8 ms·

The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s (2011)

22 points by Futurebot 11y ago

tzs 11y ago
Futurama has noted the rising academic bar. From Season 1, Episode 11, "Mars University": Fry: Good old Coney Island College! Go, Whitefish! Leela: Don't take this the wrong way, Fry, but you don't seem like the educated type. Fry: Oh, yeah? [He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket with "Notice of Failure to Graduate" written on it. The CICC logo is a Ferris wheel.] Read it and weep. I'm a certified college dropout. Leela: Please! Everyone knows 20th century colleges were basically expensive daycare centres. Farnsworth: That's true. By current academic standards, you're merely a high school dropout. Fry: What? That's not fair. I deserve the same respect any other college dropout gets. By God, I'm gonna enroll here at Mars University and drop out all over again! Leela: You won't last two weeks. Fry: Aww, thanks for believing in me. http://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:Mars_University http://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:Mars_University
- RUG3Y 11y ago
  I remember that episode well! Such a funny show.
  - mortenjorck 11y ago
    If you will indulge a classic HN tangential thought, this has me suddenly wondering about the sociological phenomenon of mentally reading things in a voice you associate with the text. There's something about the way Futurama is written and produced that seems to make it a particularly potent example (you've probably seen the Farnsworth "now you're reading this in my voice" meme), and this transrcipt excerpt works particularly well. I wonder why that is?
    - mgkimsal 11y ago
      I just tried reading that in your voice, but it didn't work out so well...
    - theoh 11y ago
      I'm prepared to entertain the possibility that it's due to some kind of dynamics of a collective unconscious that is shared across "individuals". Not very philosophically correct by materialist standards but impossible to rule out!
    - vorg 11y ago
      A few times I've read out a text aloud, then listened to the recording and it's been different. Remember that movie audition scene in the "Mulholland Drive" movie? Sometimes a single comma or exclamation mark in the written text can change that "inner voice" for a whole dialog!
    - yaw 11y ago
      Character design done well? The visual design was done in a way to make these characters very distinctive & memorable, possibly the same applies to the auditory aspects? Matt Groening: The secret of designing cartoon characters — and I’m giving away this secret now to all of you out there — is: you make a character that you can tell who it is in silhouette. I learned this from watching Mickey Mouse as a kid. You can tell Mickey Mouse from a mile away…those two big ears. Same thing with Popeye, same thing with Batman. And so, if you look at the Simpsons, they’re all identifiable in silhouette. Bart with the picket fence hair, Marge with the beehive, and Homer with the two little hairs, and all the rest. So…I think about hair quite a lot. Source: http://austinkleon.com/2007/08/28/silhouettes-and-profiles/ http://austinkleon.com/2007/08/28/silhouettes-and-profiles/
- deleted 11y ago
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- deleted 11y ago
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sthatipamala 11y ago
Interesting that software engineering in the Bay Area is the other way around. There are such high salaries being given to bachelor's holders that it is hard to justify the opportunity cost to go to a Master's/PhD.
- an0nym1ty 11y ago
  Can that really be asserted for anything but standard development/architect roles? It seems to me that anyone who wants to get into serious algorithm design (or the big buzz in ML), does need more advanced technical background. If you look at the technical foundations of a BS in the US, it is actually quite shallow from a technical perspective.
  - sthatipamala 11y ago
    You're right that more technical areas (ML, algorithms, maybe even systems) expect more advanced degrees. But there is far more demand for standard development/architect roles and even those roles command a generous salary.
  - Futurebot 11y ago
    This is something that's doubly frustrating for dedicated autodidacts. For some areas, once you start diving into them (and giving up all of your free time in the process to make any progress), you realize just how much more time is necessary to get to the "baseline" / "start of the art / be able to make a useful contribution (and how useful it is to be in an immersive learning environment surrounded by people you can collaborate with.) You can easily hit a wall even with all the books and MOOCs at your disposal, due to having to do all your learning after work when you're tired or on weekends. To have to go into debt in order to work on interesting things is unfortunate; just how many people who could have made interesting contributions in a variety of areas never do so because of that? Studying yourself into web dev and such is eminently possible, but if you want to do, for example, deep learning work at even one-half the Richard Socher-level, you almost surely need to go for an advanced degree. It might be different if you're a superhuman autodidact rather than just a "standard" one, but there are a lot more of the latter (a set that I include myself in) than the former.
japaw 11y ago
The world is getting more complex. Here where I live we have a system with a basic 8-10 years of education from years ~6-16, then apprenticeship school or university. My grandfather had a good standard of income with only apprenticeship (3 years). My father needed apprenticeship + trade school (3 + 2 years) and my generation will probably need a master degree to have the same income level (3 year of preparation + 5 year at the university). I can only wonder how long my grandchildrens education will be.
- tjr 11y ago
  Seymour Papert, in The Children's Machine: [O]n my reckoning, the fraction of human knowledge that is in the curriculum is well under a millionth and diminishing fast. I simply cannot escape from the question: Why that millionth in particular?
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  I'm always a bit skeptical of these claims, given that as far as I can tell, at least three to four years of the K-12 "education" are completely wasted on repeating old material. I don't even think it's a matter of intelligence: we can do a bunch more with the non-gifted children than we even attempt. Hell, I've heard of professional adults not knowing how to use a linear function to estimate basic financial costs from a baseline and a per-unit cost. The intellectual standards we expect from people are appallingly low compared to what they're actually capable of.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    I'm in mensa, and "use a linear function to estimate basic financial costs from a baseline and a per-unit cost" is still foreign to me. I could probably get the outcome you're trying to get at, but those words don't do anything for me but put me on edge.
    - bulatb 11y ago
      In English: If a widget factory costs F and makes a widget for W dollars, how much will it cost to build N widgets? If you have a budget of B dollars and you need to build N widgets, how much can your process cost per widget? If your budget is B and your widgets cost W, how many can you build? y = mx + b ("basic financial costs") = ("per unit cost")x + ("baseline")
1971genocide 11y ago
Richard Hamming ( the person who came up with hamming distance ) has an interesting insight - based on the rate of sub-fields being created in mathematics - he concluded that by the year 2000 there would be 1000 different sub-fields for every mathematical subfield ! Do the people in power expect everyone to know everything ? Knowledge is important - but society will stop working if everyone spends their lifetimes studying. I read it in hacker news a while ago - the amount of new information we are introduced daily in 2015 was equivalent to what humans received in their lifetimes - for most of human history. We need better methods to organize information - ( this is why google has its insane valuation - and no its not a bubble ) It should not take me 20 years to understand mathematics at the level of newton - how am I supposed to understand another 400 years of maths before I am homeless ? Its a difficult question to answer but I think its a question my generation has to find an answer - and fast.
- japaw 11y ago
  However the tools are getting better also. You now "stand on the shoulders of giants". With modern computer based math tools you can, for some problems, be lot more productive then working out everything on paper. You can also just search the internet many types of information and methods instead of having parallel invent it. Making you more effective.
jpau 11y ago
This struck a little too close to home. I'm quite educated, but formally "only" to a bachelor degree from a not-very-prestigious (but good!) university. This lack of signal is causing me problems - not only in career progression, but with my actual job! Stakeholders will occasionally look me up online and express their concern with superiors that I'm not from a Go8 university (Australian Ivy League equivalent) and that my formal education is underwhelming. It's gotten to the point where my employer is considering (and is likely to) enrolling me in the nearest Go8 and giving paid time off from work to attend part time. They'll also pay for the degree. And the weirdest part yet - the subjects closely correspond to my undergraduate subjects. This isn't an exercise in improving myself - this is solely to act as a signal. Under this arrangement, I'm clearly the one that benefits. It costs me little in time, and no money. But the whole thing makes no sense. Surely we can create a better signal.
- gluggymug 11y ago
  Have you just started working or something? As a grad of a Go8 uni and someone who has worked a couple of decades, I wouldn't worry about this signal stuff. If you want to improve yourself you can do study but it doesn't mean as much to employment as you think. Maybe in a government job you have a lot of BS from higher up idiots but not in private industry. A year of relevant full time work is like double the value of a year of study when we are evaluating job applicants IMO.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    Eh. I got my undergrad at a second-tier university and my MSc at a top-tier one. There's definitely been a perceptible difference in how people treat me.
    - gluggymug 11y ago
      Did you work a year full time in a relevant field before you did your masters? I am saying I would rather employee someone who had worked for a year in my field than someone who had done a Masters straight after their Bachelors.
sixtypoundhound 11y ago
Ugh. Stop. Just stop. That young man doesn't need a master's degree, he needs a lesson on how to find a job. Taking people with a proven inability to make real money and adding another 100k of debt on their backs for an equally bogus masters degree is completely irresponsible. Speaking as a hiring manager (for jobs that pay more than $50k/year), most of the real skills that get people hired have aren't part of a degree. - Coding? Most of my guys got their knowledge on the job. I did as well... not saying a CS degree doesn't help, but for many basic IT jobs, you don't need it.... - Sales / client mgmt? Learn by doing - Project management? Go run projects - Soft skills? Go work with people for a while, under the eye of someone knowledgeable. Get coached. Coach others. - Writing? Go write something that gets edited by a pro and published. Feedback is good. - Product knowledge or big blocks of local history? Here's a book, go read it. Sure, go set the standard of requiring a master's degree to get hired. Know what? The smart folks network their way up. Proof. My #3 guy has an MBA My #2 has a high school degree I'm just a BA... Explain this degree thing again?
- namelezz 11y ago
  Do you think this is true for immigrants? I find most will obtain advanced degrees from US universities then apply for local jobs to stay in the country as skilled engineers.
  - horsecaptin 11y ago
    You're talking about people who arrive as students with the intention of staying here and know that the only way to do that is by getting a job visa and eventually a green card. Their lives are much more constrained.
- dinkumthinkum 11y ago
  Noooooo that's not right. Most programmers do not "just learn on the job," that's hard to take seriously. There might be "that one guy" that did I guess, I don't know, but that's so far from reality. All programmers do not need masters degrees and there are many good programmers that do not have a BS/BA, but most of those, that are not just whipping out JS, are extreme autodidacts and represent a small part of the population. Also an MS in CS is not going to put you 100K in debt, in most cases you will have a tuition waiver and a small stipend in the US (TAship). I think for many an MS in CS would be beneficial but sure it's not necessary .... with more and more JS "monkey" type jobs, it may become an expectation for non Anders Hejlsberg autodidacts that want to make > 100K (though yes this depends on cost of living, but I'm just comparing to your number).

22 points by Futurebot 11y ago

tzs 11y ago

Futurama has noted the rising academic bar. From Season 1, Episode 11, "Mars University": Fry: Good old Coney Island College! Go, Whitefish! Leela: Don't take this the wrong way, Fry, but you don't seem like the educated type. Fry: Oh, yeah? [He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket with "Notice of Failure to Graduate" written on it. The CICC logo is a Ferris wheel.] Read it and weep. I'm a certified college dropout. Leela: Please! Everyone knows 20th century colleges were basically expensive daycare centres. Farnsworth: That's true. By current academic standards, you're merely a high school dropout. Fry: What? That's not fair. I deserve the same respect any other college dropout gets. By God, I'm gonna enroll here at Mars University and drop out all over again! Leela: You won't last two weeks. Fry: Aww, thanks for believing in me. http://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:Mars_University http://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:Mars_University

RUG3Y 11y ago
I remember that episode well! Such a funny show.
- mortenjorck 11y ago
  If you will indulge a classic HN tangential thought, this has me suddenly wondering about the sociological phenomenon of mentally reading things in a voice you associate with the text. There's something about the way Futurama is written and produced that seems to make it a particularly potent example (you've probably seen the Farnsworth "now you're reading this in my voice" meme), and this transrcipt excerpt works particularly well. I wonder why that is?
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    I just tried reading that in your voice, but it didn't work out so well...
  - theoh 11y ago
    I'm prepared to entertain the possibility that it's due to some kind of dynamics of a collective unconscious that is shared across "individuals". Not very philosophically correct by materialist standards but impossible to rule out!
  - vorg 11y ago
    A few times I've read out a text aloud, then listened to the recording and it's been different. Remember that movie audition scene in the "Mulholland Drive" movie? Sometimes a single comma or exclamation mark in the written text can change that "inner voice" for a whole dialog!
  - yaw 11y ago
    Character design done well? The visual design was done in a way to make these characters very distinctive & memorable, possibly the same applies to the auditory aspects? Matt Groening: The secret of designing cartoon characters — and I’m giving away this secret now to all of you out there — is: you make a character that you can tell who it is in silhouette. I learned this from watching Mickey Mouse as a kid. You can tell Mickey Mouse from a mile away…those two big ears. Same thing with Popeye, same thing with Batman. And so, if you look at the Simpsons, they’re all identifiable in silhouette. Bart with the picket fence hair, Marge with the beehive, and Homer with the two little hairs, and all the rest. So…I think about hair quite a lot. Source: http://austinkleon.com/2007/08/28/silhouettes-and-profiles/ http://austinkleon.com/2007/08/28/silhouettes-and-profiles/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

sthatipamala 11y ago

Interesting that software engineering in the Bay Area is the other way around. There are such high salaries being given to bachelor's holders that it is hard to justify the opportunity cost to go to a Master's/PhD.

an0nym1ty 11y ago
Can that really be asserted for anything but standard development/architect roles? It seems to me that anyone who wants to get into serious algorithm design (or the big buzz in ML), does need more advanced technical background. If you look at the technical foundations of a BS in the US, it is actually quite shallow from a technical perspective.
- sthatipamala 11y ago
  You're right that more technical areas (ML, algorithms, maybe even systems) expect more advanced degrees. But there is far more demand for standard development/architect roles and even those roles command a generous salary.
- Futurebot 11y ago
  This is something that's doubly frustrating for dedicated autodidacts. For some areas, once you start diving into them (and giving up all of your free time in the process to make any progress), you realize just how much more time is necessary to get to the "baseline" / "start of the art / be able to make a useful contribution (and how useful it is to be in an immersive learning environment surrounded by people you can collaborate with.) You can easily hit a wall even with all the books and MOOCs at your disposal, due to having to do all your learning after work when you're tired or on weekends. To have to go into debt in order to work on interesting things is unfortunate; just how many people who could have made interesting contributions in a variety of areas never do so because of that? Studying yourself into web dev and such is eminently possible, but if you want to do, for example, deep learning work at even one-half the Richard Socher-level, you almost surely need to go for an advanced degree. It might be different if you're a superhuman autodidact rather than just a "standard" one, but there are a lot more of the latter (a set that I include myself in) than the former.

japaw 11y ago

The world is getting more complex. Here where I live we have a system with a basic 8-10 years of education from years ~6-16, then apprenticeship school or university. My grandfather had a good standard of income with only apprenticeship (3 years). My father needed apprenticeship + trade school (3 + 2 years) and my generation will probably need a master degree to have the same income level (3 year of preparation + 5 year at the university). I can only wonder how long my grandchildrens education will be.

tjr 11y ago
Seymour Papert, in The Children's Machine: [O]n my reckoning, the fraction of human knowledge that is in the curriculum is well under a millionth and diminishing fast. I simply cannot escape from the question: Why that millionth in particular?
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
I'm always a bit skeptical of these claims, given that as far as I can tell, at least three to four years of the K-12 "education" are completely wasted on repeating old material. I don't even think it's a matter of intelligence: we can do a bunch more with the non-gifted children than we even attempt. Hell, I've heard of professional adults not knowing how to use a linear function to estimate basic financial costs from a baseline and a per-unit cost. The intellectual standards we expect from people are appallingly low compared to what they're actually capable of.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  I'm in mensa, and "use a linear function to estimate basic financial costs from a baseline and a per-unit cost" is still foreign to me. I could probably get the outcome you're trying to get at, but those words don't do anything for me but put me on edge.
  - bulatb 11y ago
    In English: If a widget factory costs F and makes a widget for W dollars, how much will it cost to build N widgets? If you have a budget of B dollars and you need to build N widgets, how much can your process cost per widget? If your budget is B and your widgets cost W, how many can you build? y = mx + b ("basic financial costs") = ("per unit cost")x + ("baseline")

1971genocide 11y ago

Richard Hamming ( the person who came up with hamming distance ) has an interesting insight - based on the rate of sub-fields being created in mathematics - he concluded that by the year 2000 there would be 1000 different sub-fields for every mathematical subfield ! Do the people in power expect everyone to know everything ? Knowledge is important - but society will stop working if everyone spends their lifetimes studying. I read it in hacker news a while ago - the amount of new information we are introduced daily in 2015 was equivalent to what humans received in their lifetimes - for most of human history. We need better methods to organize information - ( this is why google has its insane valuation - and no its not a bubble ) It should not take me 20 years to understand mathematics at the level of newton - how am I supposed to understand another 400 years of maths before I am homeless ? Its a difficult question to answer but I think its a question my generation has to find an answer - and fast.

japaw 11y ago
However the tools are getting better also. You now "stand on the shoulders of giants". With modern computer based math tools you can, for some problems, be lot more productive then working out everything on paper. You can also just search the internet many types of information and methods instead of having parallel invent it. Making you more effective.

jpau 11y ago

This struck a little too close to home. I'm quite educated, but formally "only" to a bachelor degree from a not-very-prestigious (but good!) university. This lack of signal is causing me problems - not only in career progression, but with my actual job! Stakeholders will occasionally look me up online and express their concern with superiors that I'm not from a Go8 university (Australian Ivy League equivalent) and that my formal education is underwhelming. It's gotten to the point where my employer is considering (and is likely to) enrolling me in the nearest Go8 and giving paid time off from work to attend part time. They'll also pay for the degree. And the weirdest part yet - the subjects closely correspond to my undergraduate subjects. This isn't an exercise in improving myself - this is solely to act as a signal. Under this arrangement, I'm clearly the one that benefits. It costs me little in time, and no money. But the whole thing makes no sense. Surely we can create a better signal.

gluggymug 11y ago
Have you just started working or something? As a grad of a Go8 uni and someone who has worked a couple of decades, I wouldn't worry about this signal stuff. If you want to improve yourself you can do study but it doesn't mean as much to employment as you think. Maybe in a government job you have a lot of BS from higher up idiots but not in private industry. A year of relevant full time work is like double the value of a year of study when we are evaluating job applicants IMO.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Eh. I got my undergrad at a second-tier university and my MSc at a top-tier one. There's definitely been a perceptible difference in how people treat me.
  - gluggymug 11y ago
    Did you work a year full time in a relevant field before you did your masters? I am saying I would rather employee someone who had worked for a year in my field than someone who had done a Masters straight after their Bachelors.

sixtypoundhound 11y ago

Ugh. Stop. Just stop. That young man doesn't need a master's degree, he needs a lesson on how to find a job. Taking people with a proven inability to make real money and adding another 100k of debt on their backs for an equally bogus masters degree is completely irresponsible. Speaking as a hiring manager (for jobs that pay more than $50k/year), most of the real skills that get people hired have aren't part of a degree. - Coding? Most of my guys got their knowledge on the job. I did as well... not saying a CS degree doesn't help, but for many basic IT jobs, you don't need it.... - Sales / client mgmt? Learn by doing - Project management? Go run projects - Soft skills? Go work with people for a while, under the eye of someone knowledgeable. Get coached. Coach others. - Writing? Go write something that gets edited by a pro and published. Feedback is good. - Product knowledge or big blocks of local history? Here's a book, go read it. Sure, go set the standard of requiring a master's degree to get hired. Know what? The smart folks network their way up. Proof. My #3 guy has an MBA My #2 has a high school degree I'm just a BA... Explain this degree thing again?

namelezz 11y ago
Do you think this is true for immigrants? I find most will obtain advanced degrees from US universities then apply for local jobs to stay in the country as skilled engineers.
- horsecaptin 11y ago
  You're talking about people who arrive as students with the intention of staying here and know that the only way to do that is by getting a job visa and eventually a green card. Their lives are much more constrained.
dinkumthinkum 11y ago
Noooooo that's not right. Most programmers do not "just learn on the job," that's hard to take seriously. There might be "that one guy" that did I guess, I don't know, but that's so far from reality. All programmers do not need masters degrees and there are many good programmers that do not have a BS/BA, but most of those, that are not just whipping out JS, are extreme autodidacts and represent a small part of the population. Also an MS in CS is not going to put you 100K in debt, in most cases you will have a tuition waiver and a small stipend in the US (TAship). I think for many an MS in CS would be beneficial but sure it's not necessary .... with more and more JS "monkey" type jobs, it may become an expectation for non Anders Hejlsberg autodidacts that want to make > 100K (though yes this depends on cost of living, but I'm just comparing to your number).