Sarah Harte: Is it worth doing a masters straight after a degree? Not according to employers
In the late 1980’s, billionaire Chuck Feeney responded to Ireland's chronic underfunding of our third-level sector by pumping money into Irish universities.
Chuck Feeney, the Irish-American philanthropist died on Monday. A visionary man, he made a fortune and gave it away transforming Higher Education in Ireland by investing hundreds of millions in the sector.
He came from a modest background and went to college with the help of the GI Bill. This left him with a passionate belief in education which he saw as “an essential accelerator for individuals and societies.”
One suspects that Tánaiste Micheál Martin might agree. He recently suggested shortening the teacher training by a year because of a dire shortage of teachers. The nine-month H-Dip became a two-year educational Masters to raise teaching standards in schools. But it has resulted in a sharp drop in applications and Micheál Martin contends that it has locked out lower-income students.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) welcomed his comments but Education Minister Norma Foley and academics disagree saying the lengthier course has raised standards. The competing viewpoints suggest a wider debate about the purpose of education, specifically postgraduate degrees.
We value education. Until 1967 when FF Minister for Education Donogh O’Malley (another visionary) introduced universal secondary education many people left school at 14 but since then, it’s fair to say we ran with the ball.
According to last year’s CSO figures, we have one of the lowest rates of school leavers in the EU with 96% of Irish students attaining at least a higher secondary level of education, ranking us joint second with Greece among EU member states.
We have the joint second-highest level of third-level educational attainment at 62% along with Cyprus, marginally behind Luxembourg. This represents a big leap since in 1991 only 13.6% of the population had a degree.
The Higher Education Authority’s (HEA) figures last year show that in 2021 almost one in five students graduated with a Taught Masters. Another HEA study estimates that about 35% of Irish undergraduates go on to study at postgraduate level.
But is college education about utility, with degrees being a gateway to economic and social mobility and a better future? Or is it essential for the individual development of the student, assisting them to understand the issues that arise in society, generating more civically engaged, rounded students?
The question isn’t binary, it’s both although in Ireland, at second level we veer towards the utility end of the spectrum. The arms race approach to education from which a vastly lucrative grinds industry profits culminates in the Armageddon of the Leaving Certificate.
At third level, the reasons students go to college are probably a mixed bag. Currently, in the USA the narrow, grim idea that universities and colleges should function as assembly lines for industry and business where content is designed solely to make graduates useful to employers or to power the economy is gaining traction. Consequently, many liberal arts programmes are under attack with language, philosophy and literature programmes being curtailed or even closed.
Similarly in the UK, Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently vowed to crack down on “rip-off” university degrees with poor career prospects leading to critics accusing him of attacking arts and humanities degrees.
Seeing education as not having an abstract value beyond a financial one is deeply philistine but post-graduate degrees represent a significant financial commitment. So, it’s reasonable to run the slide ruler over courses to see how much they cost, what their content is, and whose needs they serve and to consider graduate outcomes as Micheál Martin has done.
Also, at the post-graduate stage, most students apart from those who wish to remain in academia are building their human capital.
And you wonder if there might be another aspect to the decision to lengthen the teaching qualification. The third-level sector has long been underfunded in Ireland. In the late 1980’s, Chuck Feeney visiting Ireland responded to this chronic underfunding by pumping money into Irish universities.
Since the 2008 crash funding has never recovered. Irish universities have effectively been forced to act as semi-privatized businesses looking for sources of income to shore up the bottom line with post-graduate courses and foreign students being money-spinners.
Mastersportal.com suggests there are 1,296 masters programmes in Ireland. The average cost of a masters in Ireland seems to be anywhere from between €4,000 to €12,000 and is an expense borne not solely by students but often by their families.
If you want to be a teacher you have no option but to undertake the masters. But let’s say you want to work for a company, do you need one? A line that’s often peddled is that primary degrees have declined in status and that a masters degree is now necessary, but is that true or are students press-ganged into doing them for fear of being left behind?
Various factors, such as the particular sector a graduate enters and the state of the economy at a given time, impact earning power but a postgraduate degree does suggest a boost in earnings.
The HEA Graduates Outcomes Survey showed that 59% of taught postgraduates earned more than €35,000 per annum compared to 33.2% of undergraduates with an Honours degree. One further European statistic from 2022 indicates that Irish graduates earn 21% more if they have a masters degree or greater qualification.
Another benefit of a postgraduate qualification often cited is that it leads to greater long-term job security. However, in a fast-moving global jobs market this proposition is arguably somewhat qualified when the idea of long-term has taken on a different meaning.
Having undertaken a masters where the content was shockingly thin (this is not to suggest that all masters programmes are but it’s worth researching them properly) when my offspring edged towards the end of a basic degree, I began to canvass people in senior positions in various fields (including banking, tech, and management consulting) for their opinion.
The question I asked was: Should a graduate undertake a masters directly after their degree or work first possibly returning to do a masters at a later stage, if necessary?
The answer was unanimously that a graduate should work first. The student would have a better idea of what to study. And the learning experience would be richer thanks to the cumulative knowledge gained from work. In other words, it wouldn’t simply be a box-ticking exercise. Also, a company might fund or partially fund an employee’s studies if they consider the employee’s improved human capital might benefit the company.
Postgraduate degrees are generally considered necessary to be eligible for upper-management positions and to be promoted but the conclusion I drew was that they may not be as strong a deciding factor for employers at the application or early career stage as is sometimes believed. A graduate can consider working before pursuing a postgraduate degree.
As a college education becomes harder to fund, particularly with increased accommodation costs, it’s likely that more students particularly at the postgraduate stage will want to know whether they’re getting a return on their investment. While this metric for success may be offensive to educationalists, it’s probably the biting reality for a growing number of students.
Where the teaching qualification is concerned, it will be interesting to see, which point of view wins out, Micheál Martin’s or his Education Minister’s.
