Job Opportunities - BS vs Masters

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

It’s getting to the point now where I need to decide whether to go to grad school or not. I am feeling kind of done with school and want to try something new, but I have been told that the engineering jobs available with a BS are pretty rote and get very repetitive, and the pay tends to cap out quickly.

Again, I feel pretty burnt out from academics and am not interested in research. But I will suck up an extra two years of school if a masters will open the door more interesting and higher-paying job for decades to come.

So, how are the job opportunities with a BS versus a masters, and is it worth the extra 2 years?

2

Pay doesn’t really cap out quickly. I know plenty of people with just a BS making 6 figures. Getting an MS may give you a boost, but if your goal is industry anyway, you are likely better off looking for a job now and then going back to school on their dime in a few years. An MS doesn’t open up enough extra doors to warrant hating your life for two more years.

3

I should have mentioned - I think I could get grad school mostly funded. Have not heard a dollar amount, but talking with people in the department it seems like there is some money available.

That’s part of the problem I’m having. If I am going to end up going back to school later for an MS, why not knock it out now.

4

If you do a non-thesis option, it will almost certainly not be funded. If you do a thesis option, then there may well be funding but, depending on the student and a little luck, I’ve seen thesis-based degrees last anywhere from 3 to 8 semesters or so. That’s not something it sounds like you want to gamble on since you have no interest in research.

If you go back to school eventually for an MS funded by your employer, the bonus is that you will not have to pay for it and you generally can keep working at your company and making a full salary while you do so. The downside is that usually doing a thesis-based degree isn’t easy without a leave of absence from work, and those degrees are better for accessing research-related jobs (which you’ve already said don’t interest you).

5

First and foremost, if the will simply isn’t there, then it won’t be productive. You have to want to go, or at least understand the value well enough to be willing to bear more years of schooling.

You can absolutely get decent jobs with a BS. However, a graduate degree gives you some deeper insight into your field of choice that really can help you in the long run. In the early years it would seem like simply two more years spent in school; in the long run it opens a broader perspective on the academic side of doing real technical work in a way that is very helpful. Most younger folk say “you don’t need a masters degree” but those in their 30s and 40s often wish they had gotten one.

And let me say a word or two about the “work now while pursuing a Masters on the company’s dime” option. It certainly is an option, and a lot of companies (but not all) will fund it. But be wary: it’s a convenient sort of “put it off until later” option that simply pushes difficult decisions into the future. And engineering classes, as I’m sure you’re aware, are quite demanding. This means that taking more than one, possibly two, classes per semester is really tough. There are multiple factors to consider here: you will have conflicts with work obligations often (one meeting that overlaps with a class and you’re already in trouble), you will have to spend quite a few years at it (five can be very realistic here), and it doesn’t always work out as well as it sounds like it does. Any number of things can happen - family matters, meeting someone, changing jobs, health issues, loss of motivation, and so on. The reality is that many people plan to go back but never do, and it does limit them in the long run. So tread carefully here. It’s something of a fast money trap.

Thesis vs. non-thesis, my opinion is this: the thesis option is probably best if you can commit two solid years to it and finish on time. More classes will teach you more, and that is in part what a graduate degree is about, but the real goal is to transition into synthesizing advanced, often poorly defined information into real solutions to real problems. That’s what research is really about; applications to academic or corporate R&D are one application, but only one among many. But developing a complex project over multiple years of work, in a field that is not so well defined that it’s a mostly trivial task, is a very useful skill that is similar to what a thesis teaches you. Perhaps the same could be said for a PhD, but to some extent a PhD is more of just a long training program for academic work that is not necessarily more productive than training received through industry work. Some of the most successful and valued people have PhD’s, but it absolutely is not a necessity. The ability to do the kind of unstructured work generally associated with graduate education, however, is.

I hope that provides some perspective about what your various options here really entail.

6

I certainly agree with @NeoDymium that if you are completely burned out, it’ll be tough. I do think there are advantages though and do have concerns about having your employer pay for it later.

Career earnings have their own inertia. It’s known that people who start in down economies, on average, will have lower career earnings than those who start in richer economies, simply based on growth from their starting wage (less in a soft economy, more in a robust economy). The gap is not made up when the economy improves. It’s also pretty well documented that engineers with an MS make more than those with just a BS. Apply the inertia logic to this and that differential should compound.

If you decide to put it off until later, there are multiple issues. Will your employer pay? Will you have the drive to do it once you’re working 40+ hours per week and have interests and obligations outside of work. As important, where you live will dictate where you get your MS from. What if there isn’t a program close enough that you’re happy with? What if there’s no program at all. Sure you can do several MS degrees online now, but will you?

So, if it isn’t something you’re excited about, don’t do it. There are however significant advantages.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/04/04/in-defense-of-the-masters-degree/#7c67a84b1d0b

7

To me, it seems like grad school are best for students that have a zeal for a particular specialty or area of research Sometimes that comes after the first job, but admittedly it is really tough to go back to school full time after you’ve been out of school.

8

It’s important to separate Masters and PhD programs when talking about “grad school.” The latter is what is usually associated with what people think of as “grad school” while the former can often be just a form of professional school akin to medical/law school that gives you more depth in a field of knowledge that is useful for work.

9

At the BS level depending on your field you don’t even know what you don’t know. Will an MS (minimum) fix this? yes and no. It’s easy to look at the extra cost of an MS and write it off, but if you’re interested in something a bit off the beaten path grad school may not be a bad idea.

10

What area of engineering are you in? What are you current capabilities? What capabilities would you have after a masters and how much are they worth both in cash and in interest? It makes a huge difference whether you are studying civil engineering or whether you are studying something with lot of hot new technology.

11

OP said: Again, I feel pretty burnt out from academics and am not interested in research. But I will suck up an extra two years of school if a masters will open the door more interesting and higher-paying job for decades to come.

I would chime in: I take it that you have the undergraduate degree now but don’t have a job, unemployed? If you have an entry level job, why don’t you make a career out of it or give it a try for three years and do the graduate school? or switch and find another engineering job then make a career?

Perhaps you don’t like engineering career? why don’t you try going to graduate school pursuing Computer Science or doing MBA?. These two fields will always make a good living and especially for computer science, you will keep up with technology (like upgrading your certification, attending seminar, tinkering with source code, algorithm, doing hard code the mainframe, making apps for cell phone, etc)

Anyhow, do you have a high GPA and good credentials (research, Co-Op, internships, REUs, etc) when you were in undergraduate? if you do then there are high paying jobs out there you can try especially in aerospace. Or, perhaps you can try wall-street jobs as analyst (I don’t know much about this wall-street jobs).

I know in banking they have so called Management Development Programs or similar. This is trainee to supervisor or unit-manager after undergoing their training for nine or one year. They will take any engineering degree and will teach you debit and credit, banking policies and procedures, operations, credit and finance, etc. Check the website of Bank of America, Citibank etc for further info.

Usually, the career track is like this after undergraduate, they will find a job and work thru rank-and-file then after 3 or 4 years, they will pursue graduate school in their engineering field or going into MBA. Of course, if they like research and want to be educators (teaching etc), they will go straight to Phd after college.

12

I’d like to thank everyone for their posts here, lots of insight from people who have been there and done that.

Very good points here. Again, I think if I should do a masters at all, it should be right after undergrad. You are absolutely right about having other commitments get in the way of a pretty involved degree.

Yeah, that’s one of the key considerations, and one that right now I don’t have an answer to. I’m doing electrical. On one hand, it sounds like there is not a ton of amazing new stuff (I got talking to a PhD student the other day who was complaining about how everything in his field was pretty much solved 50 years ago). On the other hand, I know there are several fields of EE, such as jobs with RF or VLSI, where a masters is usually a requirement. Undergrad just does not cover enough for some of those more specialized fields.

As of now, I don’t even know what fields I specifically want to go into. There’s a few areas I think are interesting, but I’ve hardly taken the intro classes for them, much less worked a day at an actual job doing them.

There’s kind of two sides to this. One is the money, I’ll be up front about that. I was talking to some masters students at my school, and most of those guys are starting in the 80K-90K range in a low COL area. That’s 20 or 30K up from the usual starting salary from a bachelor’s, and like Eyemgh says, it starts you off on a higher wage curve in general. That’s easily hundreds of thousands more of pre-tax dollars over a career, for a loss of say ~100K in lost post-tax wages for those two years in school. If that much money is there, it seems flat-out lazy to turn to it down just because I don’t like school.

The other part of it is just hearing back from people who have worked internships, or the engineers I’ve personally talked to. Most of the work they’ve ended up doing gets really monotonous - testing, documentation, monitoring electrical substations, etc - and a lot of the students were sick of their internships just after 3 months. I’m not assuming a master’s would be a ticket to the land of milk and honey, but again, if it can get me something more tolerable to work on for several decades, then it just seems stupid to forego that because I wasn’t willing to put in 2 years up front.

13

Just an fyi, but 2 years in industry after your BS can get you to 80-90k through raises and promotions.

14

As discussed elsewhere, salaries are regional (based largely on COL - Cost of living factors). But the general point is true … MS can earn more that BS (but the 2 years of BS raises/promotions covers some of that delta)>

Should students have any concern that an MS will mean smaller, more specialized scope of job opportunities?

15

No, not really. In a lot of places it’s “bachelors or masters” where the masters gets a premium on wage and responsibilities for being somewhat more advanced.