I'm sure the reasons for this trend are incredibly complex, but I suspect that undergraduate degrees are increasingly failing to accurately signal competence, pushing those wishing to distinguish themselves to pursue graduate studies.
So many factors are leading to increased number of undergraduate degrees... not limited to degree mills, grade inflation, standardized testing, and availability of virtually everything in undergrad curriculum available for "reference" online. This simultaneously increases the number of undergraduate degrees while decreasing the average quality. Institutions that rely on the formerly strong "has a degree" signal are finding that the signal is weakening. Undergraduates now failing to signal are somewhat forced to pursue more education.
I see the same thing happening with masters degrees. Universities seem to increasingly offer combined BS and MS programs. I don't believe strong MS students are formed by tacking on just an extra year to a BS program.
Finally, another observation on STEM fields: due to the funding situation and glut of PhD's it appears to be incredibly difficult to build a solid STEM career without a PhD. Undergrads in certain STEM areas try to leave university only to find out that they actually need more credentials to meaningfully work in the field they just spent 4 years studying for.
Your point about PhDs is spot on. I’m increasingly seeing job postings with PhD asks for software and ent architecture roles that don’t seem to articulate the need for the PhD. Anecdotally it seems PhDs are also getting dragged into the credential race.
Hiring someone who's spent ten years in academia to design the architecture of real-world systems sounds like a very reliable way of getting terrible architectures. What are they smoking, are people with actual experience just way too expensive?
PhDs seem to me to be for quantifiable knowledge. They imbue highly specialised skills and imply a huge understanding of technical literature. But they structurally can't imbue skills that are nebulous. They can only teach things that are either consensus, or easy to evaluate academically.
You're confusing a Ph.D with an extension of a BS.
A Ph.D requires independent creation of new knowledge, and being able to go deep in a field. That's neither consensus, nor easy to evaluate academically. It's far more nebulous than most industry work. In many cases, they also require deep algorithmic and mathematical maturity.
A freshly-brewed Ph.D isn't going to be an expert in the mechanics of software engineering (e.g. setting up CI/CD, microservices, etc.), but will outclass most people with BS degrees in other areas. 5-10 years down-the-line, they will pick up the applied skills, while the BS won't pick up the theoretical skills.
Ph.D is also a signalling mechanisms: They were admitted, and they finished.
I'm not arguing for or against Ph.Ds, but your stereotypes seem grounded in, well, nothing. Ph.Ds have their problems, but those ain't them.
The knowledge created by a PhD by definition has to be evaluated academically. If it can't be evaluated by peers, it can't be published.
I don't mean this in a superficial sense, I mean: there's no way for a PhD to be certified for investigating the kind of knowledge that's difficult to verify in that context. They can investigate it, but the system is only allowed to give them a qualification for academically verifiable results. It cannot verify esoteric knowledge (unless it can use consensus as a proxy).
Sure, they'll pick that stuff up with experience. We might be talking past each other. I read it as: they're hiring graduates. That might not be what OP meant.
The evaluation process is quite sophisticated, with thesis committees, talks, reviews, etc.
That's much more sophisticated than for software engineers. I'm not trying to imply SEs are evaluated by sprint planning points and velocity, but a lot of that comes down to sprint planning points and velocity. Beyond that, you have performance reviews, and I've never been in a company which did that well.
Code reviews are nice. But even a lot of that is pattern matching sanity checks, little better than a lint program, when a team is rushed.
I mean, do Ph.Ds know how to architect maintainable code? Perhaps not. Have they been encultured in a culture which rewards cowboy individualistic douchebags? Without a doubt. Are they arrogantly convinced of their own superiority? For the first few years after graduating, at least from the "better" schools, more likely than not, yes.
But I think your comments about lacking esoteric knowledge are completely off-base. Ph.Ds thrive on esoteric knowledge.
Maybe that will at least encourage some US universities to offer shorter PhDs like in Europe, where one year masters degree followed by two years PhD for a total of three years postgraduate isn't uncommon.
In Europe it is far more common to have 1.5-2 year masters degrees (half a year saved by overloading) followed by a 3-4 year PhD. It is almost a universal truth that a PhD shouldn't take less than 3 years unless there are exceptional circumstances.
I honestly can't believe any credible university is turning bachelor degree students into doctors within 3 years. Would love to see an example.
I have never heard of 2 year phds anywhere in Europe and I'm in European academia, working a lot in European projects so I have quite a bit of exposure to academic cultures across the continent. Nominal time is 4 years, 3 years is already something special. And a masters doesn't count towards this, not having a masters is basically not having finished your studies, nobody I know would hire a phd student straight out of their bachelors.
Yeah, this is completely inaccurate, as other comments are also saying. Indeed, PhDs are shorter in Europe, but getting a PhD in 2 years is not just uncommon, but next to impossible. Credible universities won't even let you defend that early (bar exceptional circumstances). Never mind 3 years, most students go well into their 4th (occasionally 5th) year to finish. The difference with the US being that in Europe the funding typically runs out after 3/4 years, so after that students have to "improvise".
As I understand it, in Europe they give phd students canned projects to work on, which are designed to only take a couple years. It's just the whole plan of how long they want it to take. In the US doing a project of that size may be enough to get by at some schools, but it generally isn't supposed to be.
It's absurd to try to say how it is in Europe. You can't even say how it is overall in Germany. There are various different arrangements with companies, research centers like Max Planck, universities, some are full (state) employee positions, some are half, some give stipends, some take 3 years, some 4 or 5, some make you teach courses, some don't.
Depends on country, field, particular university or company, even the department.
So you can't generalize over a whole continent.
I am not sure what you are referring to, but a PhD in Europe takes 3/4 years. They are generally organised such that you are tied to a single supervisor/research group, which might be where the confusion comes from? They are by no means canned projects, at least as far I know.
Some 90% of people have a high school diploma now. All it means at this point is that you were not thrown out of school or locked in jail, and even then a lot of those people have it.
If someone said "I have a high school diploma" to you, what could you reasonably infer about their skills and abilities? Next to nothing.
The value from a degree arises from the fact that it is difficult and you can fail to acquire one. If everyone has a degree then not only does the signaling component of the degree disappear, the competitive advantage is also disappearing because everyone has the same baseline of competence. Electrical engineering or software engineering might be lucrative industries but only because companies can't fill all their openings. Once there are more workers than jobs we get the usual "McDonalds" hiring patterns.
This sounds like the actual problem is lack of jobs and bad economy. The employers are increasingly picky in their selection of people and people compete for increasingly higher degrees.
If economy was good, employers would have to be less picky, leading to people more likely to decide they dont need to compete over signaling.
> This sounds like the actual problem is lack of jobs and bad economy.
Prominently a lack of the factory production kind of work, I'd say.
So you keep people in school system(s) as long as possible. For people who would previously have gone to a factory after leaving school at age 16 or 18, you now keep them and give them a high-school+2y or +3y degree (it is free), and you release them only at 21-22 years old, they will be some random clerk performing some random procedure in some random client service or administration.
1. While they're in schools, they don't grow the unemployed figures.
2. Degrees guarantee a better chance for employment, they say. It is a stupid fallacy because it is only a comparative advantage, and when everyone gets one, even the advantage is gone.
So now, in France, by widening and easying them, we reached 95% of "success" for high-school degrees (which also grant access for universities). Also, high-school has become the almost unique way, so overall 80% of all kids get one of the high-school degrees every year. So, technically speaking, it means we're giving the high-school degree to a few light morons (or whatever it is called these days).
Cherry on the cake, they now finish high-school without having repeated any year (now, you can sleep your way through your whole primary/middle/high school career without repeating, no matter how little you do and you know, as long as you are not an exceptional PITA), so they are even less mature, which is another problem for practical and technical paths.
One big issue is that all those people at different levels think that they are valuable because they got a degree of some level. Except the degrees are valueless, and they are plenty of these people being given licences or master degrees. So there is a huge gap between what they think they will get (status and salary-wise)and what they will actually get.
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There is however a big difference between France and a lot of other countries: in France, good pupils do not go to University ; after high-school the top 5% (perhaps up to 10% now) goes on a path to Engineering schools (and similar paths for humanities) through competitive exams. One major consequence is that, opposite to most countries, the PhD does not represent the "elite" here. Of course there are gateways going one way or the other between the two systems, but still, the paths are pretty separated (and the gateways are mostly used to allow a few good ones from University that were missed earlier, to join Engineering schools after 2 and 4 years of University) and University/PhD is not considered the royal path. Actually, 40 % of PhDs are delivered to foreigners.
PhD is not specifically elite thing, PhD is specifically learn to be researcher education. As in generally being PhD and being engineer are two very different things. In areas where PhD is hard, they are also seen as proof that you are hard capable worker. Are you sure that seeking "royal path" and competition between PhD with Engineering is not a French artifact?
In my experience, not all masters are created equal. When looking at resumes I like to differentiate between research track MS (basically, the first years of a PhD) and "classes only" masters. The former typically ends with a thesis and for CS the latter is typically aimed at folks doing a career change after an unrelated undergrad.
Now, there's nothing wrong with doing a CS masters to make a career change, but these masters indeed tend to have lighter curriculum than the undergrad version of a CS diploma.
Absolutely. It's almost unheard of to work at a major academic institution without one.
Becoming a professor is all preparation from 18-30, and then was an assistant you still have to grind and run errands to "earn your place".
I agree that the signaling ratio of undergraduate degrees is low, but I suspect that's been true for a long time. The education is too unfocused, and employers no longer want to train people. So any degree must have you work-ready. General education is great for conversational ability, but useless for work, especially in STEM.
As for requiring PhDs - I have built my career without a CS degree at all. But I've worked with a lot of PhDs, and I think the signaling ratio they offer isn't any better than undergraduate degrees, I've worked with too many semi-competent, lazy PhDs to let them hold much weight with me.
Some of the best people I've worked with were those who dropped out of their PhD programs; it seems these people didn't care for the academic publishing circus, but were passionate about the work. But again, it's a poor signal.
The best signals are work experience and references - which doesn't help much for entry-level positions. But it does lend credence to programs that incorporate co-ops and other work-like experience.
On your last point, I would like to comment so anyone coming here feeling discouraged: I am at a mid-sized biotech and manage a team of 15, one has a masters, and all the others started right out of college with BS degrees. I look for right out of college BS degree holders! The key to finding these types of jobs is moving to a city with a robust industry because it means there is a ton of upper level jobs that need supporting help.
My company is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, but the main campus is now in Norwood, MA (30 min outside Boston). There are more jobs than you'd expect within 1h rail commute of cheap housing. If you're about to graduate with a BS in biochem, chem eng, or mol. bio, drop me a line. I would love to help you discuss your career!
The cost of housing is driving up the cost of salaries. Until Boston/Cambridge/Somerville and so forth build more housing, housing is going to remain very expensive relative to locations that have legalized the building of housing.
How much of this is just that most people coming out of these institutions are not prepared for the jobs they're applying for? A programmer with two years experience in industry is probably better than the same programmer coming out of a two-year masters.
Like, from what I can tell, most BSc graduates... suck. They're not able to program professionally, they damage your codebase. The credential just isn't a signal of adequate ability. Any hiring managers able to chip in here?
>A programmer with two years experience in industry is probably better than the same programmer coming out of a two-year masters.
There's a possibility the programmer who did the masters was simply unable to get a job after his BSc.
>Like, from what I can tell, most BSc graduates... suck. They're not able to program professionally, they damage your codebase. The credential just isn't a signal of adequate ability. Any hiring managers able to chip in here?
You can't expect college hires to be productive on day one. There's a learning curve between programming in college and programming professionally. If you want guys that have already completed this learning curve, you need to hire them with a few years of experience.
But keep in mind that right after college is the only time where almost everyone will be on the job market at the same time. After that, some of the best engineers simply disappear. FAANGs hire them and they basically never actively look for a job after that. [0]
>There's a possibility the programmer who did the masters was simply unable to get a job after his BSc.
Yeah, that would skew the data completely. Especially if you don't stratify by institution.
>You can't expect college hires to be productive on day one.
To be clear, I don't disagree with this, I'm just looking at it from the persective of employers. Why hire them if you need to retain them for a year or two before they're worth the salary? You need to pump money into them that whole time? Just hire people with experience to begin with.
But like, that's also where this debate normally goes and I think it's the less important point: the bigger issue is the credential is not preparing graduates properly. People should be angry about that, and demand it changes. They should be told that up front, before they purchase.
>the best engineers simply disappear. FAANGs hire them and they basically never actively look for a job after that
This is interesting. I hadn't thought about it in these terms.
Everyone tries. That's why you see entry level positions with 2-3 years experience requirements and entry level pay. Of course, these stay empty for years since nobody bites!
To get someone with experience in a reasonable amount of time takes money. Also, keep in mind that the engineers with 2 years of experience might be looking for an other job because of performance issues at their current one. Those who are learning fast and getting promoted aren't looking around.
>the bigger issue is the credential is not preparing graduates properly
The most important skill is really how fast someone can learn. I've always said it's harder to learn CS fundamentals than the tools and practical aspect of software. Someone who is comfortable with graphs and trees should be able to figure out git pretty fast. Someone who rote learned git commands and knows one workflow might not be able to figure out graphs that easily.
>This is interesting. I hadn't thought about it in these terms.
It's actually worse than that. With internships some engineers are off the market a few years before they even graduate. And then accept a full time offer with a 4 years vesting schedule that makes it incredibly hard to poach them.
It’s a spectrum. Some are brilliant and incredibly motivated while being humble and open to learning. Others not so much. I’d say the majority aren’t very good out of the box. And I include myself in that category when I started in the industry.
Mentoring is important and finding the people in your org that enjoy doing that and are good at it is the challenge. I’ve also found as a manager you need to find some quick wins for the new professional. Low risk things that get them experience with you services and systems.
Here is what I find most difficult for new devs in the workforce: understanding what the business does. Going beyond the technical abstractions and understanding the nuance of the business. Our best devs are in lockstep with the business side of things. They know how to translate business requirements into technical requirements. And they understand at a higher level how the business functions.
The only winning move is not to play. See what's best for you and don't worry about the alleged perks of a "better university" so much (especially not so much as to get into crippling debt)
Universities want your money but it's not educational quality that's bringing students, it's the fluff, the facilities and the "connections". Meanwhile some janitors are making more than some faculty members.
And you can definitely build a stem career without a PhD, don't buy into the hype
So many factors are leading to increased number of undergraduate degrees... not limited to degree mills, grade inflation, standardized testing, and availability of virtually everything in undergrad curriculum available for "reference" online. This simultaneously increases the number of undergraduate degrees while decreasing the average quality. Institutions that rely on the formerly strong "has a degree" signal are finding that the signal is weakening. Undergraduates now failing to signal are somewhat forced to pursue more education.
I see the same thing happening with masters degrees. Universities seem to increasingly offer combined BS and MS programs. I don't believe strong MS students are formed by tacking on just an extra year to a BS program.
Finally, another observation on STEM fields: due to the funding situation and glut of PhD's it appears to be incredibly difficult to build a solid STEM career without a PhD. Undergrads in certain STEM areas try to leave university only to find out that they actually need more credentials to meaningfully work in the field they just spent 4 years studying for.