Comments on: M.A.?

By: David Salmanson

David Salmanson — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 15:38:43 +0000

I believe Yale’s history department requires an MA for admittance at this point. Michigan’s history department definitely seemed to be leaning towards MA students from specific feeder programs. The advantages work both ways. Institutions get people who are more likely to finish and finish more quickly when entering their institution than someone without an MA. Folks with an MA from a different institution get a whole new clock when counting speed of program and thus more years of total funding, plus they usually have developed a thesis topic, and are well on their way to finishing comps/prelims etc.

By: Jonathan Ichikawa

Jonathan Ichikawa — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 05:26:39 +0000

Just a bit of anecdotal experience, here… but when I was finishing my B.A. and thinking in terms of philosophy programs, a terminal M.A. never entered the picture. Not only did my advisor never discuss it with me, I never even thought of the possibility, because I didn’t know there were such things as terminal M.A. philosophy programs. I have no idea how this bears on anything. Maybe it demonstrates that I was pretty clueless in at least one respect.

By: Kerim Friedman

Kerim Friedman — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 03:49:43 +0000

If you don’t plan on finishing the Ph.D. program – don’t tell anyone. Otherwise you’ll never get a dime of funding.

By: gthistle

gthistle — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 00:26:42 +0000

The financial aspect that ben wolfson notes is important; MA students in English, in my experience, teach a lot and garner fellowships little. Since completing a PhD also requires teaching comp at most schools, it’s good to keep an eye on burnout. I’d otherwise concur—for English in the US, at least, and maybe Comparative Lit—with the idea that an MA helps in advance of beginning a PhD. I didn’t take that route, but my peers who entered with an MA were able to transfer some coursework and cut to the qualifying exam a little more quickly than the rest of us. (My school doesn’t have a terminal MA in English, and we can’t pick one up along the way; a residual consolation prize persists.) On the other hand, in my (limited) experience, earning an MA first doesn’t help one finish any faster than going straight from a BA, nor does it affect likelihood that one will actually complete the PhD.

By: ben wolfson

ben wolfson — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 21:03:14 +0000

Surely one of the most obvious costs is that tuition waivers aren’t exactly common for M.A. programs? I don’t know if it’s harder to get a fellowship for them, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

By: JH Bogart

JH Bogart — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 21:02:04 +0000

Re Terminal MAs: How do the programs kill the students without anyone noticing? How exactly do these terminal students get resurrected? Are they zombies? Or are they all conservatives?

By: praktike

praktike — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 20:36:43 +0000

Is it fair to call it a “terminal masters” if you take it deliberately and not because you’re getting booted out of a PhD program?

By: fontana labs

fontana labs — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 19:58:46 +0000

I think an MA is a good idea, for similar reasons. I’m not sure if appealing to a difference in commitment-level is the way to put it, though. After all, people in PhD programs usually pick up the MA along the way, and they can leave at any time. I think an MA program is a good idea because it reduces the risk of what is, for me, the worst-case scenario—staying in a program because of inertia. A terminal MA is a stopping point, and it forces you to put some effort into continuing. You can’t simply drift into a dissertation because it’s the easy thing to do; you have to pursue it actively. This is a natural stopping place for reflection and reconsideration, and with the MA a student is well-informed enough about the profession, her abilities, and so on, to make decent decisions.