Urban Ranger said:
This is definitely not true for many situations, i.e. those graduate degrees that require independent research.
-Apoptosis
Yea, but it varies from university to university. In some places, a master’s degree requires research (thesis). In others that is not necessary.
All doctorate programs require research of some sort, though.
My master’s certainly required independent research, sung a foreign language no less. In fact, the research part of the degree ended up taking me longer than the rest of it put together. And believe me, even those who had related undergrad degrees were scrambling plenty in the process of learning new stuff. The amount and depth of work required for grad courses was orders of magnitude more hardcore than for my undergrad degree.
I have heard this is true of Journalism - a friend of mine who had a BS in Journalism was convinced my pursuit of an MS in MechEng was “silly” because in his Journalism program, you took the same classes as you did for the BS, just had different assignments. Similar to an honors program.
He never understood that some degrees are simply several orders of magnitude more difficult than others. Nothing I took for my Masters in MechEng was a repeat course.
Doctoral is not the “way to go” if you want to go into most corporate/business settings. An MS in your field, coupled with an MBA, will take you much further in most (but not all) fields, and it can take a lot less time too. And at many technology companies, an MS gets hired in at the same, exact rate as a PhD, and for the same position. Unless the PhD is from India or Europe, in which case they are often hired in at the Bachelor’s level (see numerous other threads comparing and contrasting relative coursework between continents for more details).
Una, who has personally hired PhDs to work under her.
Correct that to say that in engineering, out of research, me and the few peers I know who hire engineers at related companies treat a non-US MS as a BS, and a non-US PhD as an MS. But since most of our positions have the MS as the “terminal degree”, sometimes things get shifted a bit, and a non-US PhD qualifies for a BS position at times, same as a non-US MS. Typically it will depend on the “research” experience, nature of degree, country, and any work experience involved.
Masters in Engineering chiming in here - I was required to have as BS in engineering from an accredited university to even apply for the masters program.
Two notes, originating from the same insecurity: lawyers feeling like they don’t get the same respect as doctors. Until the 1960s, the standard law degree was the LL.B. - bachelor of laws. It was essentially rebranded as the J.D. to make it look equivalent to the M.D. I can attest it’s a complete joke - difficult as it was, in no way was what I went through even remotely equivalent to what baby M.D.s must do.
Around the same time, “pre-law” curricula started to appear, again to make law look like it requires preparation similar to medicine. It doesn’t. I personally don’t know a single person who had “pre-law” as a major - and I’m not sure many schools even offer it anymore, because frankly the whole idea was bull. What you need for law school is the ability to reason and solve problems - it really doesn’t matter what discipline. I knew lots of English, history, philosophy and <cough> political science* majors - but also engineering, biology and math. The science types had a bit more adjustment to make at first, but did at least as well as humanities majors. And they often had a leg up on admissions because there’s such an enormous need for lawyers who understand tech issues.
*My own major - useless mishmash occupying the low-rent districts of history, philosophy and statistics. It’s as close to pre-law as anything, considering that there’s pretty much no other gainful employment for which it’s remotely useful.
I got a Master’s degree ten years ago and still no one calls me Master. 
I want my money back!
OMG. OMG! OMG!!
My Master’s taught so much new material my brain exploded. (Math btw)
Anthracite said
This is definitely not true for most biotechnology companies. For the most part, people with an MSc are assigned to carry out experiments given to them by PhDs. Not much thinking is required, and they don’t get paid near as much as the docs. If you want to go anywhere in the industrial sector in biosciences, get a PhD.
-Apoptosis
I agree in terms of biotech. My apologies for only thinking of the “less squishy” tech branches.
Urban planning is a multiciciplinary field; it incorporates elements of architecture, geography, sociology, and economics. In my M.UP class, very few students actually had an undergraduate degree in urban planning
I have a masters degree in Architecture–undergrad in Pyschology. In my grad school no one had a Bachelors of Architecture that I recall–in fact it was discouraged. But we had a range of people with Political Science to Geology and even an English Honors student. So it really depends upon the program and the philosophy of the Graduate program.