I have a MS in computer science that I got at UC Berkeley. I had to take a lot of classes and write a thesis. Primarily, the thesis involved the design and impl

I have a MS in computer science that I got at UC Berkeley. I had to take a lot of classes and write a thesis. Primarily, the thesis involved the design and implementation of something interesting (at the time, at least), and then I wrote about what it was, how it worked, and so on. I also got a PhD in science education at UCB, and that required writing a research proposal, carrying out a six-month classroom intervention, and a lot of other work on both sides of the research (design and framing the work, analyzing the data). The amount of work was very different. The number of classes was not too different - I had about the same number of credits. All that said, my experience in academia (and out) has taught me that a degree is only one indicator among many. I've had doors open to me because of my degree, advisors' connections, and where my degree was granted, some doors I did not particularly deserve, but the degree itself only shows that I can do a certain kind of work when I want to. I've met plenty of other people who can do the same kind of work who don't have the same kind of (or any) degree. So, it feels like one of those 'neither necessary nor sufficient' sorts of things.