WSJ - 商学院Master's Degrees

SoundOfSilence

A New Market for Schools

More U.S. Business Programs Add Specialized Degrees, but Whom Does It Benefit?


U.S. business schools are trying to master a new corner of the market: specialized master's degrees.
The courses in topics such as management, accounting and analytics, generally lasting one year and aimed mainly at college graduates with little or no work experience, have a decadeslong history at many European and other international schools.
But the programs have gained particular traction in the U.S. recently, more than doubling student enrollment to 52,014 in the 2010-2011 academic year, compared with the 2006-2007 year, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. (Demand is still higher outside the U.S., where member schools enrolled 84,134 in the 2010-2011 year.)
The benefit for schools is obvious—more tuition revenue and a critical mass of students to entice recruiters when interest in traditional M.B.A. programs is declining. But the long-term value for students remains unclear, as graduates' salaries and job titles often look very similar to those assigned to new hires coming straight from undergraduate schools.
Among the business schools leading the way is University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business.
Simon started offering two specialized master's degrees about 20 years ago, and began expanding its slate of offerings in 2005 with a marketing degree. Then came medical management, accounting and general management in quick succession. The school now offers about a dozen specialized master's programs, including two slated to launch this fall.
Applications for the specialized master's degrees are up more than 50% since 2009, and there are now more students in those programs than in the full-time M.B.A., according to Simon.
Simon is seeing benefits: In the 2011-2012 academic year, gross tuition revenue was expected to hit $43.1 million, with specialized master's contributing 28.1%, or $12.1 million. Tuition for the master of science programs start at $53,516 for the full-time program and $51,204 for part-time. The average tuition for the full-time M.B.A. program is $48,007 a year.
"We've been pleasantly surprised by how strong this market is," says Mark Zupan, Simon's dean.
Successes like those at Simon have spurred more schools to expand their offerings. University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business will add an M.S. in finance to its roster this summer and is in talks to begin a degree in data analytics as well. New York University's Stern School of Business recently announced a new master's in business analytics, with classes scheduled to begin next spring. It already offers master's in risk management and global finance.
As for the students, one of the biggest arguments for pursuing graduate study is the hoped-for salary bump that often comes with an advanced degree. But without prior work experience, many specialized master's students land positions comparable in salary and job function to those of undergraduates. (And that's not taking into account the additional $50,000 or so they may incur in student debt.)
"Students in these programs without full-time work experience need to understand that they're going to be candidates for entry-level professional opportunities," says Gary Hochberg, director of specialized master's programs at Washington University in St. Louis's Olin Business School, which offers focused master's degrees in accounting, finance and supply chain management. "They're not going to leapfrog over M.B.A.s." (M.B.A. students generally work for a few years before going back to school, so they are hired into more senior positions.)
In fact, the students may not even leap over their peers without advanced degrees. Graduates from Olin's bachelor's in business administration program saw a median base salary of $60,250 in 2011, more than those in the accounting and supply chain master's programs. Those students received median base salaries of $55,000 and $56,000, respectively. Master's in finance graduates earned a median $65,000.
"The master's in management students will look to the marketplace a lot like a good undergrad," says Robert Mittelstaedt, dean of Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, which offers master's degrees in accounting, taxation, real-estate development and information management, and is introducing a new master's in management for nonbusiness majors this year.
At the Boston Consulting Group, master's candidates without prior experience generally land associate positions—same as undergraduates, says Jennifer Comparoni, head of Americas recruiting. That population has grown but still makes up less than 5% of the consultancy's entering class.
There is one discipline where the specialized master's has a particular draw: accounting. More than 40 states have adopted a requirement for certified public accountants to have 150 credit hours before sitting for their exam, and most undergraduate accounting programs don't fulfill that requirement. That hours gap has created a ripe new market for the advanced degrees.
Paula Loop, U.S. and Global Talent Leader at accounting firm PwC, says the proportion of new hires with specialized master's comprises about 40% of the 3,500-person annual class of new assurance and tax-practice hires, although those with the advanced degree are hired as "associates," the same positions as undergraduates.
Still, not everyone is keen on specialized master's degrees. University of Iowa's Henry B. Tippie College of Business has shied away from such programs, deciding in the early 1990s that they were too much of a distraction from the core M.B.A., says Gary Fethke, a management and economics professor and former Tippie dean. That school's only specialized master's offering is in accounting.
Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com]melissa.korn@wsj.com

Karmalot

中国和美国的商科教育是脱节的，很多大陆同学不愿意相信和承认这一点

wpl413

SMP提供了一个对非商科本科同学来说非常好的转型机会，但对于本科是商科，研究生继续本专业的人来讲性价比不高

wpl413

另外字体实在太小了，读完都湿了

hangli2

很多一年制硕士能不能被叫做ADVANCED degree实在要打一个大大的问号。

desmondwen

字调大点依旧看的不是很清楚。。文章写的中肯 mark之

tata9055

好文

GMU

个人认为undergradute business school的目的就是为了毕业后直接工作，然后再读MBA。金融master的话那就应该是走quant的路线，因为只有这样才有研究的意义。现在很多msf感觉就是在本科的基础上稍稍加深些。其实除了quantitative finance，像corporate、investment这些track根本就不应该开设master degree，这些是只有靠实践才能学到真本事。

上足弦的Geek

人家没瞎说，咱们也不信

lzlsnake

嗯，没说啥新鲜的嘛。楼上都懂的啊。