<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>I'm just wondering about the benefits of getting a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering vs just having a Bachelor's degree if my goal is to get a job in industry. Is it really worth it to get a Master's degree?</p>
<p>Thanks for any help</p>
<p>Depends on where you are in your career. Entry level - probably not much of a big deal. A 5-10+ years out it might be worth more and open more doors.</p>
<p>At the beginning, it is actually a bit of a detriment - the lost income during those extra college years take a while to make up. The advantage is longer term - the proportion of people with graduate degrees increases significantly the higher you go in any company. So a year or two out of school you may not see an advantage, but a decade or two down the line when you are in management or working as a highly-paid technical expert, instead of just as a staff engineer, that is where you see the advantage.</p>
<p>The reason more advanced people have masters degrees is not BECAUSE of the masters degree. They are probably more ambitious generally.</p>
<p>I dont think that’s really a fair statement. I’ve known plenty of ambitious people who dont have a masters degree because they haven’t needed one or the cost/benefit just isnt there for them.</p>
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But the two are well correlated - those who pursue a masters degree are more likely to possess the combination of technical competence and personal ambition desired in senior engineers.</p>
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As have I, what I was saying was that for one reason or another the proportion of those with advanced degrees increases as you climb the ranks of technical authority. It is not quite so clear cut with straight management, but even there graduate technical degrees are more common than they are in the “new hire” population.</p>
<p>As one example of this, my company requires either a graduate degree or a “substantial” demonstration of technical knowledge (i.e. publications, patents, etc.) for promotion to the highest two levels of engineer. My department (systems architecture, a senior department responsible for the overall system designs) does not to my knowledge have a single individual without a graduate technical degree, and a surprising number of them are PhD’s.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the info.</p>
<p>As for what cosmicfish said: “The advantage is longer term - the proportion of people with graduate degrees increases significantly the higher you go in any company”, does this mean a PhD can be beneficial not only in academics? I don’t have much desire to spend another 4+ years in school to get a PhD, and I’ve been under the impression that a PhD is most useful if I want to pursue a more research and academic-oriented career. Do most people who plan to go into industry get a Master’s?</p>
<p>Thanks again</p>
<p>Most people in industry stop at the masters, and a PhD is a questionable advantage in industry - it opens up some doors, but perhaps not enough to make up for the time and expense (lost wages) in getting the degree. Still, I believe a majority of engineering PhD’s work outside of academia, and that is my intent as well.</p>