Exploring the Alternative of Professional Master's Programs
Hans M. Bozler
Like many faculty members in primarily Ph.D. oriented science departments,
we became concerned by the diminished interest in physics graduate
programs from U.S. trained undergraduates. While our graduate programs
were filled by highly qualified students from abroad providing much
needed diversity, there was also a message that we were not providing
educational opportunities that were highly valued by students graduating
from our own colleges and universities. The reasons for the flight
of domestic graduate students are many and complex. They include better
opportunities and more rapid access to professional careers in non-science
graduate programs; higher salaries paid in professional careers including
medicine (MD), law (LLD), and business administration (MBA), and, at
least until recently, the attraction of careers in information technology.
Charged with the desire to attract more and better-qualified graduate
students drawn primarily from colleges and universities within the
U.S., we started looking at the issues that related to perceived values
of graduate education. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
we initiated a series of experimental professional master's degree
programs with the intention of providing a high value alternative to
the traditional Ph.D.: the Professional Master's in Physics for Business
Applications, Computational Biology, Computational Linguistics, and
Environmental Risk Assessment. These programs are intended to be self-supporting,
interdisciplinary alternatives to the Ph.D. All of the University of
Southern California professional master's programs require substantially
more coursework than traditional master's degrees in the sciences.
In addition to the coursework, these programs include internships and
participation from industry. All of these programs develop skills in
the areas of computation, modeling, and problem solving.
The vision of our new programs is to provide an interdisciplinary
education that in turn focuses on potential careers and provides a
fast track to those careers. Many other universities have also started
professional master's degree programs. A more complete description
of the vision for professional master's degrees and information about
universities that have initiated these programs is available on the
web site www.sciencemasters.com.
Initiating new graduate programs involves a variety of challenges.
They include challenges from getting the right students to motivating
employers. Additional challenges come from university administrations,
competing schools within the university, and from our own colleagues.
Some of these are due to the culture and traditions of academics and
employers the very thing we would seek to change. Below, I will focus
on our experiences with the physics program.
In our planning process for the Physics for Business Applications
program, we proceeded to ask two constituencies about physics graduate
programs. The first involved a lengthy questionnaire to our alumni
(at all levels). This questionnaire drew a high level of response and
the message was pretty clear. There was a lot of interest and enthusiasm
for programs that combined physics skills with aspects of business
and other professional but non-traditional skills. In fact, many of
our alumni had already gone that route in an ad hoc fashion
in order to enhance their own careers by going back to school in one
or more professional areas.
The second constituency has been a group of industry contacts. There
the message has been less clear. Their focus was more on industries'
need for immediate job skills, rather than on enhancing the careers
of the students. In fact one research division head in a large technology
corporation referred to his employee's promotion to a management position
as "going over to the dark side." Although it seemed surprising at
first, there is a natural tension between academics whose primary interest
should be the successful careers of their graduates, and traditional
industry employers whose success does not particularly depend on enhancing
the career of their employees, but rather their skills and productivity
in doing their current job.
The program design for the USC Professional Master's in Physics for
Business Applications called for a rigorous basic training in physics
plus training in our business school (the Marshal School of Business)
as well as an internship with the requirement of having the students
write and defend a report based on the internship. Likewise, the other
USC programs emphasize combinations of disciplinary training and practical
skills. For the Sloan funded programs at USC, the total number of professional
master's students taken in the last three years is close to 60, with
the Professional Master's in Computational Molecular Biology being
the most successful in attracting students. It has averaged about 12
new students per year. The university mandates that the majority of
students provide their own support and that they must be capable of
competing with our Ph.D. students. These conditions greatly limit the
number of students. In Physics for Business Applications we have taken
seven students, from which three have graduated and four are in progress
-- a smaller number than we anticipated, but nevertheless they provide
quite a bit of insight on how such programs can operate.
Initiating a new type of degree program involves changing culture,
perceptions and expectations both within the academic community and
externally with future students and employers. The culture issues start
with the rather checkered history of master's degree programs. Most
science departments and their associated schools are not in general
comfortable with these programs because they have primarily used master's
degrees as a means of "out-placing" Ph.D. students who either cannot
or do not wish to complete their degree. National ratings of graduate
programs do not consider anything but the Ph.D. programs. Master's
students are not major contributors to the research in their departments.
Most importantly master's students do not become faculty at universities.
Potential employers need to be convinced that carefully trained professional
master's students are excellent candidates for positions in business
and industry. In many cases, traditional employers have been deluged
with applications from Ph.D.'s even though their positions do not require
the specific training that the Ph.D. program adds. We hear comments,
roughly paraphrased, like: "The value of the Ph.D. is that we know
that the candidate is smart." Several of our business and industry
contacts pointed out that the greatest interest in graduates from professional
master's programs would come from smaller, more entrepreneurial employers
who expect their employees to perform a wide range of tasks. This prediction
appears to be quite correct. In analogy to MBA's being partial to hiring
more MBA's, a tradition of hiring professional master's students in
the sciences needs to come from successful placements of those students a
long process.
Even in an academic setting, patience with new programs can run short.
Administration goals can change more rapidly than programs. Old perceptions
of master's programs linger, while there remain suspicions that master's
programs detract from Ph.D. programs in some sort of "zero sum" manner.
Financial aid for students who would otherwise be fully paid and receive
full tuition support by going into a competing Ph.D. program, is a
particularly difficult issue. In the physics community, students are
frequently advised to start a Ph.D. program even though their academic
record indicates a small chance for completion.
The physics departments should consider restructuring graduate programs
to make them more reflective of the talents and job prospects of their
students by:
- substantially reducing the number of students in Ph.D. programs;
- creating really high quality masters' programs;
- getting administrators to understand that by supporting high quality
master's programs they can actually improve their Ph.D. programs;
- and finally, encouraging their undergraduate students to take a
look at the new options.
Relevant web sites:
www.sciencemasters.com
http://physics.usc.edu
www.usc.edu/dept/sloanweb
Hans Bozler is Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics
and Astronomy at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
CA 90089-0484. He can be reached at hbozler@usc.edu
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