Dubious master's degrees

[waterboy]

So, how many of you are seeing the dubious master's degrees (article in the Chronicle)? At my R1 I've seen a few that make me wonder, with new titles that chase current market conditions. I wonder how long they'll last.

[lilyb]

The admin pressured my department to create one of these programs, with no financial support, new hires in that area, or course releases for development. So, there was no interest in even ensuring the quality of the program. Reading the article helped confirm my sense that we dodged a bullet in resisting. I'm expecting that we'll face it again, though.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

So, how many of you are seeing the dubious master's degrees (article in the Chronicle)? At my R1 I've seen a few that make me wonder, with new titles that chase current market conditions. I wonder how long they'll last.

"dubiousness" is a continuum from "good program (academically), but there is no market locally for this number of graduates every year" to "completely worthless degree at a tremendous cost".
Side note: The Chronicle's article feels like a really amateurish follow-up to the month-old WSJ article series

[lightning]

The sweet spot is a master's degree that is low overhead, with high enrollments of students who don't care if the degree will advance them professionally or they just need a masters degree--any masters degree--to advance professionally, so it might as well be a "fun" degree.

Some MA creative writing programs fit this description. If the student has no writing talent or doesn't want to put in the work that a creative writing master's program demands of its students, some kind of generic "creative-lite" version. It might have the buzzword "media" or "creative" in the name of the program. If it's mostly online, even better.

Then there are the more seemingly practical degrees that sound legit, but are a bunch of fluff, such as the IT degrees that have no real IT courses or pre-requisites found in a real IT program like courses programming/networking/database/etc, along with the math pre-requisites. These usually sell themselves as "IT Leadership" or "IT Management" or "IT Policy" degrees, where supposedly, one can manage a bunch of software engineers with no real IT experience or skills. If one already has a legit undergrad in IT, then I suppose these programs would be OK, but there are already MBA programs.

Then there are the fluff business degrees with no accounting, math, or business analytics. Instead, the courses consist of students coming in to a class, discussing their own work experiences or current job, around some loose discussion framework based on a case study assigned reading.

Then there are the venerable leadership degrees, which are like the fluff business degrees but even worse because they bring in the pop psychology.

Then there are the degrees with the words "cross-disciplinary" or "inter-disciplinary" or "multi-disciplinary" or something along those lines where you can have a mostly self-designed pastiche degree of whatever (usually easy courses and/or "fun" courses) and maybe a few credit for life-experience / work experience courses--all cobbled together for the quickest path to graduation. I'm waiting for some clown university to call their flavor of this degree type, a Master's of Science in Synergistic Inter-disciplinary Studies.

Then there are are the pure pop psychology degree programs. Don't get me started on those . . . .

There are so many of these garbage degrees, and this has been going on for as long as I can remember. I've been holding my nose ever since the onset of online colleges.

The article is way too late. It should really be talking more about how these garbage degree programs directly de-valued all of higher education, in the eyes of students, parents, alumni, politicians, employers, and the general public, and are making all of academe look bad.

[jerseyjay]

Yes, I think that a "dubious" master's degree can cover a lot of ground. Recently I remember reading an article about several master's degrees at Columbia, like creative writing and film. They are absolutely not dubious in quality, in that they are taught by top-notch people, are very competitive, and often lead to their holders getting employed in their fields. They are very dubious in value, however, because Columbia degrees cost a lot of money and most creative writing or film jobs pay very little, hence leaving their graduates in massive debt.

Then there are certain master's degrees that my school offers, mainly in education-related fields. I am not entirely sure how solid they are academically, but the typical student works for the local schools, has their employer pay for them, and gets a nice raise at the end.

From the perspective of an academic, I tend to think that most master's degrees in the humanities or social sciences are somewhat dubious. Not that they are not academically legitimate, but that as a degree, they do not serve much purpose. Time was you could teach at a community college with a master's degree in history. This may still be the rule at many schools, but at least in my area, most full-time community college professors have a doctorate. Some time ago many professors earned a PhD as a stepping stone to a doctorate; nowadays, most graduate students I know go directly into a PhD program (although they may earn a master's in passing). The only students I know who go on for a master's in history are a) students too weak to enter a doctoral program directly; b) students who are are not really sure they want to become a professor and use a master's degree as a expensive "starter degree"; and c), students who already teachers and for whom a master's degree will bring in more money.

 

[mamselle]

Some time ago many professors earned a PhD as a stepping stone to a doctorate;

You mean M.A., right?

M.

[jerseyjay]

Some time ago many professors earned a PhD as a stepping stone to a doctorate;

You mean M.A., right?

M.

Yeah. Although I have met a few people who have had more than one doctorate....

[filologos]

Some time ago many professors earned a [MA] as a stepping stone to a doctorate; nowadays, most graduate students I know go directly into a PhD program (although they may earn a master's in passing). The only students I know who go on for a master's in history are a) students too weak to enter a doctoral program directly; b) students who are are not really sure they want to become a professor and use a master's degree as a expensive "starter degree"; and c), students who already teachers and for whom a master's degree will bring in more money.

In my humanities discipline, at least, there are a few good funded MA programs that produce alumni who generally either teach high school or go on to PhD programs. For the latter, it's a "starter degree," but one that offers tuition remission, a stipend, and usually teaching experience.

[Parasaurolophus]

The sweet spot is a master's degree that is low overhead, with high enrollments of students who don't care if the degree will advance them professionally or they just need a masters degree--any masters degree--to advance professionally, so it might as well be a "fun" degree.

Some MA creative writing programs fit this description. If the student has no writing talent or doesn't want to put in the work that a creative writing master's program demands of its students, some kind of generic "creative-lite" version. It might have the buzzword "media" or "creative" in the name of the program. If it's mostly online, even better.

Then there are the more seemingly practical degrees that sound legit, but are a bunch of fluff, such as the IT degrees that have no real IT courses or pre-requisites found in a real IT program like courses programming/networking/database/etc, along with the math pre-requisites. These usually sell themselves as "IT Leadership" or "IT Management" or "IT Policy" degrees, where supposedly, one can manage a bunch of software engineers with no real IT experience or skills. If one already has a legit undergrad in IT, then I suppose these programs would be OK, but there are already MBA programs.

Then there are the fluff business degrees with no accounting, math, or business analytics. Instead, the courses consist of students coming in to a class, discussing their own work experiences or current job, around some loose discussion framework based on a case study assigned reading.

Then there are the venerable leadership degrees, which are like the fluff business degrees but even worse because they bring in the pop psychology.

Then there are the degrees with the words "cross-disciplinary" or "inter-disciplinary" or "multi-disciplinary" or something along those lines where you can have a mostly self-designed pastiche degree of whatever (usually easy courses and/or "fun" courses) and maybe a few credit for life-experience / work experience courses--all cobbled together for the quickest path to graduation. I'm waiting for some clown university to call their flavor of this degree type, a Master's of Science in Synergistic Inter-disciplinary Studies.

Then there are are the pure pop psychology degree programs. Don't get me started on those . . . .

There are so many of these garbage degrees, and this has been going on for as long as I can remember. I've been holding my nose ever since the onset of online colleges.

The article is way too late. It should really be talking more about how these garbage degree programs directly de-valued all of higher education, in the eyes of students, parents, alumni, politicians, employers, and the general public, and are making all of academe look bad.

Then there's the Oxford model, where you pay the university £50 a few years after graduating with a Bachelor's.

[Morden]

nowadays, most graduate students I know go directly into a PhD program

In Canada, it's still the norm to get a Master's degree before a PhD (often at a different school). There is also no "MA exit" from PhD programs.

[dismalist]

Then there's the Oxford model, where you pay the university £50 a few years after graduating with a Bachelor's.

An MPhil in Econ, e.g., at Oxford costs £24,450 per year for two years. It is not junk.

The data are here https://thefora.org/index.php?action=post;quote=81502;topic=2519.0 Other subjects' prices can be searched.

[Sun_Worshiper]

My department has a new specialized degree that makes me cringe - very gimmicky and hard to imagine what sort of job it would prepare someone for. I wouldn't say it is "dubious," but certainly I would discourage any student who asked for my opinion.

[Parasaurolophus]

Then there's the Oxford model, where you pay the university £50 a few years after graduating with a Bachelor's.

An MPhil in Econ, e.g., at Oxford costs £24,450 per year for two years. It is not junk.

The data are here https://thefora.org/index.php?action=post;quote=81502;topic=2519.0 Other subjects' prices can be searched.

That's the MPhil. I'm talking about the MA.

[dismalist]

Then there's the Oxford model, where you pay the university £50 a few years after graduating with a Bachelor's.

An MPhil in Econ, e.g., at Oxford costs £24,450 per year for two years. It is not junk.

The data are here https://thefora.org/index.php?action=post;quote=81502;topic=2519.0 Other subjects' prices can be searched.

That's the MPhil. I'm talking about the MA.

Ah! Its price is equivalent to its value, in contrast to the US. :-)

[jerseyjay]

Then there's the Oxford model, where you pay the university £50 a few years after graduating with a Bachelor's.

An MPhil in Econ, e.g., at Oxford costs £24,450 per year for two years. It is not junk.

The data are here https://thefora.org/index.php?action=post;quote=81502;topic=2519.0 Other subjects' prices can be searched.

That's the MPhil. I'm talking about the MA.

When I earned my PhD in Britain about twenty years ago, very few students got a Master's degree. (It was called a taught Master's degree, to distinguish it from the Oxbridge style MA.) An MPhil was a different beast. When I enrolled as a postgraduate student, I was officially an MPhil student, and after a year or so, I had to upgrade to a PhD student, which involved writing a proposal for a thesis and defending it. It was usually a formality, but not always. Some people got an MPhil as a terminal degree if their PhD thesis was not up to standards, either because they were unable to upgrade their degree course from a MPhil to a PhD, or because the outside readers did not like the thesis. Some people decided that they were just not interested in the extra work a doctorate required. (Officially, a doctorate is supposed to make an original contribution to the field, while an MPhil involves writing up and synthesizing existing research. Both theses can be hundreds of pages long.) I did meet some people who enrolled in an MPhil program with the goal of just getting an MPhil. Some of these people then went on to get a doctorate elsewhere.

So while the MPhil in Britain is a legitimate--although I don't think particularly useful--degree, in the U.S. is is much rarer. I do know one person who studied history at an Ivy League school, entering right after earning a BA. After a year or so, he got an MA. Then several years later he earned a MPhil. Then six years after starting, more or less, he earned his doctorate. It looks good on his CV but I am not sure it actually is better than just my BA and PhD.

In Britain, my impression when I was there, was that the PhD served the purpose of the dubious MA. That is, every year many foreign students enrolled in a PhD program, with fees much higher than British or EU students, so for the school, foreign doctoral students were a cash cow. The degrees were real, requiring real work (usually), often paid by a student's home country.