More Canadian students graduationg with Master’s degrees

Magally Zelaya, Staff

A recent report from StatsCan found that Canadian students received a record number of master’s degrees in 2005. Across the country, 33,000 students attained a master’s degree in 2005 — an increase of 33 per cent from 2001, when 25,000 received the graduate degree.

The record-high number represents the eighth consecutive annual increase in the number of master’s degrees awarded and a 1.9 per cent increase from 2004.

Graduate students have an impact past the borders of their institutes and into the rest of the country and the world, according to Jay Doering, dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Manitoba.

“In terms of the university, graduate students are by large the research engine,” said Doering.

“It’s through graduate students that the knowledge is acquired — and with the professors, of course, there’s the preservation and the dissemination of that knowledge,” said Doering.

He continued, “In terms of the intellectual power of a country, graduate students are the next wave of people that are going to go out into industry and have ideas. They’re the next wave of professors. So, they’re really sort of rolled up in a knowledge-based economy.”

For the same data years used by StatsCan, there was a 25 per cent increase in master’s degrees awarded at the University of Manitoba— eight per cent less than the national increase. The numbers increased from 469 in 2001 to 590 in 2005.

Doering doesn’t expect the numbers to stop increasing.

“I think we probably will continue to see a rise, I think it will sort of slowly creep up,” he said. “I think more and more graduate degrees are becoming the working degrees.”

Doering said that a master’s degree gives students an “edge” over those who complete only a bachelor or honours degree and that many people seek the extra qualifications in order to be considered for more senior roles and the commensurate increase in pay.

To set himself apart, Jason Kelly obtained a master’s of Resources Management last October.

Kelly, who is also an instructor at the university, said, “I encourage all of my undergrads I teach to consider getting master’s,” he said. “I think undergrads are a dime a dozen now.”

Doering, however, noted that the number of students attaining masters degrees at the U of M has fluctuated in waves since the mid-’70s, with peaks in 1984 and in 1994.

“We bottomed out again in ’01 [regular session] and we’ve been climbing ever since.”

He suspects that there are many factors that contribute to the waves of graduate students, but he pointed to the economy as a prominent factor.

“When the economy is really strong it’s usually harder to entice students into grad school, they will go for the good job at hand.”

When asked if a failing economy in the United States might have an impact at the U of M he said, “It could well. Certainly it’s probably going to impact graduate enrolment in the U.S., and therefore it’s likely to have an impact on us.”