In the United States and throughout the world, an important debate is taking place regarding the costs and benefits of higher education. In the post-Great Recession era, issues such as employability, return on investment, and student debt levels have come to the fore. A very recent analysis published by the New America Foundation, “The Graduate Student Debt Review,” calls attention to growing levels of student debt incurred in the pursuit of graduate degrees, and calls into question both public funding for and the utility of master’s degrees. Although this analysis raises some important points, to paint all graduate education with a negative brush ignores the growing demand for and value of master’s degree-educated professionals in the economy.
Until the 1970’s, master’s degrees were largely a consolation prize for students pursuing doctoral degrees. However, in the ensuing decades, the master’s degree emerged as a key professional credential preferred by employers – first with the explosive growth of the MBA as a key credential in business, and later through the acceptance of professional master’s degrees in domains such as engineering, healthcare, and science. Today, the majority of master’s degrees in the U.S. are awarded not in traditional fields associated with the idyllic “grad school” notion of decades past (such as arts and the humanities) – but in professional or technical disciplines such as business, education, computer science, and engineering.
Increasingly, employers value the problem solving, critical thinking, and technical skills that graduate-level education provides. According to job market information system firms that index and analyze millions of job openings such as Burning Glass Technologies, more than 20% of open positions in the U.S. economy today prefer or require graduate-level education – while only about 11% of the population holds an advanced degree. Colleges and universities have responded to these demands through the creation of new industry-oriented programs and new delivery modes. While the education innovation movement is currently preoccupied with free, massively open online courses, the real innovation is occurring in master’s programs that are grounded in the professional workplace and can be pursued in executive, online, or hybrid formats – models that by increasing access to graduate-level programming, and in turn, growing the human capital and productive capacity of the workforce.
Economists and other scholars have documented substantial salary premiums, economic opportunities, and benefits for master’s degree study – and these human capital benefits are only increasing. A 2012 analysis by the Federal Reserve found that virtually all of the growth in the wage premium attributable to college education over the last decade was due to advanced degrees, with holders of advanced degrees currently earning a 30% wage premium on average over those with only a bachelor’s degree. And, according to 2013 data from the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for individuals holding a master’s degree was only 3.4% in 2013, compared to 6.1% for all workers. Given the knowledge orientation and complex, global nature of today’s economy, employers are very often demanding the master’s degree for many of their fastest growing professional and leadership roles.
Does the U.S. or world economy need substantially more graduates with master’s degrees in English Literature or Archaeology? Probably not – to take nothing away from these scholarly pursuits. Students are voting with their feet and the market is responding: according to data from the Council of Graduate Schools, master’s enrollment in these types of domains has declined for a number of years, while enrollment in fields such as computer science, health sciences, and engineering has continued to grow. Even the general M.B.A. degree is not immune to shifting market trends. The current trend among students, employers, and business schools is to prefer highly specialized master’s programs such as the M.S. in Finance or Supply Chain Management that create specialists with technical acumen rather than generalists.
Sean Gallagher is Chief Strategy Officer at Northeastern University in Boston.
Source: www.forbes.com
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