» Benefits of a Graduate Degree

What can you do with a graduate degree that you can’t with a Bachelors degree?

Ph.D. Degree

For starters, a doctoral (Ph.D.) degree allows you to be your own boss. You can have your own lab and run your own research program. You can write grants based on your ideas and submit them to national funding agencies. You can travel to scientific meetings all over the world to present your results. You can be the main author on papers that appear in prestigious journals like Science, Nature, and American Journal of Physiology.

You can teach and train students at the undergraduate and graduate level and postdoctoral fellows. You can work with pharmaceutical companies on the production of new life-saving drugs. You can serve on review boards for granting agencies and journals. You can help shape the future of professional societies by serving on their committees and governing boards. You have the opportunity to travel both nationally and internationally to attend meetings, present your research, and collaborate with other physiologists.

In research, a Bachelor’s degree will allow you to work as a technician for someone else, helping with his/her research projects. While you may be allowed to work on an idea of your own, it will depend on the person for whom you work. You may be an author on a paper and you may be allowed to attend a meeting and present your data, but that is certainly not the norm. You wouldn’t be invited to sit on review boards or committees. With a Bachelor’s degree you could teach science at a middle or high school or a science museum, but you would need special courses and educational certification in most cases.

So it depends on what your goals for your career are. Talk to your professors and family/friends and get their perspectives. In the end, though, it’s your decision.

In between a Bachelor’s and a doctoral degree is a Master’s degree. Some schools have a formal Master’s degree program, whereas other schools award a Master’s degree if you finish your coursework toward a doctoral degree but decide not to complete a research thesis.

A Master’s degree allows you more opportunities and usually a better salary than does a Bachelor’s degree. Often you will be the person coordinating the lab, including overseeing technicians and graduate and undergraduate students, for the Professor or Principal Investigator. In some labs and companies, you may even be allowed to have your own research project and be included on scientific papers as an author.

Should you prefer teaching to research, you often are also able to teach at community colleges and some undergraduate institutions. You might also consider teaching at the high school level, although additional educational coursework and certification would be required in most cases.

For additional information on the benefits of a graduate degree, see the resources listed below (APS does not endorse or assume responsibility for the information posted on these web sites).