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I expect this is mostly because there is less funding available for students pursuing a Masters. If you can get funded by doing research or teaching, then the R
by loukrazy 11y ago
I expect this is mostly because there is less funding available for students pursuing a Masters. If you can get funded by doing research or teaching, then the ROI of a masters is not bad for US students. It is typically 2 years and many employers treat it as work experience.
This is different for PhD students because you are talking about a potentially much longer period of time and much less ROI. This is especially true given the oversupply of PhDs in most fields relative to the number of actual tenure-track positions. If you can't get a tenure-track position, then you are probably over-qualified for most industry jobs and wont get much more compensation that someone with a masters.
For non-US students, the return is getting into the US on a visa and getting a post graduate technical degree from a US institution, both of which are much more likely to land you a US job (and probably wont hurt your chances in academia / industry in India / China either).
- HLRoku 11y agoI've known PhD friends that will straight up lie on their resumes when applying to places and only list that they're a masters student. I'm fairly sure this is legal since they technically did graduate with a master's degree. Regardless, it really shows how screwed up things are that you have PhDs that have to do this in order to find work. These are STEM majors, mind you -- to any naysayers.
- loukrazy 11y agoGetting a PhD should be for people who want to go into research or university level teaching, but there really aren't enough research / higher ed teaching jobs for the number of PhDs supplied. The reason for the oversupply is that US universities use PhDs as cheap teachers, meaning that they don't have to hire as many lecturers (who would be PhD graduates), meaning less jobs for PhDs once they graduate. IMHO