<p>PhD admissions really frown upon "gap years" but are masters degrees the same? Im a math major and really want to teach. Im not interested in doing reaserch or anything but instead want to teach at the postsecondary level. Is age considered as a factor in masters degree admissions. If i get a job out of undergrad and then get a masters part time or more likely apply for the masters in my late 20's or so. </p>
<p>its possible to get a job with just a masters degree considering i will have "real world" experience (talking about community colleges mostly)</p>
<p>Who told you PhD programs frown on gap years? This is patently untrue. Lots and lots and lots of grad students take time between undergrad and grad.</p>
<p>Age is not considered a factor, excepting a very few programs, and in those cases we're talking extensive age difference. I don't agree with it; I just heard a couple stories. But it's incredibly rare.</p>
<p>Obviously you can't teach at a 4 yr school with just a masters degree. But you can teach at a community college. If that's your plan, I'm wondering what job you're planning on getting in between degrees. The reason I ask is that secondary teaching experience is a bonus at the community college level. If you're interested, you can complete certification requirements before you graduate from undergrad and teach secondary in between degrees. If you can swing it, you may even land a district that will pay for your master's degree.</p>
<p>Ph.D. admissions - in many fields PREFER students who have taken time to make sure they knew what they were doing. Gap years are good for admissions, even if (like I did) you bartend and sell ski equipment.</p>
<p>I agree with DSP that age is considered a factor in only a few programs. Math and CS (which, at the PhD level, is quite similar to math) immediately come to mind. The reason for that has to do with the strong perception that relatively few brilliant math and CS insights are discovered by those beyond a certain age. Whether that perception is true or not, the perception certainly exists. G.H. Hardy, the brilliant British number theorist, once wrote that “No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man’s game.”</p>
<p>But for the vast majority of fields, age is not a problem. </p>
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<p>Actually, yeah you can.</p>
<p>As a case in point, consider the School of Construction at the University of Southern Mississippi. Many of the professors there have just master’s degrees. For example, Desmond Fletcher is Director and Associate Prof at that school, yet he only has a master’s degree. Jeff Hannon is Assistant Professor there, and he also has only a master’s.</p>
<p>As another case in point, if we just want to restrict ourselves to mathematics departments, Phillip Brown, who is a full professor of Applied Mathematics at Trinity College (in Hartford) only has a master’s degree (from MIT). Similarly, Delores Smith has only master’s degrees (albeit 2 of them), and she is an assistant professor at Coppin State. Similarly, Walter Lebensohn is an assistant professor at the US Merchant Marine Academy, yet has only master’s.</p>
<p>Opportunities expand further if you don’t want to be a professor, but just want to solely teach (i.e. just be a lecturer/instructor). For example, the lecturers in the math department at North Carolina A&T all have only master’s degrees.</p>
<p>Sure, a terminal professional degree. But this is academia we’re talking about. Plenty of architecture and construction profs hold PhD’s in architecture.</p>
<p>Just like the MBA is the terminal professional degree for business, but many business school profs have PhD’s. Heck, many of them never got their MBA’s. </p>
<p>But that’s really beside the point. The point is, there are plenty of people who teach in 4-year colleges that have only master’s degrees but not doctorates.</p>
<p>Actually the norm in architecture schools is for only history/theory faculty to have PhDs, and the vast majority of the rest of the faculty (those focusing on design, construction, drawing, etc.) have either an M.Arch or a B.Arch + licensure.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s beside the point- my point is that you’re using this guy as an example to illustrate a certain point, but the example you are using is not applicable because you picked an unusual field to pull an example from.</p>
<p>When I said a handful of programs, I meant actual programs, not entire fields. Most math programs will still not look down upon you if you take a gap year or so. Again, we’re not talking about decades. And as you are not really into research and high-powered academia, it definitely won’t be an issue. Perhaps the UChicago-Berkeley-Ivy crowd would be slightly biased, but you’d barely have to break below the top 10 and they’d be unconcerned. And since math is not one of the more insanely competitive fields like humanities, you’ll be fine, OP.</p>
<p>I agree that many architecture profs do not have doctorates and that architecture is, in general, an unusual field that has an unusual high number of profs who don’t have doctorates. </p>
<p>But I do think it’s beside the point, because I am simply showing that some people out there do indeed teach at 4-year colleges but don’t have doctorates. That’s the point. Sure, I agree that the circumstances are always unusual (in that the majority of faculty at 4-year colleges in any discipline do have doctorates). Nevertheless, I am simply pointing out that you can teach at a 4-year college with just a master’s.</p>
<p>It is besides the point. The OP already specified math as his field. You cannot teach math in a 4-year college with just a masters.</p>
<p>And while there may be “plenty of people” who teach college with a masters, that is only acceptable in very particular fields - fine arts, business, architecture. That’s it. The number of people is irrelevant; the identification of fields is what mattes. And the fields are, as I said, irrelevant to the OP.</p>
<p>Uh, what did I say in post #6? I suppose I shall have to reprint it. However, in the future, I simply ask you to please *read what I have written * before you respond. </p>
<p>***As another case in point, if we just want to restrict ourselves to mathematics departments, Phillip Brown, who is a full professor of Applied Mathematics at Trinity College (in Hartford) only has a master’s degree (from MIT). Similarly, Delores Smith has only master’s degrees (albeit 2 of them), and she is an assistant professor at Coppin State. Similarly, Walter Lebensohn is an assistant professor at the US Merchant Marine Academy, yet has only master’s.</p>
<p>Opportunities expand further if you don’t want to be a professor, but just want to solely teach (i.e. just be a lecturer/instructor). For example, the lecturers in the math department at North Carolina A&T all have only master’s degrees.</p>
<p>Just for fun, I decided to poke around at a few more schools to find some more people who are teaching math at 4 year colleges but who have only master’s.</p>
<p>Here’s Harvey Lambert, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Nevada-Reno. He has only a MS. </p>
<p>Here is a whole slew of math faculty members at Ball State University who have just master’s. Note, while the majority of them are ‘instructors’, some of them are actual professors. For example, William Eckman and Linley Kay Baker are bonafide assistant professors of mathematics at Ball State despite holding only master’s. </p>
<p>Well, that was enough fun for one day, so I think I’ll stop searching now. I am sure that if I continued, I would find plenty more examples.</p>
<p>The bottom line is this. While I don’t know about anybody else, it certainly seems to me that there are quite a few people teaching math at 4-year colleges despite only having master’s degrees. I think that’s an indisputable fact. We are all certainly entitled to have our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to have our own facts.</p>
<p>Sakky, I’m perfectly able to read your posts. You’re still wrong. Firstly, lecturers and instructors are adjuncts. They aren’t full-time faculty, even if they teach full-time, and they have no job security, little or no benefits, and usually are paid less. I doubt that’s what the OP is considering, and that constitutes the vast majority of the faculty you listed.</p>
<p>Secondly, you have not at all accounted for changes in hiring practices over the last decade. Perhaps you could make your point better if you could find advertisements for full-time math faculty at a 4 year college that only require a masters. Here’s some help:</p>
<p>First off, the fact that instructors and lecturers are teachers. You were talking about just “teaching” at a 4-year college. You said nothing about being a fully fledged professor. </p>
<p>Secondly, you’re even more wrong because I see that you still haven’t read my posts carefully. I included quite a number of * fully-fledged professors* in my above posts. </p>
<p>For example, since you didn’t bother to read it, here is Linley Kay Baker, assistant professor of mathematics at Ball State University. She has only a master’s.</p>
<p>Again, before you respond to my posts, please read them first. </p>
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<p>I suppose we should leave it up to the OP to make that determination. However his direct quote is: </p>
<p>“Im not interested in doing reaserch or anything but instead want to teach at the postsecondary level”</p>
<p>Hence, seems to me that lecturer/instructor positions would fill the bill quite nicely. </p>
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<p>So? We’re not talking about the ‘vast majority’ of faculty. We are simply talking about whether you CAN teach at a 4-year college with just a master’s. And the truth of the matter is that you CAN. </p>
<p>Now, is it harder to land such a job with just a master’s, but no doctorate? Of course! But that’s not what we’re talking about. What we are talking about is whether you simply CAN land such a job. I think it’s quite clear that you can.</p>
<p>What you should have said (and I would not have disputed) is something to the effect of “It is harder to land a teaching job at a 4-year college without a doctorate”. This would be an eminently uncontroversial point that I would not have disputed. But you didn’t say that. You specifically said: "Obviously you can’t teach at a 4 yr school with just a masters degree. " You went too far, because the fact is, you CAN teach at a 4 year school with just a master’s. </p>
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<p>Changes in the last decade? So then how exactly did Linley Kay Baker, who got her master’s in 2005, become an assistant professor of mathematics at Ball State? Seems to me that that’s well within the last decade. </p>
<p>I think I’ve made my point quite well, thank you very much. </p>
<p>But since you mentioned it, allright fine, I’ll play your game. Using the links you provided, I quickly found one tenure-track math assistant professorship at Florida Memorial University (which, yes, is a 4-year college) that does not require a PhD. True, it says “doctorate preferred”. But it’s not required.</p>
<p>How about a few more that don’t “quite” fit the bill, but almost do. Here’s a assistant professor position in mathematics at Quincy University in which a PhD is only “preferred”, and they would consider ABD. Hence, it seems to me that somebody who is ABD (but has a master’s) would indeed have a shot at being an assistant prof at this 4-year college. </p>
<p>But anyway, DSP, what do you think? Have I made my point “even better”, now that I took your links and found a bunch of potential jobs that fit the bill? </p>
<p>But besides, I don’t think this point is important anyway. Job specs serve as little more than “wish lists”. I think we’ve all seen numerous examples of companies who will put out laundry-lists of requirements for job specs, and then eventually hire somebody who doesn’t have all those requirements. For example, I remember back in the year 2000 when software companies were “demanding” that programming candidates have 10 years of Java experience (despite the fact that Java wasn’t even officially invented developed as an in-house research project at Sun Microsystems until 1991 and wasn’t officially released to the public until 1995). Even recently, I saw an ad that was demanding 5 years of experience with Ruby on Rails (RoR), despite the fact the RoR wasn’t even released until 2004. Organizations are always hiring people who don’t exactly fit the job spec.</p>
<p>Well, your methods are, as usual, a sure-fire recipe for a mediocre CV and shocking job-hunt difficulties down the road. Good luck to those who listen to you.</p>
<p>I concur that I think my CV is pretty darn good, if I don’t say so myself, heh heh. </p>
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<p>I never said that these were “my methods”. I am simply saying that these are methods that have been used by other people. I am not recommending these methods. Nor am I recommending against these methods. I am simply offering facts. </p>
<p>Look, DSP, we all have the rights to our own opinions, but we don’t have the rights to our own facts. And the indisputable fact is, you can indeed get a tenure-track assistant professor job in math at a 4-year college with just a master’s degree. Just look at Colleen Ianuzzi. Look at Linley Kay Baker. They’re living proof. </p>
<p>Look, if you were to have taken the position that it is better to have gotten a PhD if you want a 4-year tenure-track job, I would have supported you. But what you said is that you can’t get such a job at all if you have only a master’s. That’s going too far. You can, and I’ve proved that you can. I don’t think it’s the best method. But it IS a method, whether we like it or not. It’s one thing to acknowledge that certain methods exist to accomplish a goal, and then recommend against certain methods. That’s perfectly fine. It’s quite another thing to deny that those other methods even exist. You didn’t need to go there.</p>