A few weeks ago my lady wife asked me what benefits I’d enjoyed from having gained an MA in the distant mists of decades past. “Apart from opening doors”, she added.

Strangely, I’d never thought much about this before. At least, I don’t recall doing so. It’s a fair question though, isn’t it? What are the benefits of doing an MA?

I can only answer for myself, of course, but this is what it meant for me. By the way, this article has nothing directly to do with education technology. I won’t be offended if you choose not to read it (partly because I won’t know!).

Opening doors

I don’t know if having an MA did open any doors. Nobody said to me “As you have an MA…”, and no job I applied for specified “Must have an MA”. I don’t think it would have hurt my prospects, though. Logic suggests that if another job candidate and I were equal on all important respects apart from my having a higher qualification than them, I’d have been offered the job. But I have no idea if that actually happened.

People who have done creative writing MAs have told me that what made the course useful was being put into contact with literary agents.

Clear thinking

Fortunately, one of my tutors was great at questioning. I’d produce an essay, or a draft chapter of my dissertation, and she’d say why it was good and interesting. But before I had the chance to test whether the door was wide enough for me to pass through with my newly-inflated head, she would say: “But how do you know…?” or, “Wouldn’t that suggest that…?”, thereby setting me me off into a much deeper line of enquiry.

That level of questioning impressed me a great deal. I still use it all these years later.

The important aspect of what my tutor was doing was encouraging me to think more deeply. She didn’t attempt to impose her own interpretation on my research. I suppose one could argue that her biases and preconceptions would have been implicit in the sort of questions she asked me. True. But that’s a far cry from the kind of non-thinking approach and response I encountered in a conversation about Oscar Wilde’s work:

Girl: I’ve just completed an essay for my English MA about The Importance of Being Earnest, which is clearly a thinly-coded homoerotic polemic.

Me: Really? How did you reach that conclusion?

Girl: My tutor told us.

Knowledge

Many of the great education thinkers, such as Ausubel, Bruner, Vygotsky, were covered on my course, and they have continued to influence my work to this day.

Conclusion

Is it worth doing an MA? I think if you select one that is interesting, makes you think better, and provides you with much greater knowledge than you might otherwise have discovered, my answer would be yes, if you can afford it. Perhaps because I’ve already had a successful career, I’m not that interested in whether doing an MA would open doors However, if that is important for you then it’s crucial to do your research. From a discussion I had with a teacher of journalism some years ago, the prestige of the university (for a particular subject) matters more than the curriculum or even your final grade.