We live in a society where an advanced degree is increasingly considered routine preparation for a wide variety of jobs. In most fields, the master's used to prepare you for careers in industry or for teaching at community colleges, while the doctoral degree prepared you for university research and teaching. But as university teaching jobs become increasingly scarce, especially in the humanities, and as more people with advanced degrees venture into careers outside of academia, the Ph.D. is becoming a more broadly applied degree. As a result of the shift, the value and purpose of a master's and a Ph.D. are being hotly debated.

The statistics on the shift in careers for Ph.D.'s in the humanities are astounding: "According to the M.L.A.'s most recent statistics, only 33 percent of the students who earned Ph.D.'s in English in 1996–97 landed tenure-track positions that year. Only 38 percent of their counterparts in foreign languages did so"("Master's Degrees Are the Hot Topic at a Meeting on Doctoral Education," The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30, 1999). It can be argued that as the number of desired qualifications for various careers climb, the master's degree in the humanities is becoming obsolete, and the Ph.D. should be reconfigured as preparation for much more than academic work.

Others are reasserting the appeal of the master's degree in the current career climate: "If you want to put someone in an alternative career, it should begin early on, with different courses and internships offered. An M.A. program is a much better way to do it [than a Ph.D. program]," argues Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Likewise, Catharine R. Stimpson, dean of the graduate school at New York University, predicts that "[T]he master's degree will get even more popular. The master's can no longer be dismissed as a mere pathway to a Ph.D., but will become as crucial a degree as the B.A. became after World War II" ("Master's Degrees Are the Hot Topic"). Yet another camp emphasizes the value of joint programs in one of the humanities and another field, such as business or library science. The argument is that such joint programs strengthen students' preparation for fields outside the "ivory tower."

More tenure-track jobs in the sciences are still available, and a master's degree in the sciences or engineering is still a viable degree for careers in industry, but increasingly, the top positions in industry are going to Ph.D.'s. The crisis has not yet reached the same intensity as in the humanities, but the subject is receiving increasing attention. Moreover, new jobs in industry are opening up for Ph.D.'s, particularly in such areas as biotech, telecommunications, and high tech, as is evident in the number of solid-state physicists working in Silicon Valley. As a result, attention is being given to the question of changing Ph.D. training to suit these new career options.

There's no telling which of the predictions about the fate of the master's and Ph.D. degree will be proven correct, but the current level of debate certainly indicates a coming shift in the purpose of different graduate degrees. Given this climate, it is worth considering what you want to do with your graduate degree before plunging into a program.