<p>^Lol! No! But what’s really funny is that there’s little haggling over the price of a Ferrari or Bugatti. Food for thought!</p>
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<p>I’ve never heard of such a practice. Exactly which programs do so?</p>
<p>The first one that comes to mind is Rice, but I know Ive seen it with other departmets</p>
<p>“If I enroll in the Ph.D. program then decide after a couple of years that research is not for me, can I leave the program with an M.B.E. degree?
Admission into the M.B.E. professional-degree program is granted separately from admission into the Ph.D. thesis-degree program. Students who wish to change from a thesis program to a professional degree program must petition their department in writing. Upon recommendation of the department and approval by the deans office, the request is sent to the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for consideration and final approval. If approved, students who received tuition waivers while enrolled in the thesis program will be expected to repay the tuition before their professional degrees are awarded. Professional degree programs terminate when the degree is awarded. Students who wish to continue graduate study after completing a professional program must reapply for admission into a research program.”</p>
<p>To be fair, that is nearly an entirely different situation since it is a professional Masters, not a thesis-based Masters.</p>
<p>Exactly - this is akin to students who enter PhD programs at business schools and then later decide they’d rather just have an MBA. </p>
<p>What would be helpful is to list a bunch of examples where a department that awards both PhD’s and *research-oriented<a href=“as%20opposed%20to%20professionally-oriented”>/i</a> consolation master’s degrees that would require former PhD students who want said master’s to have to repay tuition and/or stipend. </p>
<p>I would then recommend that everybody should avoid those programs. A PhD program is a high-risk investment of your time, with upwards of 50% of all incoming PhD students never completing the degree, and a clawback stipulation before being awarded even a consolation master’s is egregiously adding insult to injury.</p>
<p>I’ve been at three schools (2 engineering school and 1 business school) and in each case there were students who dropped down from PhD programs to get masters (or whom received Masters on their way to a PhD). However in all 3 cases there was a sustantial difference in the classes the PhD student took versus the courses the Masters students took even in the same subjects … the PhD courses were much more theorhectical and the Masters course were more practical. From my experiece while it might be financially expediate to try this it would not be very practical in any other dimension (**** off the school and possible advisors, take theorectical not practical courses, and finally the recruiting cycle was heaviest in the fall; starting to look for jobs while still a PHD student with a full year to go would be awkward at best)</p>
<p>Actually 3togo, it is extraordinarily practical to do this. That is why people do it. Assuming you are doing a research-based MS, there is lots of overlap. If you are at a school getting a research-based MS and the classes are wholly practical and not mostly theoretical, you need to change schools because you are getting ripped off.</p>
<p>^ … interesting … I know about zilch about research-based MC … what fields have these and to what kind of jobs to they lead. My naive response would be industry would prefer the paractical MS and research places wouldl want PhDs … so where to the research MS folks tend to land?</p>
<p>Research-based MS degrees are the original flavor of MS, so I am rather surprised you haven’t heard of them. In fact, at least 50% (just an estimate, not a hard statistic) of MS degrees awarded are research-based, as professional masters degrees are relatively new.</p>
<p>Typically, the purpose of your undergraduate education is to provide you with the basic theory and practical knowledge, plus a light sprinkling of the advanced theory. Traditionally, the MS is/was used as a way to delve a little deeper into that theory and get experience in a laboratory setting. Then, of course, the point of the PhD is to master a subject and make fundamental contributions to that particular branch of science.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, those research-MS folks tend to end up at a lot of the same places as the professional masters jobs with the addition that they can more easily find themselves in the more technical positions that a professional masters doesn’t really prepare a person for, such as R&D.</p>
<p>Still, even most professional masters programs (in engineering) aren’t teaching you purely practical skills as you seemed to imply. It is usually the same classes as the research-based MS people, only with a big exam at the end instead of a research thesis. I would caution against any form of masters in engineering that focuses almost exclusively on the practical side of things. That sounds more like getting a BS+ (made-up term) or something.</p>
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<p>Personally, I think the far more Machiavellian approach is invoked by those PhD students who have little intention of completing any degree - either PhD or master’s - but are simply using the stipend as a extended and paid job search or hunt for venture capital financing for their startup idea (or to discover that startup idea in the first place). You see this at schools such as HYPSM which have extensive recruiting access to top employers which the vast majority of schools lack, as well as deep connections to the venture capital space, with some VC partners even serving as faculty at those schools. Let’s face it: if you’re a student from some no-name low-tier school in the middle of nowhere or especially if you’re an international student from a poor country, you’re not going to have access to the best employment opportunities right out of college no matter how strong your academic performance is. It may indeed be rational for you to enter a PhD program at a name-brand school even if you don’t care about graduate school simply for the superior career resources. </p>
<p>Heck, I myself can think of several MIT PhD students who, frankly, spend more time on their startups - including drumming for VC financing - than they actually do on their ‘official’ academic research. They fully leverage the MIT brand name and network to garner meetings with financiers. They may never finish their PhD’s, heck they may not even finish their consolation master’s, but if they become millionaires through their startups, I hardly think they would care.</p>