Wage Gap Between B.S. and Master's Degree for Engineering

College Majors Engineering Majors
41

<p>Hello. I am a high school senior and am planning on majoring in Electrical or Computer engineering in college. (I already got accepted in the University of Central Florida, and am now waiting on UF and Texas A&M).</p>

<p>For a while now i was determined to graduate with AT LEAST a masters for various reasons:</p>

<p>1) It will help me get/retain a good job upon graduation.
2) The possibility of a company that i would like to work for paying for my masters.
3) The obvious pay raise (I don't want to worry about any financial troubles when i have a job and, more down the road, when I have a family)</p>

<p>But after reading through this thread I am having second thoughts.</p>

<p>The main points that were made in this thread that caused this are:</p>

<p>1) The "you'll have to work x years with a MS in order to make up this amount of money you would have made with a BS in the 2 years you were in school working on your MS" argument.</p>

<p>and</p>

<p>2) That some companies will pay for your MS WHILE you work for them.</p>

<p>I don't want to have to work full-time and then go to school at night or something crazy like that!</p>

<p>This thread has given me something to think about. But for now I am still leaning on going straight for an MS.</p>

42

<p>
[quote]
This is not true with many companies that I worked for.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, frankly, those companies are either very nice or very stupid (or perhaps both). After all, what's to stop you from having your employer pay for your degree, and then upon graduation for you to then immediately jump to a competitor for higher pay? Your employer would effectively be subsidizing its competitor. </p>

<p>But, hey, if you have such a deal, then by all means, milk it. I just don't know how long it will last, especially in this economic environment, so you might as well get while the gettin's good.</p>

43

<p>hmmmm now why am i laughing....ahhahah dude i completely agree that india "is" also a filth slums and all but no way i mean no f***in way is India's crime rate comparable to Americas crime rate check out the statistics of crime rate of various countries and then give ur opinion sir...but still i say America,standard of living wise is way much better
and sir why is crime rate low in India is coz of education u see sir India is the 2 and most populous country and thus their the unemployment rate is very high in other words alot of competition for jobs so well guys there they have to study to succeed.... </p>

<p>so again i ask the question?
who are to blame.... it is the people who are uneducated who dont go colleges ,who just pass their high school which are to blame :-)
for more info refer to this site
<a href="http://www.bard.edu/bpi/pdfs/crime_report.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bard.edu/bpi/pdfs/crime_report.pdf&lt;/a>
[url=<a href="http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/9998-1.html%5DOpen"&gt;http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/9998-1.html]Open&lt;/a> Tech Support - Crime vs Education.<a href="another%20discussion">/url</a></p>

<p>btw
i am a US citizen :-) though born in India so it makes me American :-)
and again i am not taking Indias side i am taking educations side</p>

<p>PS: i find it interesting u are taking sides here :-) sides where no sides should be taken..
PSS: and about the mumbai attacks ...SIR it was the terrorists who ****ed it...not the Indian people themselves</p>

<p>again guys i am srry if i hurt any1 via this message or any msg b4 :-)</p>

44

<p>Sagoorbest, I really think there is something very WRONG with your head. Your posts make no sense, nor is there any logical reason for you to bring up your totally random points in this thread (other than to look for attention).</p>

<p>Stop trying to compare the US to India. Your arguments are so weak that its actually funny.</p>

<p>Also, most people in America are literate, and have some form of education. Most people who "just pass their high school" in this country are able to find work, so they have other alternatives to crime. Mabe its different in India because its undeveloped? I've never heard of people trying to blame high school graduates for our crime rate.</p>

<p>ps. If you are going to rant, at least try and tie your nonsense up with the post in some way. And if you're going to live here, learn how to write English.</p>

45

<p>
[quote]
she could have very easily gotten a quite nice and lucrative job at a top strategy consulting firm that would have almost certainly paid her double what she was making at Dell

[/quote]
</p>

<p>How much did her masters cost her? Attending school full time for a MBA could cost as much as $25,000 a year just in tuition costs. If she attended for two years, she got a $50,000 benefit (or whatever it was) in addition to her salary. </p>

<p>If her intent was to leave Dell for investment banking, she should have paid for the course herself and attended school full time. I'm sorry, but I don't see that this gal really "lost" anything. She will gain two years more of experience, have no debt for her MBA and then can apply for other jobs.</p>

<p>By the way...Winston-Salem may not be HER cup of tea, but it's a great and growing area of the country. The cost of living there is much less than in most other places so she probably is saving on living expenses as well.</p>

<p>I'm sorry but I think this gal needs to make lemonade out of lemons. She got a deal that many would love to have (bet she also had health insurance with Dell too...while she attended school).</p>

46

<p>
[quote]
Well, frankly, those companies are either very nice or very stupid (or perhaps both). After all, what's to stop you from having your employer pay for your degree, and then upon graduation for you to then immediately jump to a competitor for higher pay? Your employer would effectively be subsidizing its competitor.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>They offer that as a benefit to attract people to work for them. As a whole some people will leave and some don't. But the knowledge one gain from taking courses benefit the company that offers these benefits as well.</p>

47

<p>I think there's no drawback in getting a company to pay for your tuition for graduate school. Some company requires you to work for them 1 or 2 or 3 years after graduation. Otherwise, you will need to pay back (either the last year or the whole package). </p>

<p>If you really like the company and want to continue working there, then by all means go get a degree that they will pay for. After you get the degree, continue to work there. If they give you a raise (which I'm sure most companies do after you have a degree) that's a plus.</p>

<p>If you dont' like the company you're working with, after you get the degree, you can quit. You might have to pay back the entire cost, but that's the same as if you quit your job before to go to school and pay by it for yourself. If you're working while you get your degree, you can put down 2 more years of experience + you earn some money during those 2 years. How is that worse than quitting it all and paying by yourself?</p>

<p>After you get a degree, some companies are willing to offset the education cost for you to leave the old company.</p>

<p>I don't see the disadvantages of having your current company to pay for your graduate degree.</p>

48

<p>
[quote]
If you dont' like the company you're working with, after you get the degree, you can quit. You might have to pay back the entire cost, but that's the same as if you quit your job before to go to school and pay by it for yourself. If you're working while you get your degree, you can put down 2 more years of experience + you earn some money during those 2 years. How is that worse than quitting it all and paying by yourself?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>There's a quite serious drawback: the problem generally boils down to a matter of financing. Students have access to a range of loans, often times arranged by the schools, with which to pay them, with many of these loans subsidized by the Federal government. But once you've already graduated, you don't have access to those loan facilities, and, like I said before, most people don't have a pile of cash just lying around with which they can pay back their employer. Nor is it easy for you to request that a bank provide you with a big lump-sum loan because you need to pay back your employer in order to breach your employment contract. Most banks won't approve that, because you're not a student anymore and hence no longer qualify for student loans. {Which leads to the other part of the problem - most employers will demand that you pay everything back *immediately and in its entirety *, under pain of breach of contract, and most people can't easily access the financing to do that. In fact, I suspect that most employers require this because they know full well that most people won't be able to access the financing which means that the contract will bind them tightly to the company.} </p>

<p>I would agree with you that if you had a pile of money lying around, or had some other way around the financing problem (i.e. a home equity loan), then you could just get your employer to pay. But most people don't have that. </p>

<p>
[quote]
After you get a degree, some companies are willing to offset the education cost for you to leave the old company.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sure, but if they don't have to offset that cost, then that means that you can probably negotiate a higher salary/signing-bonus from your new employer. Why not - after all, it's the same total expenditure to them either way.</p>

49

<p>
[quote]
They offer that as a benefit to attract people to work for them. As a whole some people will leave and some don't. But the knowledge one gain from taking courses benefit the company that offers these benefits as well.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Like I said, I think they're very nice and also very stupid.</p>

<p>I personally think a far wiser method (for the company) would be to either use the binding contract that I discussed before. Or, a modified contract where the company doesn't pay upfront. That is, get the employee for the degree himself (perhaps through loans), and then, once the degree is finished, have the company pay back a portion of the cost, with interest, for every year the employee continues to work for you. After a certain number of years, the company will have paid back all the costs to the employee. But the employee is free to leave at anytime (but he has to pay the remainder of the bill.) </p>

<p>That way, the company still gets the benefit of increased knowledge and human capital of the added degree. You still attract people who want to get a degree that is (eventually) paid by the company. But you don't attract those people who are just looking for a hit-and-run job: those who just want to get a degree from you for free and then immediately jump. I would argue that those are the people you shouldn't want to attract anyway.</p>

50

<p>
[quote]
hmmmm now why am i laughing....ahhahah dude i completely agree that india "is" also a filth slums and all but no way i mean no f***in way is India's crime rate comparable to Americas crime rate check out the statistics of crime rate of various countries and then give ur opinion sir...but still i say America,standard of living wise is way much better
and sir why is crime rate low in India is coz of education u see sir India is the 2 and most populous country and thus their the unemployment rate is very high in other words alot of competition for jobs so well guys there they have to study to succeed.... </p>

<p>so again i ask the question?
who are to blame.... it is the people who are uneducated who dont go colleges ,who just pass their high school which are to blame :-)
for more info refer to this site
<a href="http://www.bard.edu/bpi/pdfs/crime_report.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bard.edu/bpi/pdfs/crime_report.pdf&lt;/a>
Open Tech Support - Crime vs Education. (another discussion)</p>

<p>btw
i am a US citizen :-) though born in India so it makes me American :-)
and again i am not taking Indias side i am taking educations side</p>

<p>PS: i find it interesting u are taking sides here :-) sides where no sides should be taken..
PSS: and about the mumbai attacks ...SIR it was the terrorists who ****ed it...not the Indian people themselves</p>

<p>again guys i am srry if i hurt any1 via this message or any msg b4 :-)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I hate to fuel the fire but your posts are almost as difficult to understand as Indian customer support reps.</p>

51

<p>
[quote]
That way, the company still gets the benefit of increased knowledge and human capital of the added degree. You still attract people who want to get a degree that is (eventually) paid by the company. But you don't attract those people who are just looking for a hit-and-run job: those who just want to get a degree from you for free and then immediately jump. I would argue that those are the people you shouldn't want to attract anyway.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It takes time and energy to do these courses, companies want to encourage employees to do more training on their own. The key thing to keep employees from jumping ship is to treat them right, ie if they are happy they are less likely to jump ship. Most people like to stay working with people boss/co-workers they like. Besides having a MS does not necessary guarantee a salary increase that an employee without a MS would not have gotten, ie if you jump ship you tend to get a salary increase with or without a graduate degree. Besides these tuition are tax deductible for the company anyway so it's not stupid that they offer these benefits.</p>

52

<p>
[quote]
It takes time and energy to do these courses, companies want to encourage employees to do more training on their own. The key thing to keep employees from jumping ship is to treat them right, ie if they are happy they are less likely to jump ship. Most people like to stay working with people boss/co-workers they like. Besides having a MS does not necessary guarantee a salary increase that an employee without a MS would not have gotten, ie if you jump ship you tend to get a salary increase with or without a graduate degree. Besides these tuition are tax deductible for the company anyway so it's not stupid that they offer these benefits.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Uh, your response is a non-sequitur for it doesn't address any of the points I raised in post #49. To wit:</p>

<p>Sure, companies want to encourage employees to do more training on their own. But they can just as easily do that through my system, which also offers subsidized degrees, but with delayed financing. Like I said, it could even be *company-arranged financing, as most companies have access to significant debt/loan facilities as part of their general operations, some of which could go towards creating a corporate "student loan" program. That's certainly more financially burdensome than having the company pay everything upfront. </p>

<p>The major advantage is that the loan is shifted onto the employee, and that loan will then be gradually retired by the company over time as long as the employee stays. Hence, you improve the morale of those employees who intend to stay. Now, I agree that you don't improve the morale of those employees who don't intend to stay, but I don't think the company should care about them anyway. </p>

<p>Which points to another major advantage for the firm: the screening feature. Presumably, under such a system, the the bachelor's degree engineers who actually want to improve their knowledge and who intend to stay in the company will take the deal. That means that it is precisely those engineers who aren't interested in improving their knowledge and/or who don't really intend to stay who won't take the deal. Hence, the company now has a tool to categorize its 'best' employees. {Of course the company will not tell its employees that that is what is going on.} </p>

<p>*Whether you get a salary increase or not from jumping to a competitor once you get an MS is irrelevant: the question is, why should the company pay to educate somebody who is going to jump anyway? A rational company should choose to pay to educate only those guys who are actually going to stay. </p>

<p>*The tuition would be tax-deductible under either system, so it's a wash. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that, compared to a method of upfront payments, the system I described offers no disadvantages, and many advantages. Again, the basic idea is that companies should not pay to educate people who are just going to leave. Now, granted, that will probably deter those people from joining in the first place, but I would argue that that's a good thing, for I don't think you want to be attracting those people.</p>

53

<p>Good grief. So long as we're counseling people who are still undergraduates, it pretty much sounds like a much better idea to just do a really good job as an undergrad and get an assistantship or fellowship to grad school. That way, it's someone else's non-corporate lump of cash, and you get research and/or teaching experience. I know for a fact that the awesome electrical engineering research firms troll the journals to look for potential employees, so going to grad school straight away and getting your name on articles might actually result in a much better set of initial opportunities for you, and you won't owe Corporate America a year or a buck.</p>

<p>OP, get off the computer and start working on problem sets. It's cheaper for you in the long run, and produces much less forum angst...!</p>

54

<p>
[quote]
*Sure, companies want to encourage employees to do more training on their own. But they can just as easily do that through my system, which also offers subsidized degrees, but with delayed financing. Like I said, it could even be company-arranged financing, as most companies have access to significant debt/loan facilities as part of their general operations, some of which could go towards creating a corporate "student loan" program. That's certainly more financially burdensome than having the company pay everything upfront.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Your system does not offer enough incentives for employees to take on extra-load while working.</p>

<p>
[quote]
*Whether you get a salary increase or not from jumping to a competitor once you get an MS is irrelevant: the question is, why should the company pay to educate somebody who is going to jump anyway? A rational company should choose to pay to educate only those guys who are actually going to stay.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Your assumption is that people will jump when they get a MS, therefore a company is stupid to pay for it in the first place. This is not necessarily the case. Some companies are big enough that you can do internal transfer to better position that merits better raise.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Again, the basic idea is that companies should not pay to educate people who are just going to leave.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I have a different philosophy to yours. I think company should pay to educate its employees. People will leave when they are not happy with their jobs. HR in my companies have done survey to confirm this.</p>

55

<p>I think if a company pays for its employees graduate education it would increase the chances of that employee remaining in that company for a longer period of time.</p>

56

<p>
[quote]
Your system does not offer enough incentives for employees to take on extra-load while working.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>How so? The incentives are the same as in your system. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Your assumption is that people will jump when they get a MS,

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Uh, no, please read my posts more carefully. I never said that all people would jump. Obviously some would not. What I am saying is that some would, and those are precisely the people who you don't want to be subsidizing. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I have a different philosophy to yours. I think company should pay to educate its employees. People will leave when they are not happy with their jobs. HR in my companies have done survey to confirm this.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Again, please read my posts more carefully. Under my plan, the company still pays to educate its employees - as long as they stay. If they don't stay, then they won't get a free education, but that's precisely the point. But those who do stay will get a free education.</p>

57

<p>
[quote]
There's a quite serious drawback: the problem generally boils down to a matter of financing. Students have access to a range of loans, often times arranged by the schools, with which to pay them, with many of these loans subsidized by the Federal government. But once you've already graduated, you don't have access to those loan facilities, and, like I said before, most people don't have a pile of cash just lying around with which they can pay back their employer. Nor is it easy for you to request that a bank provide you with a big lump-sum loan because you need to pay back your employer in order to breach your employment contract. Most banks won't approve that, because you're not a student anymore and hence no longer qualify for student loans. {Which leads to the other part of the problem - most employers will demand that you pay everything back immediately and in its entirety , under pain of breach of contract, and most people can't easily access the financing to do that. In fact, I suspect that most employers require this because they know full well that most people won't be able to access the financing which means that the contract will bind them tightly to the company.}

[/quote]
</p>

<p>So are you saying if you already hold a bachelor degree and are working for a company, it's better to quit your job to go get a master / phD than to just work + get the degree at the same time while the company's paying for the cost? Sure, when you quit your job and go to school full time, you might get a loan. But that loan is far less than the money you make in 1,2 years if you continue working at the company. </p>

<p>For example if I work for company X and making $50,000 / year. I want to get a master degree. It's better to quit that job and go to school full time for 2 years? Why not keep the job and earn $100,000 during those 2 years (and save a chunk to pay back in case you want to quit)? If you have better offer, you can quit and pay back the tuition money.</p>

<p>Having your company to pay for your degree while working is a win-win situation (you still keep the job, you still get paid, and you earn a degree). Quitting your job and getting loans to attend school is a lose-lose situation (you still have to pay back the loans, you lose your job and the money you could have earned during those years).</p>

58

<p>
[quote]
So are you saying if you already hold a bachelor degree and are working for a company, it's better to quit your job to go get a master / phD than to just work + get the degree at the same time while the company's paying for the cost? Sure, when you quit your job and go to school full time, you might get a loan. But that loan is far less than the money you make in 1,2 years if you continue working at the company.</p>

<p>For example if I work for company X and making $50,000 / year. I want to get a master degree. It's better to quit that job and go to school full time for 2 years? Why not keep the job and earn $100,000 during those 2 years (and save a chunk to pay back in case you want to quit)? If you have better offer, you can quit and pay back the tuition money.</p>

<p>Having your company to pay for your degree while working is a win-win situation (you still keep the job, you still get paid, and you earn a degree). Quitting your job and getting loans to attend school is a lose-lose situation (you still have to pay back the loans, you lose your job and the money you could have earned during those years).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, let me put it to you this way. You might think that that's stupid, but that's precisely the tradeoff faced by most people who choose to enter top-ranked full-time MBA programs. Let's use Harvard Business School as an example. I think it's quite obvious that any HBS student could have just kept working and gone to some part-time MBA program at night and made money during the mean time, like you said. Yet practically nobody does that; well over 90% of all people who admitted to HBS will choose to go. So why do these students quit their jobs and choose to go into debt to HBS? Are they all being stupid? </p>

<p>Furthermore, some of these students could have probably finagled some sort of deal with their employer where the employer sponsors their tuition at HBS, in return for agreeing to return once they graduate. But I know many students (not all, but many) who spurn that offer, again, because they want to have complete freedom to recruit for any job that they want after graduation without having to worry about any prior commitments. {One common problem with being sponsored is that you are often times barred from using campus recruiting facilities, as part of the contract you sign with your employer.} </p>

<p>I think it really boils down to what you want and what you think you can get. Certainly, I agree with you that for some people, it makes sense to just have their employer pay for their degrees. However, I would argue that for other people, it makes little sense. The fact that HBS has the most students of any B-school - far more than any part-time program - is living proof that many people believe that quitting their jobs and taking out loans is the optimal choice for them.</p>

59

<p>Sakky, when I was in elementary school, my mom (who's a CHE) when back to school to get a masters. Her company payed for her, but since she was working full time, it took her quiet a while to finish.</p>

<p>Of course, this was many years ago, but I think it still works pretty much the same. from my understanding, the tuition they payed was like a benefit, just like health insurance or a 401K. They did it to attract their employees. Also, since it takes a while to get the degree if you work full time, the employee will have been at the company for a while anyways by the time they graduate.</p>

<p>Many companies have realized that their employees are their most precious asset, and will make a much bigger contribution if they are happy than if they are not. An employee who wants to leave but can't because he would have to repay a loan is certainly not going to be a happy employee. Given the nature of engineering, it would often be the company who looses out because that employee surley won't give his best work. For example, a design enigneer that is capable of producing very innovative work could just produce enough medicore work to keep his job. This could potentially cause a company to loose mega bucks, and would kill organizations who are the leaders in their areas.</p>

60

<p>Sakky, what you say may be true for an MBA but I'm not sure it holds water for an MS or MEng. Chances are, if you're getting an MS or MEng, you're not going to go from 53K a year to 90K a year just by getting a masters. Maybe you'll get a 10K or 20K increase, but if you're not going to rack up 120K extra in the three or so years that you'd otherwise be working for a company to satisfy them after they've paid for your masters degree, then it's just not economically worth it to go into a massive quantity of debt and put your entire life on hold.</p>