What Can You Do With a Masters, Anyway?

A Masters degree is a great way to continue your education in a subject after completing your undergrad. Not only that, it looks pretty good on the old CV and can improve employability as well as your earning potential (all good stuff).

Alternatively, a Masters can be a jumping off point for a career in academia – after all, what else are you going to do with that tweed blazer?

Let’s take a closer look at what you can do with a Masters – and find out what other people actually do with theirs.

An increasing number of people study for a Masters degree with the intention of moving on to a PhD (and then, perhaps, into an academic career).

Many PhDs are going to need you to have a Masters degree. This is especially true of Arts and Humanities subjects. It’s often possible to go straight to a Science PhD from undergrad, but a Masters degree can still be helpful – especially if you didn’t get the undergrad results you wanted.

You can find more information about choosing a PhD and funding one over at FindAPhD.com.

Of course, continuing to a PhD won’t be your only option after a Masters. If you have a specific career in mind you may wish to take a further postgraduate qualification that provides a gateway to a profession.

A Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), for example, is a one-year course that would give you the required skills to become a school teacher. This can be a very rewarding career if you are passionate about subject and want to spread your knowledge. Graduates with Masters degrees can sometimes qualify for bigger training bursaries. Plus, that extra subject knowledge obviously looks good on a teacher’s CV.

If you’re looking at a vocational Masters (i.e. one that has a career specific element to it) then you probably have a pretty good idea of what job it might lead to. That’s not to say your degree subject always determines your career, but let’s be honest: a Masters in Accounting probably isn’t what you pick when you’re thinking of a career in botany

For those who haven’t chosen a vocational Masters, or just want to go in a different direction, there is a great deal of choice. Not only does your shiny new degree carry a fair amount of weight with prospective employees, it also provides you with a variety of transferable skills.

As well as improving the skills you acquired during your undergrad studies, your Masters will have taught you to think critically about data or other information and to question loose or naïve interpretations.

This is as useful in the boardroom as it is in the library or laboratory. You will also have learned to work more independently than you did during your previous course.

Aside from the more generic skills, your course will undoubtedly have gained more subject-specific skills. For example, a Masters in French will hopefully have provided a fairly good foundation in a foreign language. A Masters in English or History will have developed skills in weighing up different perspectives and experiences, as well as written communication and presentation. And so on.

Knowing what you can do with your Masters is nice, but wouldn’t it be handy to see what other students actually do with theirs? Well, you can.

There actually exists an official body called the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) whose task it is to gather statistics on what happens to graduates after they, well, graduate. As part of the Graduate Outcomes survey, they post questionnaires which are dutifully returned and then number crunching done. This all gives us a fairly good idea of what Masters graduates go on to do.

Of the people that acquired Masters degrees in 2019-20, around 88% were in employment or further study 15 months after graduating. Additionally, postgraduate students were found to be 18% more likely to be in a professional occupation, rather than a less senior associate.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into these stats (and don’t mind trawling a sizable spreadsheet), all this information is freely available from HESA. You can also check out our guides to Masters employability and the postgraduate subjects with the highest earnings.

There are a lot of career options open to you after you finish your Masters and you are often in a better position to look for employment than when you only have a Bachelors degree.

If you are interested in pursuing a Masters we have many more guides to help you though the process of finding and funding the gateway to your dream job, PhD project, or other opportunity.

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