
For Many, a Grad-School Stint Doesn't Pay Off in Job Market - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575342751927334436.html
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nickpinkston
While not extremely glaring, this is just another hint of the education bubble
waiting to burst in years to come.

[http://chronicle.com/article/Will-Higher-Education-Be-
the/44...](http://chronicle.com/article/Will-Higher-Education-Be-the/44400)

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enjo
Is it? The argument around an 'education bubble' seems to be more around two
things:

1) Students racking up enormous debt in esoteric disciplines that don't
directly translate to jobs. 2) An absolute deluge of students in certain
fields (like 'marketing') from thousands of universities that effectively drag
everyone down to the mean. Since a degree is so common it ceases to be a
unique differentiator...making it worthless. The 'bubble' here is in the
perception of utility for degrees meaning kids will abandon college for other
paths.

Here we have a MIT grad in a hugely in-demand field that can't (or won't) find
a job. My hunch is that she actually can find a job, she just lacks the
qualifications that she thinks she has. She probably needs to take a lower-
responsibility job and actually build those skills... that doesn't mean her
degree isn't a great investment (it probably is), it just means she's
approaching this from a very unrealistic perspective.

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nickpinkston
I agree that a lot of this is her being unrealistic / overachieving / etc.,
but I think we're going to see a lot more of this to come.

More telling though is the fact that they framed it in education bubble terms,
not as much recession terms, which perhaps shows the media's ethos to be
friendly to the concept - at least the WSJ.

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Volscio
Here in DC my fellow alumns are having some difficulty finding jobs, and they
are ready to work just about anywhere. They eventually get sucked up into the
big consulting firms though. They will do well enough in 10 years' time.

I think the biggest problem has been for international folks who can't get
anyone to sponsor their visas except for, say, the World Bank, which is all
too familiar with the process.

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cageface
Even MIT grads are having trouble? That surprises me. There seems to be a lot
of work for web coding monkeys. Are people just being stupidly pedantic about
requiring X+ years of experience in random trivial technology Y?

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qq66
For the MIT graduates, it's not as much "finding a job" as "finding a job that
they will take." Their standards are pretty high and in some markets, the
downward expectations-adjustment process takes some time.

Also, as an MIT graduate myself, I can say that there are people who have
Master's in Engineering in Computer Science and can't even be a code monkey.

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cageface
Way to shatter my illusions! I thought you were all lisp gurus that could code
an NLP processor in 10 lines of code.

I suppose I'd have pretty high job expectations with a master's from MIT too
but I'd still rather be working than unemployed.

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_delirium
It's a bit of a dirty secret, but at a lot of top schools with reputations for
brilliant students, it's not always true of masters students, at least to the
same degree. Undergrads and PhDs, yes, but schools often seem to see masters
students as cash cows, because more of then pay full tuition (there aren't the
same financial aid packages as for undergrad, or RA/TA stipends as for PhD
students).

Though this doesn't relate to the situation in the linked article, which is
someone who got both a bachelor's and masters from MIT.

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pgbovine
afaik, MIT EECS does not have a 'cash cow' master's-only degree program. in
order to do a terminal Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in EECS, you must
have been an undergrad there as well. the only way to get a terminal MS from
MIT EECS without having been an undergrad there is to be admitted into the
Ph.D. program and then drop out after 2 years.

however, the practice of having a 'cash cow' master's-only program is fairly
common amongst many other US universities

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ladyada
When I was there, this was true, and probably still is. I did an MIT EECS MEng
and I'll be honest with you: its probably not worth it if you dont land a
TAship or RAship that covers all costs.

Getting into the MEng program is not done by application and decision, its
purely 'decided' by your ugrad GPA. The theses dont have any sort of
committee, just your advisor signing off. Many advisors cant/wont pay for your
tuition unless you are the Bomb so the key is if you can get a TAship, just
keep doing that. 1.5 to 2 years later, write a 40 page LaTeX paper about
something and you get an MEng

Personally, I did it because you get to polish off your ugrad degree with a
bunch of fantastic grad classes and if you play it right, the whole thing is
free and comes with a stipend. its a bit more education and lets you stick
around but I wouldn't say its thought of as a way to boost income or job
status.

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dmd
Data point: In 1999, I was making $60k doing entry-level sysadmin work at a
major pharma. Now it's 2010, and I have a PhD from the University of
Pennsylvania in cognitive neuroscience, and I'm making ... $60k again. (I like
my job a whole lot better though.)

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fleitz
The nice part about Canada is we have federally sponsored jobs programs in the
IT sector exclusively for those with degrees so they don't face competition
from those with out higher education.

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enjo
How is that a nice thing? Why shouldn't you have to compete on fair and level
ground with folks just because you have a piece of paper?

*note: I don't have a degree.

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fleitz
It was meant to be sarcastic. I don't have a degree either. It's especially
ridiculous when you consider the public resources that go into providing
higher education.

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enjo
That flew right over my head:)

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w1ntermute
Judging from the upvotes, I'd say it flew over everyone's heads ;)

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aduric
Not everything is about how much extra x% wage you can pull by going to grad
school. I'll admit that that was my thinking when I initially decided to do a
masters but in my second year now, I realise the incredible amount of
knowledge and experience I gained. After undergrad I thought I could take on
the world. I was actually surprised that I couldn't get a job at the all the
cool high-tech companies. Only now do I realise how dumb I was. Only now can I
safely say that I can do the job that is required.

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duckpunch
> After undergrad I thought I could take on the world … Only now can I safely
> say that I can do the job that is required.

Given that history, would it not be wise to complete a PhD to make sure you're
not having the same mistaken thought once more?

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robryan
The more I read about grad school the more I can see that it's not something
you want to do in the hope of landing a better paying job when you get out.

As people have mentioned to the sense of entitlement of a masters graduate
from a top uni are probably keeping them out of the job market to. Unless the
narrow field you researched is exactly what your applying to do at a company
experience is probably going to look better.

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known
Education system should ideally create employers and not employees.

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crpatino
Why is that? Would you like to run a company that employed mostly uneducated
people? More over, would you like to be part of an economy where most
available goods/services were the product of unskilled labor? What about
shopping around amongst an appalling number of undifferentiated providers?

The "we educate entrepreneurs" is an abdication of the higher education
establishment's mission. It profits by producing a bunch of graduates without
regards for the needs of society. This includes not only the contents of the
curriculum, but the yearly amount of graduates as well. It is a bubble in the
making, or so it seems.

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known
Wondering why Govt is not offering software development services for small
businesses?

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ww520
Somehow I read the title as Grade-School Stint.

