An ever increasing number of students are opting for Masters level degrees. Is this a wise choice? No, argues Masters student, Calvin Davies.

Times are changing. Things aren’t like the old days…or so I thought roundabout this time last year. These days it seems the world, his wife and his mistress has a 2:1 or better degree from a prestigious university and I knew I was destined to join this non-exclusive club. In recent years, I have developed a strong passion for learning and so, this time I decided to carry on my studies to a Master’s level.

I am currently six months in and have enjoyed every second of my Finance MSc. However, whenever anyone asks me is it worth doing a Masters I resolutely tell them “No”. If you are thinking of doing a Masters degree, I simply cannot recommend it and this is for several reasons.

No one can deny, a Masters degree is a very prestigious award and it will not do you any harm to complete one. Companies such as PWC, BP, Barclays etc even offer increased pay or graduate fast track programmes to people with a Masters. Certainly gaining a Masters degree is touted by Universities as a way to gain a competitive advantage in the job market and it is a clear-cut way to demonstrate to employees that you possess an honest and genuine interest in Finance, especially if you did not do a Finance-related undergraduate course.

A Finance MSc is there to help students build upon their knowledge base and develop a very strong foundation in Finance. A Masters degree definitely does give students a strong foundation of knowledge. Herein, lies the problem, it is too impressive. Significant amounts of the information and theorems you learn you will never ever find a use for in the real world. For example, in Econometrics, you will very quickly question the relevance of learning extremely tiresome, almost PhD level Mathematical derivations of regression models. Unless, all the econometricians in the world were to die tomorrow, this level of detail is something you will never be called upon to use.

And if you didn’t study a finance related undergraduate degree and didn’t build a core knowledge of finance, or at the very least, undertook a course with strong mathematical components, when it comes to learning the course you will struggle! “It is like giving a 7 year old, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and expecting them to read and understand it”, my friend with a Computer Science BA quipped.
There are additional attractions to doing a Masters. If your personality has shades of the “Van Wilder” spirit and you want to put off leaving University as long as possible, completing a postgraduate degree is a productive way to spend your time. However, you would be wise not to expect a social scene anything reminiscent of undergraduate life. Many of your fellow students will be very focused individuals, on average older, and some may even have families. When reciting the legendary tale of your drunken heroic activities of the previous weekend, you will be pleasantly surprised how few laughs your story gets.

Indeed for those students who enjoyed their undergraduate degree a bit too much and got a 2:2 overall, many see doing a Masters as a way to redeem themselves in the eyes of prospective employers, and signal that they are intelligent, hardworking and capable of achieving great things. I severely question the viability of this strategy. Personally, I believe the minimum educational criterion is simply there to act as a filtering mechanism and reduce the burden on the HR department as they sift through the thousands of applications each year.

The final consideration is the huge costs involved in taking a Masters. They are expensive and funding in the forms of scholarships/bursaries etc are extremely limited. Student loans are not available. As a rule of thumb, a reputable Business school will charge from £10,000 for a home student. Completing an MSc in Financial Economics at Oxford will cost you £23,500. In addition, you have to add living expenses which again can easily be an additional £10,000. A sound budget for completing a Masters degree would be about £20,000 to £35,000 for the year. This is potentially only a fraction of the cost. Once you consider the opportunity cost of the salary which you could have been earning once you graduated and add that to the figures above, the cost of doing a Master’s can potentially be truly astronomic.

Overall, I can only recommend a Master’s degree if you truly have a passion for learning. So much so, that you would even consider learning Finance to a PhD level. In my opinion, if your motivation for completing a Masters degree lies anywhere else you will simply be wasting your time.