<p>There are many degrees out there, but what master’s or phd has the best return of investment if you aren’t academically inclined to do research or teach?</p>
<p>If one is not academically inclined, and has no interest in research, the PhD is not only unnecessary but extremely unwise.</p>
<p>^ I see where you’re coming from, but I think the poster was saying “research” and “academics” to mean for a career. And doing a PhD is usually to learn about something in depth, if that’s what one really would best be doing for that time in one’s life. It doesn’t imply an academic career at all.</p>
<p>I think also, the poster here mentioned a master’s for a reason. My answer to the OP is that if you count professional degrees like MBAs and JDs, they’re right up there, but a master’s in engineering well complements a bachelor’s, earns you 2 years of specialized study, and looks good. Or, using a master’s to complement some area of study in bachelor’s with another, so you can get into a field that’d otherwise have been less familiar. There’s no answer to “which is the best” – depends what field you want to work in. </p>
<p>I can tell you that doing a PhD in some highly theoretical field isn’t going to help you explicitly get a job somewhere outside of research and academia, though a PhD in a field like math definitely tells a large market of employers that you’re among the most powerful minds around. And quantitative background is important in many fields, so that’s one good option – you could do your PhD in whatever you like, and it’d look like a plus, becauase at least it’d say you can learn mathematical things that <em>are</em> relevant to your career with high proficiency.</p>
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<p>In recent history, Master’s in Finance or related fields (i.e. Financial Engineering, Computational Finance, Financial Mathematics, etc.). To be sure, that may not be true going forward.</p>
<p>As far as PhD programs are concerned, the fastest payoff is to be found in Finance PhD programs, although that’s a low bar, as the payoff for all PhD programs is low. If all you care about is pure payoff, the finance master’s is optimal.</p>
<p>I think as a rule of thumb Professional degrees tend to have a higher return on their investment compared to academic degrees. I personally would not see the purpose of obtaining a PhD if your intent was to not conduct research or teach. Buf if I had to think of any PhD degree program that brought it the most financially, I would imagine it to be anything mathematically related like engineering any business related field.</p>
<p>PhD with the highest payoff:
A program at Harvard/Penn/Yale/Chicago/Stanford/NU/etc. that lets you dual enroll in the business school and get an MBA. Better yet if they let you take MBA classes with your funding rather than you paying for the degree out of pocket.</p>
<p>Oh, highly second the master’s in finance. Financial engineering is a nice thing to do after getting a math degree, for instance.</p>
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<p>Why do you think so? Are these positions getting to be less in demand? That would be a little saddening to me.</p>
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<p>The career prospects for research and teaching may not attract many highly intellectual candidates. I myself have been doing lots of thinking these days. The point is that you can choose to learn highly stimulating material for 5 years after graduating undergrad, do research of your own, and get to the point where you’d have a foundation in a subject that’s with you for life if you keep it alive. </p>
<p>If one does this, and then assumes a highly lucrative position as a career, it can only be seen as an awesome thing.</p>