Honours Honestly
13/Jun 2013
Do I have to?
Now we come to the main point of this series of posts - what should I do next? I decided that studying was worth more than going straight to a job, but does that hold true for honours? Ok, back to theThe value
- You can add a title to your resume.The additional value of the title diminishes because most employers won’t know what it means to have further degrees. There are also very few jobs with a requirement for further degrees as a minimum.
- You receive basic training in your field. The training is not basic anymore and most of the course material become more theoretical.
- You get to meet interesting people.The students that you did your undergrad with will most likely also do your honours with you so you can only hope to build a better relationship with your professors.
- You are forced to study fields that you might not have otherwise. You will now study to elongate the stem of your T, but you don’t have a very wide choice in which you are extending it.
- You earn the right to not be overshadowed by someone with a degree.It might have some value but you are in more danger to become that person that does the overshadowing instead of just preventing it.
- The degree is the tiebreaker for getting a job. This stays pretty much the same.
- The value of studying a difficult degree. As I explained in the previous post the fact that this is honours and is more difficult than another degree does not give you as much value as you might expect.
- More Money. Exactly the same argument holds: you might make a bit more but you start later.
- The degree is recognized internationally. On multiple occasions I was told by my lecturers that this is a major reason why you should do an honours. All this recognition gives you the chance to study further at an international university. As stated earlier I don’t intend to go into academia, so this is not that important to me. Employers won’t care that you don’t have the exact same degree than local people. The question is: can you do the job?
The cost
The costs are the same. Some of the values change, like how long you are studying and how much more money you will get when working, but they roughly balance out.There’s more?
So the costs stayed the same. The value decreased almost across the field except for the international recognition which, for me personally, does not weigh that much. To further complicate the matter new forms of education like MOOCs are also something to consider.Are MOOCs really an option?
Massive open online courses (MOOCs), like those presented by Udacity, Coursera and Edx are not yet competing with traditional universities, but they are serving those that aren’t helped by them. I think that they also have a major part to play in lifelong learning. They provide a structured and efficient way to learn about a new subject or field. If I were in a hiring position I would value someone that has taken MOOCs over the last 5 years or so much more than someone that has completed any number of degrees. The reason for this is that most likely the MOOC person has an intrinsic learning drive or at least understands the value of continuous learning and will continue to learn in future whereas for the other the degree does not say much about how updated the other student is at the moment and how that will continue in the future.With additional opportunities like the masters degree that Udacity will provide alongside Georgia Tech, the value of these type of courses just keep on increasing. For these reasons I think that MOOC’s are a legitimate alternative to further study if you are not looking to enter the academic side.