Does particular grad school matter?

It seems that many larger employers will pay for masters degrees for their engineers. Often they have arrangements with a local university, which in many cases may be lesser known (though accredited) engineering program. How would having a masters from such schools be viewed by future employers? Would it not matter at all where their masters is from?

Accreditation from ABET (abet.org) in your specific field of engineering study is the main thing – aside from that it won’t matter too much which university you attend.

A masters from a reputable but not necessarily top tier school is viewed highly by most but not all employers. Some people are anti-education folks, thinking of you as an extra few thousand dollars per year for having “a piece of paper” that demonstrates advanced knowledge of the theory in the field. Some are pedigree focused, meaning it’s top tier or bust. But most simply recognize that a Masters degree from an average but not necessarily top program is a qualification that shows that you stuck to school, that you can finish difficult coursework, and that you can probably advance through the company more quickly than those without one.

@mommyrocks ABET is wholly irrelevant when it comes to graduate school.

I would say it depends on how long you continue to work at the company who paid for the Master’s degree. The longer you continue to work, the less relevant the degree itself becomes and the more important your work history.

And I think it would be a red flag to a potential employer to have a Master’s funded by a company and then immediately be seeking employment elsewhere anyway.

True but often, the ability to have a successful work history is the ability to complete high-quality projects, and even more importantly, to be assigned to one. The credential, and what you learn in grad school, both go a long way towards that.

Generally the “growth curve” of people with Masters, especially in large companies, is steeper than for a Bachelors degree.

Generally speaking, if an employer is willing to pay for your to obtain a degree at a given school, that means they respect the education provided by that school. How future employers view it may vary a little bit, but by the time you are looking for a future employer it is likely that your work experience will be all that really matters at that point and the degree you hold is there mostly just as a credential (since most companies have policies in place to discourage leaving right after they pay for your degree). The reputation of a school will tend to matter more (largely in indirect ways) if you are going for a thesis-based degree (whether MS or PhD), which is usually not what employers are subsidizing.

In the industry and in life though, is the degree we get signalling that “I have learned” or that “I can learn”? This is probably a conversation for a different thread, but honestly getting an MS for someone who already has a job etc is more for the “MS” title than actually learning. The cosmetic appeal of the degree, whether right or wrong, is what is most important at that point in your career.

In my opinion, I think engineering degrees signal to employers “I can learn. Very fast.” more than anything else. I see how this argument would break with jobs like national labs or something of that nature, but for the most part I think it is true. That is why personally I would not have any issue with getting the MS in Engineering degree with relatively easy classes and/or not a top tier school because who in the industry really would actively use stuff like grad school level Solid State Physics etc? Most jobs are for people to provide value to a for-profit company, and that is why I doubt anyone would really look into or care the inner workings of two different MS degrees. It just checks a box.

It is the age old question - does college make people smart or do smart people go to college? If the latter is true, why do we have college and not some other cheaper means of signalling smartness?