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Specialized Master's Degrees

Specialized Master's Degrees
1/6/2010
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Scholarships.com Staff

Thinking about graduate school? You now have more options than ever, including several varieties of specialized master's degrees for growing industries.

The New York Times recently profiled ten of these new programs, giving a run down on who offers them and what graduates can do with them. If you're thinking of pursuing an advanced degree and want to consider something a little outside the box, you might want to check out the "Ten Master's of the New Universe." Ranging from programs that fill a current demand for workers to programs aimed more at enhancing participants' current jobs or anticipating future needs, the degrees profiled provide an interesting cross-section of new graduate programs.

If you're looking for a graduate degree that will make you more immediately marketable to a growing industry, you may want to consider homeland security, cybersecurity, or education leadership. Programs in these areas have largely been created to meet new demands: keeping the country safe, keeping information on the Web private, and running innovative new schools. These degrees can help you get hired in growth industries, or help you move up within them. However, there are many other valid paths to careers in these fields, so while specialized degree programs can give you an advantage over other candidates, a degree alone may not be enough to get you hired.

Many new master's programs are also focusing on more specialized areas of long-standing fields, or on intersections of different disciplines. For example, Columbia University offers a Master of Science in narrative medicine, which promotes a better understanding of patients as people through a better understanding of literature involving illness. Master's degrees in sustainable cultures and urban environment also blend ideas from multiple fields to address more specific problems in their own. While none of these degrees translate into a direct career demand, they allow professionals and students to gain new perspectives on their disciplines and the problems that interest them.

Finally, there are master's programs that you may have never imagined could exist or have a market. From degree programs in construction management to social networking, highly specialized master's degrees are giving candidates an edge in the business world by providing in-depth training that puts job candidates on the cutting edge of developments in their field. Specialized MBA programs are part of this trend. If you know exactly what you want to do in the business world, you may want to skip the generalized degree and go straight for a graduate education tailored for your job, such as the MBA in pharmaceutical management at Rutgers University.

As a warning, master's programs in general, but especially somewhat esoteric ones, are unlikely to come with large financial aid awards. If you're interesting in pursuing a master's degree in one of the fields above, be prepared to shell out a significant amount of cash or throw some serious effort into your scholarship search.

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