Chinese graduates are questioning the value of continuing their education for a master's degree, a survey has found as the number of students applying for further study declines.
More than half, or 52.9 percent of the survey respondents thought it was not worth their while to spend two years on a master's degree, while the rest still thought positively of master degree studies.
I recently got an MA myself, so I'm not against graduate study. However, when it is done simply to separate you from the rest of the job seekers out there, it's usually a bad idea in the long run.
Usually I see this with lawyers who go abroad for an LLM. When an industry, like the legal sector, adopts the attitude that the better candidates are those that have received an LLM from abroad, then it becomes mandatory in a sense. No matter whether the degree is useful substantively, if everyone else has one, you gotta go out and get one too.
I'm glad to see the numbers go down if it will lead to better cost/benefit analyses. Students should not be pressured to get a degree just for their resume.