Bachelor's vs. Master's Degree

A bachelor's degree is designed for breadth. Roughly a third to a half of it is general education — writing, mathematics, science, humanities — and the rest is your major. It certifies that you can learn broadly and think at a college level.

A master's degree is designed for depth. There is no general education. Every course is inside your field, and the expectation shifts from learning the material to using it.

Undergraduate assessment leans on exams and recall. Graduate assessment leans on analysis: literature reviews, case studies, applied projects, and a capstone or thesis that requires you to produce something original.

Reading changes too. You move from textbooks that summarize a field to peer-reviewed articles that argue within it, and you are expected to evaluate methods rather than accept conclusions.

Most master's programs run one to two years, 30 to 60 credit hours. Federal grant aid largely disappears at the graduate level; funding comes from loans, employer reimbursement, assistantships and scholarships.

The return depends almost entirely on field and employer. In some fields a master's is the entry ticket. In others it is a promotion accelerator that is only worth the cost if someone else is paying part of it. Run the numbers before you enroll, not after.