Earning three masters degrees and a graduate certificate in four different subjects and currently completing a PhD as a mid career professional, I thought I would share some thoughts on the best way to deal with the very real phenomenon of credential inflation.  At some point in your career you will likely be faced with one of two issues: (1) a particular credential is needed for career advancement (e.g., an MBA) or (2) a desire or need to change careers (e.g., you want to start teaching in higher education or technological change has wiped out the industry you are in).  How do you go about getting the required credential and retraining/education while still employed?

Fortunately there are lots of options: night and weekend programs, MOOCs, online degree programs, blended programs.  Assuming that you are paying for education and not your employer there are some things to consider.

First, higher ed is expensive.  From a pure accounting perspective, does the net present value (NPV) of future cashflows justify the cash spent on the education?  This raises the issue of prestige.  Prestigious degrees are expensive.  If you’re looking at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, it is likely that the NPV is negative.  As a mid career professional, you are unlikely to see large enough increases in salary to justify spending $100,000-$200,000 for a masters degree.  Your payback period may be longer than the length of your career still ahead of you.  If you are merely acquiring a required credential, skip the prestige if you are footing the bill.  If a career change is in order, then prestige may be valuable in opening doors, but realize that the you will never get the return on investment in accounting terms, only in increased social status due to the prestigious qualification.  You can impress people with that Harvard sheepskin on the wall.

Second, will you learn something?  As I discovered in my own sojourn through higher ed, price does not equate to quality.  Of every university I have attended–University of California, Santa Barbara (BA), Gratz College (MA), Diablo Valley College (business school prerequisites), Oxford University Extension (archaeology classes for fun), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (MBA), Regent University (Certificate in New Testament, mainly to learn Koine Greek), Troy University (MS), and University of Leicester (PhD in progress)–the best education I received was at Troy University, a big state school in Montgomery Alabama whose mission is mainly teaching.  The training I received in International Relations there was top notch.  The strongest parts were the training in theories of international relations and in research methods, which are crucial for later success at the PhD level.  Second place has to go to the junior college on the list, Diablo Valley College.  Because DVC’s mission is teaching not research, the faculty are truly invested in student success.

Third, study what you don’t know.  This was advice I received from Rick Kreysar, former US professional soccer player and senior executive at Computer Associates.  Since I was getting my MBA as a required credential for advancement (or even a lateral move since at my level computerized resume screens weed out candidates without one), he suggested that study something I didn’t already know.  It was great advice.  I spent a decade in IT, sales and marketing.  Instead of studying sales and marketing, I studied finance for my MBA.  It gave me tools to (a) stop paying for financial advice, (b) increase risk adjusted returns of my retirement plan, and (c) taught me mathematical tools I apply regularly in my current role outside of finance.

So you need to learn something and do it on the cheap, how do you succeed?  Start with a self assessment.  Have you been out of school a really long time?  Academic work can be challenging at first.  Consider baby steps at a junior college.  I remember utterly flaming out on my first research paper at Gratz College because I was so inexperienced at ‘playing the game’ after 10 years out of school.  Are you a self starter or do you need to be coached and/or prodded to do things?  Distance education, MOOCs, and the UK tutorial system, require you to be very self-disciplined.  Do the reading, get the work done, stick to a schedule.  I frankly sucked at this as a 18-22 year old undergraduate, but was absolutely able to be disciplined as a 35 year old.  

A word about MOOCs: MOOCs open up education to the masses at a very low cost, but I personally found that the very low cost is an impediment to finishing.  The penalty for blowing off a class and not completing is low.  You’ve gotta really want it and not be easily distracted by life (work and family obligations especially).  It is hard to tell your spouse or kids you can’t do something because you have to study, when that class was $30 and not $1500.  That is at least my $0.02 on the subject.

My General Advice on choosing a distance program

Comparison shop.  Higher education is expensive, but you can find bargains.  Many big state schools in the Midwest and South offer in-state or discounted tuition for out-of-state students.

Choose a school people will have heard of.  To an extent reputation matters.  When I was looking at MBA programs, I narrowed my list of schools according to budget and eliminated schools that nobody has heard of.  For example, if all else being equal you’ve got a short list of a small liberal arts college, a directional school (universities with North, South, East, or West in the name) and a big school people have heard of, choose the bigger name.  It helps with the job applications, casual conversations and leveraging an alumni network.

I am a huge fan of accelerated programs.  Programs that cram 15 weeks of material into 9 or 10 weeks are a boon for somebody who works.  They will kill you on the reading and research papers are stressful due to time constraints, but I found that the drawbacks are more than offset by the benefits including: making progress while taking one class at the same time, which aids focus; fewer discussion board postings/problem sets per term; if the class sucks, you’re stuck with it for 33% less time.  I found that by going to school year round, it was easier to stay on the tread mill and finish.  Both Troy and Nebraska were accelerated: Troy 5 semester terms per year, Nebraska had 4 semester terms per year.

Accreditation matters.  Make sure any university in the US has regional accreditation if going for an MA or MS.  There are degree mills that prey on uninformed consumers.  Furthermore, avoid any MBA program that is not AACSB accredited.  Internationally, it isn’t a real MBA unless it is AACSB accredited.  Those schools offering one under their standard regional education are not conferring a real MBA.  It is the same deal with unaccredited law schools, by the way.  If it is not ABA accredited, you just wasted your money.

International programs

International education is fraught with peril but can be tremendously rewarding.  I did some exploration here, and for a US resident there are some gotchas.  First, while every nation has its own standards for accreditation, for a US resident, you should always consult the list of foreign schools eligible for student loans from the US Department of Education.  A qualification from a school on the list is likely to be considered a real qualification, when it comes time to evaluate it.  Most large US employers and all education institutions will use a transcript service to scrutinize your education to see if it meets the standard of the degree claimed.  You won’t have much trouble with degrees from the developed world, but you may with degrees from the Third World.  Furthermore, professional societies may have additional hoops to jump through for licensure.  Take law as an example.  In the United States you will take a 4 year undergraduate degree, then go to 3 years of law school, and sit for your state BAR exam.  In the UK, however, a law degree is an undergraduate qualification.  Plus you will still need to learn US law by completing an LLM degree in the US to learn US law before you sit for the BAR exam.  (Hint: this may be the cheaper and shorter option.)

Transfer from one system to another can also be almost impossible.  In the UK for example, for a bachelors degree there isn’t the US equivalent of general education requirements.  BA degrees are 3 year degrees in your field, not 4 years with half your course work outside your major area as in the US.  You study a subject for three years at two different levels, roughly equivalent to US lower division and upper division course work.  The actual number of modules studied is much lower since the modules themselves are much bigger in scope.  Thus transfer is almost impossible without either substantial bureaucratic hassles or almost starting over with a qualification or testing out of stuff with CLEP tests.

The way education is conducted is also very different.  It is a culture shock going from the US system to the UK system.  The first shock is that the quantity of work produced is much lower.  For example, in the US, written assignments have minimum word counts, in the UK, they have maximum word counts.  In the US prolixity is rewarded, but in the UK it is punished.  I actually found it very difficult to scale down arguments to fit the word counts.    There are also fewer assignments.  A typical module may have one seen and one unseen paper of less than 5,000 words.  Contrast that with a typical course in International Relations at Troy that had 2 or 3 seen papers of 7,500 words or more plus weekly question responses of 400 words or more.  Frankly, I am thankful that International Relations at Troy had an arduous exit exam process, because it prepared me for the type of unseen papers I would encounter in the UK.

Also, the UK makes a big distinction between research degrees and taught degrees.  Graduate school in the US has very different aims.  An MA or MS in the US is taught degree.  You do a bunch of course work, at least 30 semester units of it, and then do a small research project or, in the case of some MS degrees, more coursework and maybe an exit exam.  An MPhil is a research degree.  You are learning how to do research and along the way mastering the basics of a field.  It is a very different concept.  Think of the US and the Henry Ford model of graduate education and the UK as offering an artisanal model of higher education.  If you need structure, look to the US.  If you want freedom, look to the UK.

PhDs

The PhD is the way you enter the higher education guild and is also a required credential for some fields–e.g., policy work in Washington D.C. pretty much requires a PhD, working as a research scientist in industry requires a PhD.  Here is where reputation matters.  If you want to be a professor at a tier 1 research university your chances of being hired into a tenure track position is much greater with a prestigious degree (Ivy League, a ‘public Ivy’, Stanford, or Oxford/Cambridge).  For jobs in industry, what your research was and who you did it under is more important than reputation.

The PhD means you will most likely have to quit your job, although there are a small set of programs, mainly in professions like business and psychology, that are part-time.  Furthermore, there are more and more part time programs in the humanities and social sciences being launched in order to attract enrollment, even at really good schools.

I am currently doing a part-time low residency PhD in Politics and International Relations at University of Leicester in the UK, which was one of four programs in International Relations that I found: Manchester Metropolitan University, Birmingham, Leicester, and King’s College London.  King’s College London was my first choice because they have a famous expert in international peacekeeping, Mats Berdal, whom I wanted as my supervisor, but he was full up with students.  Because you are admitted on the strength of the research proposal in the UK (see below), you can get into disputes over relevant literature and methods (which nixed MMU).  That left Birmingham and Leicester.  Leicester was more eager to have me.  

The PhD is very, very, very different in the US and the UK.  In the UK, they are minting a person who knows how to do a substantive and original piece of research, full stop.  In the US, they are certifying you as an expert in the field, who also knows how to do research, hence 90 additional semester units of course work and comprehensive exams are required before you can even think of starting your research (essentially you will be doing two+ masters degrees worth of coursework before doing research).  Admission in the UK is based primarily on the strength of a research proposal and whether they have resources to supervise your research.  If you plan on returning to the US to work in US higher education, you will be more heavily scrutinized, because of the difference in the qualifications.  A UK PhD is generally looked down upon in the US, partly due to cultural factors–you haven’t ‘paid your dues’ in suffering through the sadistic US system–and partly because there is suspicion that you haven’t mastered your field.  

Let’s assume that already hold a masters degree or two.  In the US, you will likely not be able to transfer units from other schools (the reason cited will be ‘we issue {Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, Harvard, …} degrees here’), you will suffer through 3-4 additional years of coursework on top of what you have already done, sit for your comprehensive exams, then they will look for supervision for you in the department with no guarantee of continuing (it being contingent on their being space in a lab for you or a supervisor available; I know more than one person who got to this point and exited with an MPhil or MA because there was no supervision or lab available).  You write your research proposal and only then start your research.  Tack on a couple more years at a minimum for research and writing and you are finally done.  Except perhaps in Mathematics where the dissertation is usually short, this is a Bataan death march, doubly so in the humanities.  I remember having teaching assistants in classes at UCSB having already spent 7-8 years and weren’t done yet.

Contrast that with the UK: gain admission, which be definition means they have supervision for you and you have a decent research proposal; you take whatever modules you need to be able to be successful in your research, which at a minimum is a required research training module and required research ethics training (I’ve not had to register for modules beyond the required due to my own background and mainly do short seminars in skills I need); go before an internal review board after a year or two to show your progress to date and a finalized research proposal; they either accept is as worthy of a PhD and can be completed in a timely fashion or not.  Then you are advanced to do your research, you do it, write it up and an outside examination committee reviews the dissertation, examines you orally (the feared viva), and decides whether to confer the degree.  (External examiners are also a big difference between the US and UK systems.  It is how they ensure quality in the UK.)  You are done much faster with less pain, assuming you have quality supervision.  But you’ve got to be confident that you can work in this less structured environment to complete it.  

I chose the UK route because I already held 3 masters degrees and wasn’t going to waste time with the equivalent of 2 more, I was over 40, and needed a required credential for policy wonk work.  (Dream job is at RAND Corporation.)  There is a ton of unacknowledged age discrimination in the US.  US programs don’t want people past their 30s and certainly nobody who would be 50 when finished.  It makes sense from the perspective of the  guild because they will be investing resources in minting a new member of the higher education guild.  They want to make sure that you have a lot of time left in the guild before retirement, at least 30 years.  I did not encounter any of that in applications in the UK.  UC Berkeley and Stanford on the other hand–as they say in New York fuhgettaboutit.

I also lucked out in my supervision.  My supervisor himself is a non-traditional student who came back to higher ed mid career in order to make a career change and got his PhD in his 40s.  Since I am not trying to get a tenure track position in the US after graduation, I am less concerned about how a UK PhD is viewed.  Be advised, if you go the UK route and you are looking for a tenure track position in the US, I suggest you stick with Oxford/Cambridge due to reputation concerns, make sure you also teach undergraduate modules, network heavily in professional societies, and publish, publish, publish.  You’ll get interviews based on your reputation not the school’s.

Check back in with me at the end of 2020 to see how my UK PhD experience went at the end of the journey.