Abstract
There is continued growth in the number of master's degrees awarded in the life sciences to address the evolving needs of the biomedical workforce. Academic medical centers leverage the expertise of their faculty and industry partners to develop one to two year intensive and multidisciplinary master's programs that equip students with advanced scientific skills and practical training experiences. However, there is little data published on the outcomes of these graduates to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs and to inform the return on investment of students. Here, the authors show the first five-year career outlook for master of science graduates from programs housed at an academic medical center. Georgetown University Biomedical Graduate Education researchers analyzed the placement outcomes of 1,204 graduates from 2014-2018, and the two-year outcomes of 412 graduates from 2016 and 2017. From the 15 M.S. programs analyzed, they found that 69% of graduates entered the workforce, while 28% entered an advanced degree program such as a Ph.D., allopathic or osteopathic medicine (M.D. or D.O.), or health professions degree. International students who pursue advanced degrees largely pursued Ph.D. degrees, while domestic students represent the majority of students entering into medical programs. Researchers found that a majority of the alumni that entered the workforce pursue research-based work, with 59% of graduates conducting research-based job functions across industries. Forty-nine percent of employed graduates analyzed from 2016 and 2017 changed employment positions, while 15% entered advanced degree programs. Alumni that changed positions changed companies in the same job function, changed to a position of increasing responsibility in the same or different organization, or changed to a different job function in the same or different company. Overall, standalone master's programs equip graduates with research skills, analytical prowess, and content expertise, strengthening the talent pipeline of the biomedical workforce.
Highlights
In a time of increasing competition for funded biomedical STEM Ph.D. slots, and a narrowing bottleneck in the professoriate pipeline for Ph.D.’s [1,2,3,4], educational institutions must recalibrate their metric for success in graduate education
The smaller proportion of graduates who sought entry into advanced degree programs as a primary motivator is perhaps in part explained by “gap years”. Graduates may use this period for additional professional development through employment to reapply for advanced degree programs if they were not admitted to these programs previously. We explore this possibility in a later section when we discuss the two-year outcomes of graduates who enter advanced degree programs after a gap year
We see a smaller proportion of advanced degree-seeking domestic graduates (n = 229) pursuing Ph.D. degrees (n = 31, 13%), while 146 (63.8%) were enrolled in medical programs (M.D. or D.O.). These differences in international and domestic graduates for Ph.D. and medical degree programs were statistically significant (χ2 = 117.8, df = 1, P < 0.001). Corroborating these placement trends, we found that 89% (n = 94) of international students who enrolled in advanced degree programs after completing their M.S. were enrolled in the following M.S. programs that contain research-intensive components or tracks: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Fig 5
Summary
In a time of increasing competition for funded biomedical STEM Ph.D. slots, and a narrowing bottleneck in the professoriate pipeline for Ph.D.’s [1,2,3,4], educational institutions must recalibrate their metric for success in graduate education. Ph.D. conferrals have stagnated and Ph.D. recipients utilize their research skills across employment industries within and outside of academia [5, 6]. This trend is concomitant with a steady increase in the number of master’s degrees being awarded annually in the life sciences. The number of doctoral degrees awarded from 2016–17 to 2017–18 increased only by 0.6%, compared with the 2.1% average annual increases seen between 2007– 08 and 2017–18 This recently slowed growth in life science doctoral degrees is in stark contrast to the 2.4% growth in master’s degree production from 2016–17 to 2017–18
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