At the end of the Master’s degree, students usually think while they should go for a PhD or another Master’s degree. It is excellent to think about this decision, as there are significant differences between both levels that you may need to consider before starting to apply for a new degree program.
Though both PhDs and Masters are regarded as graduate studies, there are substantial differences between both degree levels.
Skill Acquisition vs. Research
The Master’s program is inherently interdisciplinary, mixing teaching styles and curriculum from different disciplines to ensure students gain particular tools and skills for a diverse palette of future careers.
However, PhDs are intended to be individual research endeavors, with less guidance from departments and professors, targeting to confirm the answer to a particular question.
Therefore, you must choose a second Master’s if you need to know something, and a PhD if you like to be a professional in your profession.
The Difference in the Duration of Both Degrees
Although a Master’s degree has four semesters, some degrees offer the chance to condense the studies in 18 months or one year. Usually, PhDs take over three years to complete, based on the graduate school and the subject.
It must affect your decision, offering the different time it takes before a diploma turns out to be a career asset.
You also Select Your Career Path
A master’s degree is planned to convey general skills, perfect if you need to keep the options of career open while thinking about the diversity of jobs. For instance, a Master’s degree in communication sciences can do your work in different areas from journalism to sales and PR.
In a PhD case, your specialization gets narrower, although the depth of expertise progresses meaningfully. It is the anticipated path if your destination is precise, at the top of the hierarchy or if you want to be an entrepreneur or freelancer.
Funding Opportunities and Degree Availability
A Master’s degree is the fastest-growing kind of study program accessible globally, with the more alternative interdisciplinary mixture being approved every year in a try to adjust to the job marketplace.
Usually, PhD programs are more resilient to alteration and focus on long-term established research goals, including many candidates and departments, over many years.
Their aim is less prone to market changes, based mainly on society’s research need, along with demands of financing places such as local authorities, think tanks, central governments, museums, and ministries.
Time Commitment and Flexibility
A pace difference between PhDs and Masters is the chance to work throughout the years of the study. Although some part-time degrees and masters offer courses focused on the late evening to allow attendance from the employed people, PhD’s are seen as something like full-time work, funded in the way to reimburse the impossibility to balance the research with a job.
Well! There is no need to mention that a PhD includes consistent research and other responsibilities like publishing, reference papers, conferences, teaching, and assistance with the departmental organization.
Changing the Specialization
If you think about moving towards your new specialization to requalify your skills or diversify, the Master’s degree is easier and more accessible to initiate from scratch. If you want to do a PhD in an entirely different discipline, it is pretty demanding to achieve, mainly because the graduate schools need ‘affinity with the topic’ while applying.
It is not essential to mention that a successful PhD proposal is more demanding to achieve in an entirely new domain and topic. It does not mean that applying for a different Master’s degree is not without challenges or effort; however, it is more probable given the abundance of Master’s programs accessible globally than PhDs.
Generally, different universities get successive masters in a related or similar field as a sign of shallowness and indecisiveness. Contrarily, having two or more degrees in knowingly other disciplines such as Languages and Engineering or Arts and Economics can be a significant CV booster.
Possibly one choice is not better than the other. It is only a query if you need to be better in your area or if you aim to be more of a scholar and devote yourself to research.
If you make your mind to get another Master’s degree, filter through numerous study options or check your desired PhD destination and field online.
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Best of Luck!