUs." This is a measure that is now put in place to help assess what doctors should be reimbursed by comparing how long they take to do a procedure with other doctors. Of course, some people argue that using RVUs isn't actually going to decrease doctors' salaries (people being paid by the AMA to say that, lol), but I think the intent is to make docors do as many procesures as possible for as little reimbursement as possible.

About what you said about the master's programs...Never knew those programs existed! Awesome!

 

[Coriolis]

It's a very complex matter, the effect the Affordable Health Care Act will have on the healthcare system and perhaps someone with more expertise will chime in but this does not seem likely to happen. Basically, the doctors I talk to explain it like this: they are already forced by hospital management to see a ton of patients in a short amount of time. When universal healthcare kicks in, they will have to see more patients but their salaries are not going to go up. The new system is modeled after Medicaid; doctors are already struggling to be reimbursed for those patients because of tactics the fed uses to make sure they don't have to spend a lot for those people. Lots of info about this in the NY Times recently.

Salaries aside, the current system cannot handle a significant increase in demand. Increasing salaries for doctors will not add more hours to their workday. I am hoping that, to attract more people to the field, there will be some student debt forgiveness or even degree sponsorship, at least reducing the costs of becoming a doctor, even if the pay remains the same. There should also be an increase in the use of nurse practitioners and physican's assistants, who can easily provide much routine care. This is good for patients, as well as for the financial bottom line.

 

[The Great One]

On the other hand, more people are going to have medical insurance, and therefore more people will be consuming medical services. I have read projections that the demand for doctors and other medical providers will quickly outstrip demand, so these careers might become both more lucrative and more manageable for those who pursue them.

I think that they're gonna make less though.

 

[kyuuei]

I think it depends on what sort of degree you aim for as far as funding goes.. I don't see many MSN's funded, for example, but clearly they do exist.

Anyways, I still think master degrees and PhD's are worth the effort if you're already working in a job you love in that field. To give the example earlier, there really isn't a necessity for that guy to get a master's in psychology, as he's got a legit career in computer science. While it is easier to get a job in a company in which you are established, going to another company or moving to a new town/state, it might be easier to land a job of equivalent pay in which you were paid via seniority with credentials they are demanding instead.

In the case of nurses, for example, you really can only go up from a BSN. LVN's make less than RN's, which make less than BSN holders, which all make less than practitioners. This is generally speaking, but it is a pretty cut-and-dry hierarchy there. I would say computers are much more relaxed as experience frequently does not add up to formal education with programmers and such, and it is an easily tested ability.

I think they matter, and they are definitely worth the extra effort, but as with everything.. if you don't need it, and you like where you are, and it would cause you stress and financial hardship, I don't see it being a viable option.