Funding is generally not available for MS programs. You might be able to acquire some assistantships which will cover tuition and perhaps a little more, but those come with a catch. Usually you don’t get them the first year, and even if you do they tend to be loaded with some form of perverse incentive that makes it impossible to graduate in one year. In general you will probably have to pay at least one year out of pocket no matter how it works out.
Conventional wisdom tends to say that you should work for a few years then have an employer pay for it. It probably can end up being free to obtain if you do this. But I’d caution against this choice for a number of reasons, some of which you mentioned:
- There is no guarantee that your employer will actually pay for it. Even when they do, it's always with strings attached.
- Like most "career advice" this tidbit comes from the mindset of the business schools and is focused on when and how you get your MBA. With an MBA, it really is just a two-year program, where the academics aren't as intensive as they are for engineering, and very often catered towards being able to go to school by nights. Engineering will take longer, and 5 years of night classes is not uncommon.
- Engineering isn't always good for night classes. Guess how thrilled your employer is going to be if you start to leave at 12 PM twice a week, and either leave for the day or come back at around 3 PM, because you have a class? Say an important recurring meeting is scheduled during that time as well. People tend to be understanding of school commitments for about the first week or two before your other commitments start to annoy them.
- 5 years of commitment, including night classes, is something you could easily talk yourself out of doing, and you will find you will reach career roadblocks because of it.
- At the end of the day, even if everything works out great - that the company will pay for it, that you can get it done in 3-4 years, that you aren't really missed for the time you are gone - your career ends up being on "slow mode" for all the time that you are in school. A lot of your high-quality working power has to be diverted to schoolwork or else you fail, so your performance suffers. You aren't always there for critical decision-making events. You're taking up company money, and they have stipulations that basically ensure that you have to stay in that position or pay a fine. The costs aren't direct but they can very easily add up to be well over what it costs to just go to school up-front. Might even get you a better job, and it sure won't get you a worse one.
On the other hand:
- Debt is an issue. I would recommend putting all your effort into a Masters to be able to finish in one year. At this point, professional development is secondary to the degree itself because at the MS level, you’ve already reached a point where you should be able to pick up anything that you do not already know when you need to.
- You’re more expensive. In the long run, a Masters degree is more productive than a Bachelors degree, all else held equal. But you are more expensive at the start and you still have no experience. I think this is a stupid form of cheapness on the part of companies but it really does exist.
- As you specialize, less jobs start to be available. The trade-off is that you become more desirable for the jobs that are available to you. So pick a good specialty.
Overall, my general advice is that a Masters is a good idea if you know why you’re getting one. Money-wise, it only makes sense if you spend only a single year there. For engineering, part-time MS in the future is not really the way to go. Having that Masters gives you a much steeper growth curve in big companies, so if you have one and you’re actually skilled enough to work on advanced projects (she seems talented enough), then it’s best done quickly, while the motivation for more schooling is still there, and while there aren’t additional complexities that come with having a family and a job.