A friend who came from a wealthy family went to an Ivy League teaching school. While she was there, her family went bankrupt and she had to take on student loans. Fast forward to today, she regrets going there, saying a cheap state school would have been just as effective for her career.
Do teachers need advanced degrees?
31–40 of 70 posts
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#32Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#33It's funny that this is a question when every college STEM class is taught by people who have degrees that have absolutely nothing to do with being able to teach effectively.
I think a lot of teaching jobs are like that. If you were good at teaching STEM, I think you could probably work nearby in a STEM job for more money.
This does suppose there are good jobs in the area, which can be a bit hit or miss especially out in the sticks. Not to say one couldn't move, but moving isn't in the cards for everyone.
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#34No job "needs advanced degrees". They need experience. If you want to get your foot in the door in a competitive market, degrees help. They offer some substitute for experience. But it's ridiculous to require them.
Do you mean for a teaching job, or just any job? Certainly in fields like biology, you can only be taken seriously by others in the field by having an advanced degree (which is really only the beginning).
In computing, in the commercial field, you can of course get by with no degree.
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#35FYI: the author of this piece is the eugenicist Cremieux who was responsible for using hacked data to attack Zohran Mamdani for checking Black and Asian on his college application.
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#36> Have you never met a bad doctor? A shoddy lawyer? A barista with a PhD?
I presume the implication is that bad doctors and shoddy lawyers exist and just because they have advanced degrees doesn't make them good at what they do. This seems reasonable.
BUT, I find it fascinating that people who aren't doctors or medical experts think they can spot a "bad" doctor or people who aren't lawyers or experts in law think they can spot a "shoddy" lawyer.
A good doctor/lawyer makes good decisions and executes beneficial actions given the facts surrounding a situation. It's pretty hard to judge whether those decisions and actions are good or bad if one isn't an expert.
That's a huge motivating factor for professional licenses.
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#37A friend who came from a wealthy family went to an Ivy League teaching school. While she was there, her family went bankrupt and she had to take on student loans. Fast forward to today, she regrets going there, saying a cheap state school would have been just as effective for her career.
You aren’t really paying Ivy League prices for the quality of the classes, but more the quality of the connections and reputation.
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#38My understanding is that, these days, a lot of advanced degrees held by teachers are in Education, not say Math or History. I’d love to see this data recut by degree type. Edit - wow we’re talking about 50-70% of the masters being in Education, Special Education or Admin fields. (Page 14: https://mhec.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/202510-MHEC-Grad... ) This data is basically telling us nothing about the value of a t…
I'd say that there is no such statistically significant data.
Practically nobody teaching K-12 has subject-matter masters degrees. It's just not part of the career trajectory. As unusual as a nurse having an M.A. in history or something. Yes, would occur on the margins of people changing course in life, but not the mainline.
Specifically, the question here is about the efficacy of pay-scale bumps for Masters degrees in education. To your point (and my counter-point), teachers get a substantial pay bump* if they hold a M.Ed, but no bump if they hold a masters in their teachable areas.
For persons who can afford it in the moment, taking a one year or two or three year part-time M.Ed. after getting a few years teaching experience (an entrance requirement in most M.Ed. programs) can pay for itself over the next 2-5 years, then is all surplus for the rest of the career.
* - all of the varies a bit by jurisdiction but I think this is "the general case".
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you overpay CEOs, people who hate leading, and hate being CEOs, will become CEOs for the money. Is a good idea to select the people who hate leading to become CEOs?
You say that as though it’s an option CEO is selected by the investors for whoever will side with the investors 100% of the time over every other group including employees What you suggest would subvert this and so it won’t and can’t happen
This was far more of an option in the 1980s and earlier; a CEO being compensated 20-30x a line employee was pretty standard around then; now it's closer to 250-300x. I think there's more optionality than we may assume, we've just left the structural incentives that drive that difference in place.
Re: Do teachers need advanced degrees?
#40FYI: the author of this piece is the eugenicist Cremieux who was responsible for using hacked data to attack Zohran Mamdani for checking Black and Asian on his college application. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Lasker
What do they call this type of argument, again? Ad hominem?