Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!agate!bizet.Berkeley.EDU!matloff
From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: The need for an advanced degree
Message-ID: <18730@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 4 Jan 89 22:33:42 GMT
References: <8901041445.AA20933@decwrl.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
Organization: EECS, UC Davis
Lines: 48

In article <8901041445.AA20933@decwrl.dec.com> ciarfella@levers.dec.com (Paul Ciarfella) writes:

>	I've been thinking about going back to graduate school full-time
>for a master's degree in computer science (with an emphasis on software 
>engineering and distributed systems).  I cannot make a firm decision on 
>whether or not to go back because I'm not sure what the advantages of a
>master's degree are.

>	What advantages do 2 years in grad school have over 2 years in
>industry?

My first comment is that it's like the old joke about a person of
ordinary financial means who sees a wealthy guy on a yacht, and asks
how much it costs.  The rich guy says, "If you have to ask the price, 
then you can't afford it."  :-)   I do feel that if someone has to ask 
about the benefits of grad school, then they are probably not the type 
of person who would, upon completion of grad school, feel that it was 
"worth it."

But I will go ahead and answer anyway.  My wife works in the Silicon
Valley, and I used to work there before my present faculty position, and 
among our acquaintances there, it does seem that many employers are 
beginning to express strong preference for people with graduate degrees, 
both in hiring and in the amount of responsibility given to an employee 
after he/she is hired.  I think that this is largely due to two factors:

   1.  As I have mentioned before, typical undergrad CS programs
       do not teach "practical" knowledge about computer systems.
       E.g. a student can come out of an Operating Systems course
       and not know the term "bootloader," and come out of a course 
       in Programming Languages and Compilers and not know the
       difference between compiled and interpreted code.  By 
       contrast, a student who did some good systems-development
       research as part of an M.S. thesis will really know this
       stuff.

   2.  As I have also mentioned before, a very large number of
       technical people in the Silicon Valley are former foreign 
       students whom their employer has sponsored for U.S. immigration.  
       The Immigration and Naturalization Service generally insists 
       that such an employee have at least a Master's degree.  Thus 
       all these foreign-born engineers do have M.S. degrees or higher, 
       and thus employers have grown accustomed to hiring people
       with such degrees.

Comments?

    Norm