[WildUtah]

* Universities make much more money off their Masters students, most of whom are international, and pay full tuition (or someone does for them).*

It's a scam.

The Ph.D. is the real graduate degree in US schools. If you get a MS, people who know the system expect that you flunked out in quals (it's the parting gift for those that couldn't handle the work). Terminal MS degrees at serious schools are just outright selling prestige to the naïve.

A MS from MIT or Stanfurd is much, much less prestigious than a BS degree from the same school and requires less academic rigor.

[pm90]

I'm sorry, but your understanding of Masters degrees seem to be dangerously misinformed. There is a wide spectrum of MS degrees offered by US universities, from leading-to-PhD to Professional-degree-for-Software-Devs. I agree there are some who "flunk out" their quals and leave with a Masters, but the selection process for a PhD is stringent enough that this is a very small minority of all MS degrees.

Personally, a research oriented MS degree allowed me to work closely with a researcher and contribute to that research leading to paper publications and a thesis. The goal of the program seems to have been to allow people to get a taste of doing research and then move on to a PhD program if they found that appealing.