<p>What about government work? Is that what you mean?</p>
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<p>Most hiring companies do not give a major pay upgrade for a master’s degree - usually just a few thousand and certainly much less over time than the year or two of foregone salary. The obvious exception is the government, which is sounds like is being discussed above.</p>
<p>No, I was speaking for aerospace companies in general. I recruit for one of them, and we share salary data. The average difference for a new-hire with no experience with a BS vs MS is more than a few thousand. And many job descriptions require a masters at a minimum.</p>
<p>And I recruited for a chemical company for a number of years, and we also shared data. The difference in chemical, mechanical, electrical, and industrial is a few thousand unless the student finds an R&D position related to research.</p>
<p>What if a person gets a masters in a field unrelated to his undergrad (undergrad chemE, masters/phd materials) and is looking for a chemE job, would the masters help him in terms of getting a job or a salary advantage?</p>
<p>Here’s the stats for people graduating with a BS versus a MS from Carnegie Mellon (obviously I’m pulling data from there since I’m most familiar with where to grab their info).</p>
<p>I’ll list it as Mean/Median since the two numbers can differ a little bit.</p>
<p>Civil & Environmental
BS: 54,054/54,000
MS: 61,987/60,000</p>
<p>Electrical & Computer
BS: 68,459/65,000
MS: 81,556/80,000</p>
<p>Mechanical
BS: 57,850/58,100
MS: 72,052/70,258</p>
<p>(Sadly no info for ChemE or Materials Science since there were too few MS graduates for them to post information.)</p>
<p>Looking at it you get a roughly 15% higher starting salary. You’d also probably get chances at more interesting jobs and possibly more room to move up within the company since you’ve got an advanced degree.</p>
<p>During my undergrad years, I spoke with some structural engineering firms and they would flat out not even consider anyone without a MS degree.</p>
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<p>That is a biased sample. Only the top 25% or so of undergraduates will be able to get into that school for an MS. So your BS group is made up of students with U/G GPAs ranging probably 2.0 to 4.0. Your MS group is made up of students with U/G GPAs ranging from 3.3 (or so) to 4.0. That’s apples to oranges.</p>
<p>So you really need to compare on a student by student basis. Student A gets a BS, applies for jobs. Student A then gets an MS and applies for jobs again. What’s the salary difference? Usually just a few thousand. As an example, the going rate for a BS ME with a mid 3 GPA right now is $67,000 - $70,000. If you assume that the average MS students are mid 3’s in GPA, the average MS is only a few thousand more than the BS of the same quality.</p>
<p>Now there are exceptions, obviously. An MS can lead to a higher salary is 1) you find a job related to MS specific research or focus (e.g. a BS ChE gets an MS focused on biochemical engineering), 2) you use the MS to change from one field to another (e.g. from CE to IE), 3) you use the MS to go to a better school (e.g. U/G at Texas A&M, MS at MIT).</p>
<p>When I get back to work on monday (or earlier if I go in this weekend) I will pull the latest records for new-hires with no experience and tell you precisely the mean pay differences for BS/MS/PhD (expressed as a percentage…don’t think I should publish actual dollars) for aerospace companies. But I think RacinReaver’s data is about right for BS-to-MS.</p>
<p>This discussion reminds me of how clueless my husband and I were when we were negotiating our first salary. Granted, the economy sucked so we were happy to get ANY kind of job, but the company that hired both of us was desperate at the time, so we should have asked for more. They asked US what we wanted, and we said, “$XX or $XX+,” and of course they picked the lower number! They didn’t bump up our salary appropriately until DH announced he was leaving the company, then they gave us both raises! He really wasn’t blackmailing them, because he had another offer, but he was happy to stay with the first firm.</p>
<p>Then we both got laid off the same day, two months before we were vested in the retirement plan. Hmm, I guess they got back at us!</p>
<p>if you use your MS as “career path changer” you have the potential to make a lot more money.</p>
<p>Say BS IE to MS FE</p>
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<p>I can tell you without looking - last year BS ChE - $69,500, MS ChE - $71,200 (from the same school). You get 1 year of additional seniority for the one to two year degree. And that’s a Fortune 100 company. </p>
<p>I also see my student’s salaries at the BS and MS level, and that’s about standard across the board. Now a BS with a 2.2 GPA will probably make closer to $50,000, whereas an MS with a 3.2 GPA (you can’t have >2.0 and graduate from a graduate program) makes closer to $71,000, but I wouldn’t use that to jump to the conclusion that an MS is worth $20,000 more.</p>
<p>id sleep a lot better if i had a masters or a phd… especially during these tough economic times…</p>
<p>No, you’d sleep a lot better if you had more job security, not more degrees.</p>
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<p>Could it be that some industries value the MS more than other industries?</p>
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<p>I would definitely say that some fields value an MS more than others (e.g. architecture or civil engineering), but our salaries are set based on market demand for a particular degree, not for an industry.</p>
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<p>id rather hire a bus driver with a phD than a bus driver with an associates degreee</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t. He’d quit as soon as he found a better job, hah.</p>
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<p>I’d rather hire the person who knew how to drive a bus better…</p>
<p>GP Burdell or others</p>
<p>I have a question that relates to this thread, but in a more specific form. I am currently in IE at Purdue and see myself taking a management track in my career as soon as one becomes available to me. I was originally planning on working for a few years and then getting an MBA, but lately I have been rethinking that plan and am weighing the prospects about an MS right after undergrad. My prospective schools that I have been looking at are Columbia, for an MS IE. Or Cornell, for an MS in Applied Economics and Management. I will continue looking for other similar programs.</p>
<p>My main reason for this would really just be to have a name brand graduate degree on my resume. I have started to doubt that I will ever actually get around to going back to school after five years as I would have to do with an MBA, so this has started to seem like a better option for me. </p>
<p>My long term career goals are actually entrepreneurial, but I would prefer to have a graduate degree just in case that doesnt work out for some reason. Do you have any thoughts on the benefits that might come from this move? The drawbacks? Do you think that Columbia or Cornell are going to add value to my resume in proportion to the costs over the long run? Any thoughts in general?</p>
<p>OK…I pulled the salary data for the latest aerospace cross-company review (conducted fall of last year). For new hires with no experience, MS=1.20BS, PhD=1.22MS. This data would be an average of mainly aero, mech, electrical, materials, systems, and optics.</p>