Sure, you don’t need a PhD to actually work in the field. Depending on how advanced the field is and on supply and demand, you could get by with a Masters or even a Bachelors. And yet, if you work in a research shop, it’s still better to get the PhD. Academia and R&D centers that are intended to mimic the academic environment (national labs and a significant number of private R&D labs) are very pedigree-focused, and they will very visibly favor those who actually have PhDs for the good positions. Even the way you put it seems to imply that:
I have seen many labs that treat people with thesis MS as “research people who will be satisfied to do low level work for their entire career” as opposed to PhDs who want advancement. You can get jobs, sure, but most people would be better off going for the degree that allows them to advance in research, or to avoid R&D and go for a more applied route.
This entire “learning how to learn” shtick is taken way too far and is a bit of an empty statement. Every educator says that about just about everything but it just isn’t true. You don’t get a Bachelors to learn how to learn, you get one to understand basic human academic knowledge at a somewhat advanced level and to develop basic competency in a specialty to show that you can work competently and learn how to do jobs related to that specialty. You don’t get a Masters to learn how to learn, you get one to acquire advanced knowledge in your field, and to prove that you can learn advanced material in the specialty and to apply that knowledge to difficult problems within the field. You don’t get a PhD to learn how to learn, you get it to apply advanced knowledge and your research ability to solve an important research problem within that specialty, and to prove that you both know that sub-specialty well and that you could solve similar problems. It’s not about “learning how to learn” but about proving that you know a lot and have the necessary level of competence, and that you can learn the rest when you need to.
To paint people who don’t pursue a Thesis MS as pursuing education on a “purely monetary basis” is disingenuous and unfair. Moving on with your life isn’t always just about money, but about a whole lot of things that can be considered “opportunity cost.” Establishing yourself in one city instead of living in college. Marriage and children. Starting to pay off debts so that life can move on. Transitioning from a school environment to a work environment. A stable outlook of what the next few years are going to look like. A one-year program, as opposed to a 2+ year program (and they do go on longer if something just happens to get in the way of an early finish), gives stability and a better idea of the future. Money is part of it but not the only part. I’ve also noticed that many of these things tend to be more time-sensitive for women than for men, and given that the OP’s child is female, these are particularly important considerations.
There are always trade-offs and of course it is valuable to gain knowledge in the research process. All else held equal (and things are very far from equal), it’s better to have done research than not to have done research. However, a few caveats:
- University is not the only place to learn how to do research. It’s a standard part of a lot of jobs to learn skills that are very similar to what research in a university is. And you do learn a fair bit about research even from coursework - often classes do teach skills similar to what labs teach you, only over a much shorter and less effective time scale.
- If you do undergraduate research, the added value of doing more research in an MS program is diminished. Skills in “research” tend to be pretty universal over research topics.
In short, I don’t disagree that research experience is valuable, but a thesis is far from the only way to get that experience, and often time is wasted on a longer program.
Thinking of coursework as “just a piece of paper” of no significance is a pretty big disservice to students as well. That coursework shows an ability to work competently at an advanced level in the field, where often very cutting-edge knowledge is needed. That is not very far from what a thesis or PhD provides in terms of useful abilities.