The degree, which a few universities quietly pioneered in the mid-1990s, combines graduate studies in science or mathematics and business management courses. In 2008, 58 universities were offering the professional science master’s degree, or P.S.M., according to the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington. By the start of this academic year, the number had nearly doubled to 103, and is set to climb further.
The number is certain to grow because the professional science master’s degree is being adopted by at least six state university systems. In addition, in February, the first P.S.M. program in Europe was created at the Open University in Milton Keynes, northwest of London.
Advocates of the degree say it will become a fixture at many more universities because it promises to satisfy the work force requirements of increasingly technological economies in the United States and abroad.
“I think of it as a 21st-century degree,” said David King, dean of graduate studies and research at the State University of New York in Oswego. “It’s interdisciplinary. It’s a hybrid, which I think is more agile. It’s responsive to rapidly changing needs in terms of the job market.”
Mr. King likens the growth of the P.S.M. to the emergence of the M.B.A. more than a century ago. He heads a systemwide consortium of 16 New York colleges and universities that introduced the P.S.M. on seven campuses in September. (The degree was already being offered at an eighth campus in the consortium, the University of Buffalo.) He said he expected all 16 schools to offer the degree next year.
The professional science master’s degree received an important imprimatur two years ago from a committee of the National Research Council, which inquired into ways to enhance the master’s degree in the natural sciences.
Carol Lynch, director of the professional science master’s program of the Council of Graduate Schools, estimates total P.S.M. enrollment around 5,000. That is a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands enrolled worldwide in M.B.A. programs, but Ms. Lynch said the degree “is on a huge trajectory, and we’re just getting started.”
Already, however, the subject matter of professional science master’s curriculums differs widely (as does tuition, which ranges from a few thousand dollars a year to more than $20,000). Studies in biotechnology and environmental science are in particular demand. Also required are business courses in subjects like project management and communications.
The degree typically involves two years of study, and there is no thesis requirement. But P.S.M. students must work with a “real world” company either in an internship or on a project.
Most enrolled students are Americans, many at large state schools, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.
But there is a large minority of international students pursuing a P.S.M. One of them, Aayush Pandey, 23, is studying biotechnology at Northeastern University in Boston. After earning an undergraduate degree in that subject last year at the Amity Institute of Biotechnology in New Delhi, he found that his options were limited to embarking on a doctorate program with a researcher’s career in mind or working as a low-paid laboratory assistant for an Indian biotech company.
“I didn’t want to do a research-oriented course,” Mr. Pandey said. “I was more interested in industry.” He thought that with a P.S.M. degree in biotechnology, he could stick to a field he liked and prepare for a management-level job. When he completes his degree, he will look for a job with a U.S. biotech company, aiming to save enough money in two to three years to repay his parents the $36,000 that they lent him to cover his tuition.
Northeastern’s biology-oriented P.S.M. classes have attracted international students, particularly from India. Of the 154 students who enrolled this autumn, 76 are from countries other than the United States, with 68 from India.
Northeastern has been increasing its P.S.M. offerings, having inaugurated a course in bioinformatics in 2001 and adding specialties in biotechnology, marine biology and regulatory science.
Murray Gibson, dean of Northeastern’s College of Sciences, said the professional science master’s degree provides a “potential source of revenue,” deepens the school’s partnerships with business and links its professors and students to cutting-edge business research. “It goes two directions. We can service industry and know better what’s going on outside the university,” he said.
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