<p>In your opinion, which degrees are the most influential regarding making the biggest difference in our society?</p>
<p>MBA, JD, MPA, Master of Engineering, Ms. Ed, etc.?</p>
<p>MD!! At least this degree will make the biggest difference to peoples’ lives…</p>
<p>It’s not the degree, it’s the person.</p>
<p>JD would have the biggest societal effect. If a person changes one law, this affects everyone.</p>
<p>I agree with the VTjas81. It’s foolish to say that a degree is influential in making differences in society. You can have a MD and still be a crappy doctor, which makes no difference to anyone. I doubt that most of the influential people in society today have any sort of advanced degree (save the famous doctors and lawyers). </p>
<p>If you’re talking about careers, those in the health professions (this includes the whole heathcare team: nurses, optometrists, pharmacists, physical therapists, technicians, phlebotomists - not just the doctor!) will always be the most influential. As long as there are sick or injured people or those whose lives are affected by adverse conditions, you’ll pretty much be in demand.</p>
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<p>A disproportionate number of powerful politicians have law degrees. Politicians have great power to change the world, for good or ill. A single law can help or hurt millions.</p>
<p>If you think an MD, politics, etc. is the most influential in our society, than your a stereotype person. I definitely agree with TVjas, Jadex, it depends on the person and his/her nature, and nurture. To ask your question (from my perspective), the most influential force in the universe is intelligence (currently all combined human intelligence on earth prevails), and technology.</p>
<p>I don’t know that it’s causative, but I agree with sakky. People wielding JDs have a disproportionate amount of power over the political machine.</p>
<p>Then again, it could be said that without MDs they’d all be dead. And without engineers, they wouldn’t have the guns they declare wars with. Without the PhDs to make the foundational leaps in science to make better weapons, the engineers wouldn’t be able to design them in the first place.</p>
<p>And without the bureaucrats (many of which have MAs or MPPs), they wouldn’t have the information or ability to enact many of the laws.</p>
<p>So it’s hard to say, to some extent.</p>
<p>Of course it’s people who make the difference and not the degree…but that wasn’t the question. Nor was the question which fields have been most influential throughout history. The question was asking which degree, in this present day, in general, is most likely to have the biggest effect on society (I assume…). Of course it’s a JD. Society is governed by laws, and laws are set by people with JD’s. Simple.</p>
<p>I vote for the PhD, simply because everybody else is voting for boring degrees.</p>
<p>Come on, I’m going to have an influence on society with my PhD… right? :D</p>
<p>Of all of the Presidents of the United States that had graduate degrees, the most common such degree by far is a law degree. I believe only one President (Woodrow Wilson) held a PhD.</p>
<p>What about all those scientists doing biological research that leads to vaccines, gene mapping, etc.? Some have MD/PhDs, but many have “just” PhDs. (Go Mollie!)</p>
<p>I agree, it depends on the person. Of course, we history PhDs will be utterly useless.</p>
<p>The JD provides a good background for politics, a fact why many politicians, not just here in the US, but throughout the world have law degrees. Further, a prevailing belief exists you need to have a law degree to become a politician or a policymaker.</p>
<p>However, the most appropriate degree for a politician would be the MPA, because it entails much of the training needed to manage public organizations, such as the US government. In fact, the chief public administrators in the USA are the President, governors, mayors, and those serving in similar positions. These people make the decisions governing our lives.</p>
<p>I agree with those who say character, ability, intelligence, etc. ultimately determines success; but the question was asked to stimulate debate and see what other people thought about the topic.</p>
<p>when i read the thread, i thought it was referring to specific degrees (including universities).</p>
<p>can we make a list here of undoubtedly “powerful” grad degrees? i’ll start:</p>
<p>Yale JD (> Harvard JD)
Harvard MD (~Hopkins MD?)
UPenn MBA
Harvard PhD (in general, wow)</p>
<p>I’ll assume, for my own purposes, that your list is ordered from least powerful to most powerful. ;)</p>
<p>Ph.Ds (engineers and scientists).= 100% are most influential. They are the cause and result of all medicine, politics, economic system, standard of living (I can go on forever).</p>
<p>Medical doctors: sure they save lives, but they would allow millions of people to die if it wern’t for technology improvements such as biotechnology and microtechnology, etc. (which came came from ENGINEERING and Science). MDs are doctors that memorize a great deal of info. to treat people, but they are not innovative. </p>
<p>Lawyers: people that like to be rich and have a good standard of living. (in other words, they are not innovative at all)</p>
<p>Business people: money hungry to some expend, very social, and somewhat innovate. (I say somewhat innovative because for example, ebay and amazon are great industries developed by entrepenuers, but it wern’t for the engineers that actually invented the Internet, we wouldn’t have it. )</p>
<p>Politics: a mixture of lawyers and business people that want to keep order in the world. </p>
<p>Scientists and Engineers: from my philosophy, I have the greatest respect for people that are innovative and change our world. EVERYTHING you see around you is a result of a scientist and engineer’s ideas and work that was brought into effect through hard work and consistency to get the job done.</p>
<p>If you want to make an immense money (path A) and have an extraordinary standard of living (going on vacations all the time, high tech cars, etc.), than lawyers, doctors, and being an ambitious business person is for you. However, if you want to shape the physical world at your will and marvel at the beauty of life itself (path B), being an engineer and scientist is for you. I choose path B because eventually (your looking at mid-century) our intelligence and knowledge of technology will prevail so much that all the money in the world won’t save you.</p>
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<p>If you’re going to list the Penn MBA, then I think you have to list the Harvard MBA also. After all, frankly, people who get into both programs tend to choose Harvard. </p>
<p>And as far as the ‘wow’ of Harvard PhD’s? Well, I don’t know. I have seen some mediocre Harvard PhD students, at least from a relative standpoint (at least, relative to other PhD’s of top schools). While obviously many of them are star scholars, others are, frankly, not particularly serious students and are only there for the Harvard name. You look at some of the placement records for some of these Harvard PhD’s, and, frankly, quite a few of them get placed into positions that really aren’t that great. </p>
<p>Personally, I find the MIT PhD students to be, overall, a more serious group of scholars. In case you are wondering, no, I am not an MIT Phd student.</p>
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<p>Well, to be fair, you can write the best dissertation on earth at Harvard and get placed at Podunk U. just because of the market.</p>
<p>“our intelligence and knowledge of technology will prevail so much that all the money in the world won’t save you.”</p>
<p>Are you planning to build an army of killer robots?</p>
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<p>Podunk U may not be that bad. Some people don’t get placed anywhere at all. </p>
<p>But that’s not really the point. The point is that there are some Harvard Phd’s who, frankly, aren’t all that interested in doing good scholarly work. Their dissertation is mediocre, they don’t publish in any good journals (or perhaps have no publications at all), and they’re not really trying to make any real discoveries. They’re just there for the Harvard name. Many of them take just the consolation master’s - a wiley strategy in my opinion, as not only do you get a Harvard degree to put on your resume, but you actually GET PAID to get it, in the form of your doctoral support. But some of them do actually make it all the way through the PhD process, but submitting a dissertation that is barely good enough to pass committee. They’re not going to get much of an academic posting that way, but they don’t care, because all they want is to have a PhD from Harvard so that they can run off to a lucrative career in private consulting or investment banking or whatnot. </p>
<p>I don’t want to paint an overly bleak picture. So let me give you an example. I know a guy who is getting his PhD in Applied Mathematics at Harvard. And frankly, he’s lost heart. He’s tired of academia. He’s pretty close to finishing his thesis and graduating, but he’s not seriously pursuing a career as a mathematician anymore. He’s not submitting any more articles for publication, he’s not attending any more conferences, he’s not revising any of his working papers. Instead, he’s interviewing with a bunch of hedge funds, investment banks, and consulting firms. In fact, he’s not even taking any more math classes - the classes he is taking are all at Harvard Business School. This guy would have difficulty getting placed at even Podunk U, because he’s not producing anything mathematical. Not that he would want to get that placement anyway. </p>
<p>The point is, I don’t know that there any more of a ‘wow’ factor of the Harvard PhD, as compared to a PhD from any other top school, as I don’t think it’s any more difficult to get a Harvard PhD than a PhD from a peer school. What ‘wow’ factor that exists seems to come from just the word ‘Harvard’, rather than the Harvard PhD specifically. Like I said, there are people with Harvard PhD’s out there who aren’t really producing good scholarly work, either because they are tired, or not interested anymore, or whatever.</p>