Friday, July 2, 2010

Congratulations on Getting that Masters Degree, Now What Are You Going To Do?

The unemployment rate for 20 to 34 year olds with masters degrees is up to 4.2%  from 2.9% in June 2007, according toWSJ.

Bottom line, any sector of the economy that the government has been promoting aggressively, from housing to education, is collapsing. It is all a manipulated mess.Think about it. The government has twisted the American Dream into being about owning a home and getting a "good"education, even if you can't afford either and don't know what to do with either if the government hands you the money to get both.

 The government pumped up both products, so that many people using government money,or government guaranteed money, have bought into the pumped up dream, without understanding what it is really allow about. With out  toiling hard for something, they have just grabbed what government has handed to them.When it doesn't workout, they just walk away. These people ended up with an inferior product that would have never appeared in a non-manipulated market.

The houses they bought are falling in price like a rock, some are even being abandoned. And everyone  knows degrees aren't what they used to be, even graduate degrees. I know a math major who has a PhD and I seriously wonder if this person  knows what the square root of nine is. I know another person with a masters degree that has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence. Recently, and I am not making this up, I had to explain to a person with an MBA from the University of Chicago the difference between election primaries and the general election.  I had to explain to a Wharton grad (who is a bank stock analyst!) how the Fed creates money.

The world is changing and everything government has touched is collapsing. If you are thinking about getting a graduate degree because it is important to have a "good" education, forget about it. The government has loaded so many flunkies into these programs that those graduating out of these programs are getting little respect, and will be getting even less respect in the future. These degrees will be like owning a house in Detroit.

There's still a certain cachet if you get an advanced degree from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale and, overseas, the London School of Economics--and maybe a few others--but that's it. The intimidation factor you will have after getting a degree from one of these schools is probably worth the effort to get them. Also, if you  are attempting to learn a career skill such as accounting or engineering, it makes sense to continue on. Or if you truly love learning and have a specialty, such as the study of 17th century literature, continue on. The flunkies aren't taking these courses.

But, if you are thinking about getting an MBA in, say, management, forget about.You are much better off getting a job sweeping floors at a company being run by the smartest businessman in your part of the country.

The increase in the unemployment for masters degree graduates to 4.2% is just the start. It will be in double digit levels in no time. The country and the world is changing, and it won't be a better place for most.You are going to have to be sharp and quick to maintain your standard of living.The government has destroyed most of the easy routes and appears to be on a  campaign to close even more.

44 comments:

  1. "Bottom line, any sector of the economy that the government has been promoting aggressively, from housing to education, is collapsing."

    What does this portend for health care, which for the moment is still going gangbusters?

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  2. As I have stated before, I fully expect over coming years for life expectancy in the U.S.to decline significantly. People won't get treatments when they have been diagnosed with illness, and in many cases the diagnoses won't even occur.

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  3. As a non-traditional physician (I have a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering), I completely agree with the author. One reason I went into medicine, apart from altruistic reasons, was that the career was relatively recession proof, and having been burned by the recession in the early 90's, I was skittish of pursuing a PhD. I escaped from the military-industrial complex, and have no regrets. I still value the time spent in graduate school, as a growing process, but the expectation of a robust and successful career with my narrow field of study was unrealistic. I am glad I saw the writing on the wall when I did. Large numbers of engineers mean cheap labor to build bombs! That is why we have a push for technological/math/sciences education in the primary and secondary schools.

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  4. I told a friend (who recently earned an MBA) that we desperately need a vibrant manufacturing sector in this county which is not unionized and can compete with the world. He told me that the U.S. "exports" much more than manufactured goods: we export all kinds of things like legal services. I pray for the world and the U.S. in particular.

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  5. I work with a MBA graduate from what is considered a prestigious business school in the South. This 'gentleman' is a recent graduate and his writing skills are so subpar everything he produces has to be rewritten before it can be considered customer facing. To top that off his politics are so populist with no basis in reality it frightens me that he votes. One of the government's roles to him is to 'give' us things. He has actually stated this. Forget healthcare, the government should 'help' us all buy homes among other things

    If that's what our education system is producing these days, there is a serious problem.

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  6. As an engineer who earned an MBA in my forties, I must say that (a) MBA school was easier for me than it appeared to be for other adults from disciplines different from engineering--I missed a 4.0 by one grade point; (b)over the following five years my salary (probably based on my worth to my employer) increased at, I estimate, twice the rate it would have with simple annual raises for time-in-grade; and (c) my life and work experience made the material taught so much more effective, and my ability to use what I learned so much better, than had I earned the MBA right out of college. My take is that MBAs are not for children, and not for the degreed but uneducated; and the combination of both is hopeless.

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  7. Hey now, getting a Master's degree in Computer Science is no mean feat, even these days. And a Ph.D. is even more difficult (go on, ask me how I know). You have to learn such a huge amount of specialized knowledge that can be applied over a dazzling array of fields and areas that it boggles the imagination. The areas of research in my field are born, developed, and lead to useful and practical benefits extremely quickly. Additionally, consider the fact that anyone bothering to get an advanced degree in computer science heads directly back to their country of origin, and I'm left wondering why you'd say my degree is useless.

    At the same time, I am getting a Ph.D. for exactly one person: me. I don't care about the American Dream as sold to us by the gov't. I want to help lead humanity into the bright technological future. I may have rose-colored glasses firmly attached to my nose, and for every wonder created a hundred demons could be unleashed. I would still point to the wonders and proclaim it good.

    Finally, I will say that I see few flunkies in CS, and virtually all of them are here on student visas, although the same could be said for the non-flunkies as well. Virtually no American wants to study high level CS, because it is hard. You can't head into the Ivory Tower, nor can you handwave your ideas. You must have both strong theory and strong practical results in this field, and I hope it stays that way.

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  8. But, but ... without a PhD in economics from "a decent economics department (and passed their PhD qualifying exams)", one "cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy" according to Dr. Kartik Athreya, PhD (University of Iowa).

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  9. What about a masters degree in economics? :)

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  10. The government has loaded so many flunkies into these programs

    This is particularly true of the MBA. Almost every MBA-conferring university in the US has prostituted itself to become an MBA degree mill.

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  11. It's ironic that the rotating ad banner at the top of your page is advertising a Brown University MBA as you cast aspersions on MBA degrees.

    I wonder what you think of the idea of getting certificates/certifications in lieu of additional degrees. These are usually a smaller commitment of time and money and more targeted towards an immediate career/business need, though some are probably not worth much more than the paper they are printed on either.

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  12. Robert Wenzel wrote "I know another person with a masters degree that has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence."

    I believe he should have used "who" in place of "that."

    The sentence should read like this:

    "I know another person with a masters degree WHO has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence."

    Just an observation - if I am wrong please let me know.

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  13. As an accountant/analyst with nearly 30 years in the field, (with no CPA), I am strongly considering getting a Certificate in Management Accounting (CMA) - it isn't a license or a state sanctioned designation, but it does convey to would be employers or clients, I believe, a qualification beyond simple general financial accounting and bookkeeping abilities. Now THIS, I think may have value . . . an MBA, forget it, unless it is in MIS.

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  14. Masters degrees are my field (chemistry) rather worthless. In fact, they're pretty much consolation prizes for not being able to be cut out to move onto your PhD. You've got to be real slow to not even get a Masters.

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  15. As a physician educated here and abroad as well, I have seen t he deterioration in the quality of medical education drastically in india (where all education is now state regulated) and the same will start to happen here after the new health care law. I noticed that doctors from just a generation ago have a completely different mind set and appreciation of medicine than grads now, and not just in terms of knowledge. Medical education has become reduced to rote memorization of a fixed number of selected readings to pass government sponsored examinations and I have seen it getting worse and worse. It has deteriorated to such an extent that, a medical school grad from india, to pass the medical board exam in US, takes on average 3.5 years of training/coaching from centers like kaplan university. I trace it all back to when government started to become heavily involved in medical training and education under the guise of universal standards and social justice.
    I see what happened to india post independance as just the road map ahead of the US given the increasingly socialist course that this country is taking.

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  16. Mrs. Thatcher's famous British Chancellor Nigel Lawson with a first in economics from Oxford did not understand fractional reserve banking. Send money and food!
    Frances Howard
    Salisbury UK

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  17. I've even seen lawyers with shoddy writing skills, so I can believe somebody with a master's degree can't construct a proper sentence. I can also believe a Chicago MBA doesn't know the difference between a primary and a general election. That a Wharton stock analyst doesn't understand how the Fed creates money is entirely believable, as alumni of such schools are less likely than their more populist counterparts to delve into matters like central banking. But a math Ph.D who doesn't know the square root of nine? I think Mr. Wenzel is engaging in a little hyperbole here.

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  18. Great thoughts on the current state of education. As a recent law school graduate, I can say first hand that the market out there for lawyers is all but non-existent. Now, I didn't go to one of the Ivy League prestige blowers; but I did go to a state school with a fantastic reputation.

    Fortunately, I was a non-traditional student so I know how to find work and how to do work. Unfortunately, many of my school mates are too young and have never held a job (a real one) before so they are not finding any jobs. I feel sorry for them, not because they can't find jobs, but because they have no idea why not.

    I remember thinking during law school, "man this is such a waste of my time." I loved the first semester, that "teach you to think like a lawyer" bit was pretty interesting; but, that quickly died off. These other kids tormented themselves over their studies, and many seemed clueless as to what they were doing or why they were doing it.

    People wonder why so many professionals have drinking (or other drug) problems, yet they rarely look at the source. We are pushing our kids into an almost doomed life. We don't want them to ever think for themselves, until they finish school (whenever that may be) and get a "real" job. Truth be told, most people in government still don't want them to think.

    In my opinion, that is one of the greatest reasons so many students have trouble in law school. They can figure out the tests and regurgetate almost anything (the memory game masters by this time); but they have real difficulty grasping the foundations of the issues. Albeit, some are pretty masterful at the rhetoric by this time.

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  19. @Anon:

    "What does this portend for health care, which for the moment is still going gangbusters?"

    US Health care will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. Sayonara and good riddance!

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  20. Nice article. "The square root of 9" is grammatically incorrect, because 9 has two square roots.

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  21. "The square root of 9" *is* grammatically correct if you're using counting, whole or non-negative real numbers. Likewise, if you're using real and disregarding imaginary numbers, it is grammatically--and mathematically--correct to say the square root of -1 doesn't exist. Q.E.D.

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  22. On further reflection, even if you were using real numbers, the phrase "the square root of 9" would remain grammatically correct. The error, such as it is, would in that case lie either in a typo (i.e., "the square *roots* of 9") or innumeracy (insofar as -3 and 3 are both square roots of 9). Nice try though.

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  23. @Anon:

    "What does this portend for health care, which for the moment is still going gangbusters?"

    Healthcare is not going "gang busters". I've been working in electrocardiology for 3 years while going to school for my biochemistry & molecular biology degrees. The system has been imploding since 2008. Staff is bare-bones, pay is frozen for many employees, bugets are slim, etc. Medicare/Medicaid/S.S. are also continually refusing to pay for....ANYTHING. We actually haven't updated alot of our technology simply because they won't pay for these better quality/faster/cost effective exams. Private INS does, but that means little because 70% of the system is structured around government programs--financial, regulatory, etc.

    Healthcare will just be the last domino to fall, and it has long since begun to wobble.

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  24. To the proud computer science graduate student,

    After spending time at 5 top-tiered computer science departments, I have to say that CS grad students are probably the least literate and well-rounded students you can find in any department. Many of them aren't particularly strong in formal methods either, which is somewhat surprising. In general, I find physics graduate students to be much more literate, worldly and interesting than those in CS.

    As for the rest of your comments:

    a) I do not believe that most students who study CS return to their home countries after graduation.

    b) Your interest in the field is admirable.

    c) I have no idea why computer science attracts few domestic students, particularly those of caucasian descent. I agree that theoretical computer science is hard, but there are some sub-disciplines that are non-formal, and no more challenging than psychology. (i.e., human computer interaction and user interfaces)

    Good post.

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  25. While I understood the teacher's opinion, the note she sent home with my son was appalling: "Tom's problem is he think he are better than everone else." Verbatim. He was then ten, in the fourth grade. That was 1973.

    "It hasn't gotten better with age."

    I've moderated a couple of websites for about a dozen years; a total of some 20,000 active members. I compare today's literacy with those of my WW II generation, and again, "It doesn't get better..."

    'Rat

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  26. Tony: You miss the point. The correct grammar is along the lines of, "3 is a square root of 9." It's incorrect to say it's the square root of 9; it's not the only one, after all!

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  27. Anonymous: You miss the point. Only whole numbers or positive real numbers have any meaning for most of us in our day-to-day living. I say this having studied differential and integral calculus, matrices and calculus with vectors as a college student. In the real world of positive real numbers, "3 is *the* square root of nine."

    I won't say "nice try" this time. I'm running circles around you.

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  28. To annonymous who wrote:

    "Robert Wenzel wrote 'I know another person with a masters degree that has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence.'

    I believe he should have used 'who' in place of 'that.' "

    The sentence should read like this:

    'I know another person with a masters degree WHO has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence.' "

    Absouletly correct , and I might add, I learned my English in the governmet controlled education system here in the U.S.

    Fortunately, I learned my economics on my own by reading Mises, Hayek and Rothbard.


    Just an observation - if I am wrong please let me know.

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  29. Engineering jobs with the government are excellent with these types of paper. No productivity is required.

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  30. Some years back, in a book titled "Education's Smoking Gun," the masters and doctorate programs at UMass were exposed for the frauds they were--in all probabiity they're far worse today. "Dr." Bill Cosby was awarded his doctorate in education for doing a presentation on his cartoon character, Fat Albert. Those incompetent school administrators lording it over teachers with real degrees might well have gone to UMass, where students incapable of getting an undergraduate degree in the first place were transferred into an accelerated "special learning" program resulting in masters and doctorates in things like "audio-visual presentation," awarded for setting up equipment the average ten-year-old could handle. As the author alludes to, these are PC programs cleverly designed to both subvert education and promote a political agenda. The "educationists" were beautifully lampooned by the Underground Grammarian, Richard Mitchell, and his work is still available on the Internet, as funny and devastating as it was in the 90s. As to those MBAs, the quants' lunch pail of financial formulas are now known to be nearly worthless, quantifying as they do the unknowable. A good friend who went to Warton used to joke that his father's money would have been better spent giving him a 3-year's subscription to Fortune magazine. A neighbor's wife went back to Harvard and was awarded her doctorate in English Literature despite not even knowing the name of Dr. Johnson. Her thesis was in some bizarre feminist gibberish. What a tragedy it is, therefore, for all those whose masters and doctorates are suspect for all this PC subversion. Isn't it also true that the President of the United States himself was awarded his undergraduate degree from Columbia in a "special ed" program more suited to those going into arts and crafts than law school?

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  31. When I purchased the company I run now It was almost into bankruptcy. I knew they had a great product but they made so many missteps they frittered away their advantage. The culprits: the MBA's 8 of them 'managing' the company into the ground.
    I fired them all. We recovered in 6 months and now very profitable

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  32. My favorite thing about this article is the people arguing over an 's' in square root(s) of 9.

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  33. I have a Ph.D. in biology from a university with a very prestigious name - I spent 7 years working towards it, followed by 6 years as a postdoc fellow and may very well be unemployed in a few months once my fellowship expires. I know several other people in the same situation. The government rewards grants to scientists to train Ph.D. students and postdocs, much like Fannie and Freddie cranked out subprime mortgages. We aren't actually trained though - more like we do the grunt work so that papers get published and the boss will get his or her grant renewed and get tenure. I can't say I came away from the experience knowing more than I did going in. For every hundred Ph.D. students who enter the program, there are a talented handful (less than 5) who go on to do great things. For the rest of us, it is a waste.

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  34. Anonymous wrote:
    --
    Robert Wenzel wrote "I know another person with a masters degree that has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence."

    I believe he should have used "who" in place of "that."

    The sentence should read like this:

    "I know another person with a masters degree WHO has no idea of how to construct a proper sentence."

    Just an observation - if I am wrong please let me know.
    --
    The use of 'that' rather than 'who' is not incorrect, though 'who' is preferable here, because the clause refers to a particular person.

    Mr Fowler gives a good guide to usage: http://www.bartleby.com/116/205.html

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  35. .....I have always wondered about the "value" of such degrees....I barely got out of high school,
    took one college level course (Economics) from the U of Chicago while working a towboat through the Gulf of Mexico. I went to work for McDonalds and learned everything they had to offer...then spent the next 25 years working at the grade of a Lt. Col, teaching business from Japan to Croatia, Bosnia to Hungary.(80k per year)..In life and work,..I am of the opinion that it is the motivation of the person involved, not always the college degree....

    Regards,

    O'Guillory

    p.s.- wrote a book as well called Webster Groves, and it is for sale on Amazon.com

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  36. AS Gerald Celente is fond of saying, I have six words for you:

    Princeton Harvard Yale, bullets bombs banks

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  37. Health Care is like government. It takes money away from the people, it does not create wealth.

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  38. I have a Ph.D. in biology from a university with a very prestigious name - I spent 7 years working towards it, followed by 6 years as a postdoc fellow and may very well be unemployed in a few months once my fellowship expires. I know several other people in the same situation.

    That'd be me. My experience as an academic biologist followed a near-identical path as yours. The only difference is that I gave up finding a tenure-track job two years ago and I'm now trying to make a go of it.

    As you suggest, part of the problem is that we weren't actually trained to do anything useful to the world outside of academe. The system is geared to reward perpetuation of the university and not to making new discoveries.

    The other problem is of course over-production of PhDs. The market is just plain saturated with the over-degreed.

    I hope your luck has been better than mind.

    -mikehell

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  39. I have two undergraduate degrees, one in business, and one in accounting. I've decided to get an MBA, just because it expected in todays world, nothing more. Education does not confer greater intellect to a fool, nor does it build character in someone who is immoral or unethical. A graduate degree simply says that a person has the ability to perform research. In the MBA program, you conduct analysis of a given case study. It requires common sense and experience to understand, and apply, what you learn in school, no matter what grade level you attain. My father is a barely educated Greek immigrant, and yet he has made a lot more money than most college graduates.

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  40. This is the inevitable result of state-licensing and accredation. State-accredited education is naturally a disaster, since the state doesn't know how to do anything except create bureaucracy-- and is naturally going to be bass-ackward when it comes to telling people in society how to do their jobs. That's why schools filter out creative intelligence, and advance freaks with sponge-memories and no common sense, and who simply are good at absorbing details and spewing them out on command like parrots.

    Meanwhile, these graduates viciously defend their competence-- which doesn't mesh with the fact that they find it desire to deter all non-degreed competition at the point of a gun, if they're so superior to it; obviously, they believe that everyone else is stimply too stupid to recognize it, and needs to be "helped" by the state to make the "right" choice on whom to hire.

    Of course, this is the inevitable result of any statist empire-- which the United States has been ever since the Lincoln Adminitration, when the people ceased to be their own rulers, and instead became the servants of their elected officials.

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  41. P.S. Another point that schools forgot, is that a penny saved is a penny earned. People have no idea how to recognize the botttom line in the economy, but simply believe that their training will automatically lead them to the right choices-- because the state accredits the trainers. This is "The Emperor's Clothes" on steroids.

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  42. it's good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource,
    thanx now i have the link which i was looking for my research.

    MBA Dissertation Proposal

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  43. "Masters degrees are my field (chemistry) rather worthless. In fact, they're pretty much consolation prizes for not being able to be cut out to move onto your PhD. You've got to be real slow to not even get a Masters."...

    This is based on just some colleges, the vast majority of student with M.S. as the highest degree went for just a Ph.D.- Also, one can be a chemist (as an occupational title) with a Masters (They even certify you with only a B.S., but honestly B.S. are often not enough for more responsible positions), it is the research jobs that are harder to obtain without a Ph.D.- Professional Science Masters should help those who one to work in chemistry but are may not compromise to the Ph.D.- Ph.D. is better, no doubt, but sadly M.S. should be pretty decent and more well-viewed if we stop the self-fulfilling prophesy. Look most places in the world, even U.S.A., and notice how the professional body that represent the rights of chemist as a professional "label" graduates as a chemist- they don't require Ph.D. except for the jobs that are mainly basic adavanced research, as opposed to applied chemistry, which really exist, believe it or not. Notice how we really made it harder for chemist. Engineering were so pleased with their professional status that a Ph.D. in Engineering is considered very optional, not the "expectation"... if engineering is harder than chemistry, then why chemist are expected to be doctors in sciences? (or else they only have a consolation price)?? Just make exams for the M.S. candidate, many M.S. schools do that... If M.S. are unprepared or unqualified,then, what a waste of resources U.S. is doing- M.S. should be enough for the service and applied sciences, Ph.D is for all those things plus the researcher... It should be optional, not "the expectation"

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  44. "Masters degrees are my field (chemistry) rather worthless. In fact, they're pretty much consolation prizes for not being able to be cut out to move onto your PhD. You've got to be real slow to not even get a Masters."...

    This is based on just some colleges, the vast majority of student with M.S. as the highest degree went for just a M.S.- Also, one can be a chemist (as an occupational title) with a Masters (They even certify you with only a B.S., but honestly B.S. are often not enough for more responsible positions), it is the research jobs that are harder to obtain without a Ph.D.- Professional Science Masters should help those who one to work in chemistry but are may not compromise to the Ph.D.- Ph.D. is better, no doubt, but sadly M.S. should be pretty decent and more well-viewed if we stop the self-fulfilling prophesy. Look most places in the world, even U.S.A., and notice how the professional body that represent the rights of chemist as a professional "label" graduates as a chemist- they don't require Ph.D. except for the jobs that are mainly basic adavanced research, as opposed to applied chemistry, which really exist, believe it or not. Notice how we really made it harder for chemist. Engineering were so pleased with their professional status that a Ph.D. in Engineering is considered very optional, not the "expectation"... if engineering is harder than chemistry, then why chemist are expected to be doctors in sciences? (or else they only have a consolation price)?? Just make exams for the M.S. candidate, many M.S. schools do that... If M.S. are unprepared or unqualified,then, what a waste of resources U.S. is doing- M.S. should be enough for the service and applied sciences, Ph.D is for all those things plus the researcher... It should be optional, not "the expectation" (Note : this is the corrected version of the previously posted commentary)

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