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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: The need for an advanced degree
Message-ID: <18960@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 Jan 89 02:57:33 GMT
References: <8901101352.AA22246@decwrl.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
Organization: EECS, UC Davis
Lines: 58

In article <8901101352.AA22246@decwrl.dec.com> ciarfella@levers.dec.com (Paul Ciarfella) writes:

>	To the educators out there ...

>	Have you found any differences between working with a masters
>	candidate who has been in industry, ie., has work experience,
>	and a candidate who is going straight from BS to MS?

Excellent set of questions, but may I split things into 3 groups instead
of 2?  There should be a separate category for foreign students, mainly 
due to the foreign MSCS students' goal to do well enough in grad school 
to be able to attract an employer to hire them and sponsor them for U.S. 
immigration.

Let's use this notation:

   Group A:  Domestic, straight from BS to MS.

   Group B:  Domestic, work in industry before MS.

   Group C:  Foreign students.

Before going on, I should insert a disclaimer that I am just talking
about tendencies below, and don't mean to imply that every single
student is like this.

>	Which candidates work harder?  

I think that the Group C students work harder than Groups A and B 
(which is NOT meant to imply that I don't think the domestic students 
are working hard ENOUGH).  The other two groups work equally hard (as
each other), for different reasons:  Group A people tend to still be 
hung up on the undergraduate concept of grades being very important, 
while Group B work hard because they have made a conscious decision 
to drastically change their lives (and undergo financial sacrifice) 
to come back to school, and so they really make their time "count."

>	Which seem to understand and grasp their work better?

In my opinion, after adjusting for everything else (grades, GRE scores),
Group B is MUCH better.  They really THINK much more about the material
and ****its implications****, again, as opposed to just doing well in
terms of grades.

>	Which are more cooperative, ie., who is the better team player
>	when working on group projects?

I really haven't observed much difference between the 3 groups in this 
aspect.

>	Who would you rather teach?  Why?

For a systems course, I'd much rather teach Group B, and take them on
as research students.  For a theoretical course, I'd choose Group C;
Group A seems less interested in theory, and Group B tends to have
forgotten its advanced math.

   Norm