[sashank_1509]

“Masters only programs” is a bad hack that needs to be gone. It is just a cash grab from overseas students desperate for a Visa to work in the US. Many of these programs are highly exploitative and leave overseas students with crippling debts and have almost no academic merit. I’ve seen this in supposedly good schools like CMU that offer Masters in Software Engineering which is basically a cash grab for overseas students. And many other made up masters programs. Very few 2-3 masters programs in CMU are genuine, and even then they just become a way to funnel unpaid labor to professors who before had to rely on undergrads, now have a steady stream of poor master grads willing to put in large amount of times to pad their resume or for a pitiful stipend. It inflates professor egos, and enables more brutal lab cultures that require working on weekends etc. and this is still in a relatively good school like CMU, gets much worse in other schools. Govt should just ban this whole system.

[macleginn]

There may be issues with the implementation, but masters only programmes are absolutely commonplace in Europe. Some are better, some are worse, but good ones are genuinely helpful for people to, e.g., upskill before going into industry or decide whether they want to do a PhD.

[ifethereal]

Master's programs in Europe are commonly the pathway/requirement to applying for a PhD position. This supports why they might be commonplace there, but it also means the same reason would not justify the master's only programs in the US in the same way.

[macleginn]

In many places, there is a distinction between "master's through research" (a gateway to PhD) and "master's through study" (more coursework, less independent research, a gateway to r-n-d-level positions in the industry).

[gekoxyz]

Yeah but as a European I think we took the wrong route. I am from Italy, and until 2001 we had 5 years undergraduate programs only. We then chose to do 3 + 2, but we should have gone with 4 + 1 years instead.

I have a BSc in Computer Engineering and I'm finishing a MSc in Computer Science. The MSc has been useless other than for being able to start doing research. I could have learned additional things in 1 more year, without repeating most of the knowledge in the other year, and then start the PhD directly. Instead I did a MSc where for 1 year I mostly repeated old topics before starting working on really new things.

I think Masters should be highly specialized for people that after a Bachelor start to work but want additional knowledge for their position.

TLDR: 4 years Bachelors -> 4 years PhD is the correct route in my opinion. We messed up in Europe

[macleginn]

But nobody has 4 + 4? The traditional system was in Europe 5 + 3, now we mostly have 3/4 + 2 + 3 (Europe) or 3 + 1 + 3 (UK/Ireland).

I don't have a lot of experience with the US system, but from my experience after 3/4 years newly minted postgrads are probably not yet ready to knowingly commit to 5 years of specialised training. European-style MA/MSc's often feel "useless" because they actually help people switch course and find a new footing. However, good master's programmes are either flexible enough for advanced students to take more specialised modules or have high demands to begin with.