Master degree or experience or both of them ? 1

[Riko_93]

Hi,

I'm planning to get master degree in oil and gas related field. I'm wondering what would be the good move. To take master degree and then gain work experience or doing master while working or only work experience is enough to found job easily ? Trying to figure out if master degree is important/necessary than work experience or not

Regards,

 

[truckandbus]

Not in the oil and gas field - how common is it for employers to subsidize advanced degrees? If you can get a company to pay all or some of the masters that might be the way to go.

Getting an advanced degree is a good way to differentiate yourself from other job candidates (either for a new job or for a promotion). The worst advice I was given (that I took) was to NOT make use of my first company's tuition reimbursement program. I was told by my supervisor that I could get the degree but it wouldn't matter since management didn't care about that stuff, I was already on a management fast track...fast froward a couple of years and he is retired, I switch industries and have to start over establishing my worth, do that again 15 years later. It would be easier to get into the smaller pile of resumes if I had the advanced degree

 

[Riko_93]

Thanks a lot for advice
I will get the master degree

 

[jfpe]

I would recommend going for your Masters while working. it cuts down on your social life, but you'll get the best of both worlds - theoretical and practical experience. Some engineering schools cater to this approach, offering evening and on-line classes.

-JFPE

 

[zdas04]

And you are already in the door when you get the Masters. The company I worked for paid for my MS, and since my Thesis was related to a problem that my company had, they provided the resources that I needed for that (which were free access to a large number of gas wells, a measurement test trailer built to my design, and an operator for nearly 6 months).

In Oil & Gas a masters without relevant experience is a liability. A Masters with relevant experience is an asset.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[oldestguy]

My expedience is that the Master's put me well ahead of the undergrad classmates, and had more rewarding positions.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Don't feel bad about dragging out your masters while working. I dragged it out over 4 years. I don't regret that one bit. If I was overloaded, I wouldn't have had time to do side reading and digging into things. Undergrad felt like a pressure cooker in comparison where I never had time to fully wrap my head around everything. Looking back, it might have been better to have worked as tech while doing my BS and dragging that out,too. I could have entered the workforce as an engineer with 4+ years of experience as a relay or substation technician if I had known I wanted to go into power.

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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[moltenmetal]

A masters can be either courses and a project or fewer courses and a thesis. The latter is valuable because it forces you to measure something yourself and interpret the results- usually. While no education is a waste, the value of extra courses to a student who has just completed a Bachelors' worth of courses is questionable, unless there's a particular specialization that you are after and the courses are directlyr relevant to that specialization. If you're doing the coursework option (here that would be a M.Eng. rather than a M.A.Sc.), doing it while working is the way to go.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

It depends on the university. Some universities give M.A.Sc to both coursework option and thesis.

Based on IEEE Salary Reports in power engineering, a masters pays for itself easily over the course of a career. A Ph.D is questionable if time is taken off of work. Over 30-35 years, it doesn't take that much of a difference for the masters to pay for itself if no time was taken off of work to complete it.

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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[moltenmetal]

Based on a regression of salary data back in the late 1980s, if you spent two years doing a Masters degree versus working right after graduation and remaining employed, the payback period was plus infinity assuming a reasonable time value of money. So if you're doing it for money, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea to do it though. I did mine in 1 yr via a combined Bachelors-Masters program my uni offered, so it was a no brainer and likely had a financial ROI as well. But because it taught me hands-on what is involved in making measurements and interpreting data that you have to be able to stand behind and defend, it was worth far more than its financial and time investment cost. The courses I took as part of that program? About half of them were totally worthless, and the other half were at least better for me than spending my time drinking beer instead.