Sure it does,give no nevermind to that duffing, dirt farming carnival barker
Actually, come to think of it, as I was just responding to a slew of emails, I remembered what FF said here and realized it
is annoying. I work at a university, and your degree is basically currency here, and it works the same way at all your alma maters/favorite unis as well.
For example, my email signature has ",M.S. my field here" after my name.....and actually I hate that. It's pretentious. It shouldn't matter. I have the job I have, and the position and the title should be enough. But I learned to do it both as a survival mechanism and to get things done. You're not taken seriously unless you have a graduate degree. I can say with 95% confidence I only got this job because I've got that degree. My work is kinda sorta related to my degree, but not exactly, and frankly what I learned in school overqualifies me for this job, somewhat. And also I lacked plenty of skills necessary to do this job. Doesn't matter. Advanced degrees are like sharks to chum around here.....they're enamored with them. It doesn't matter how low or crappy your job is.....they like to collect people with degrees.
If you have only a bachelor's degree, they think less of you. In some cases I swear it's harder to get people to do stuff you need them to do if you don't advertise that you're in their club. And, really, I'm just barely passable. The "real" jobs around here are full of people with PhD's. They
love that. Having a master's is just sneaking in the door and them allowing you sit in the cheap seats in the back where the drinks are bad and the food is leftovers.
I've met a number of very intelligent people with bachelor's degrees, and their upward mobility is genuinely limited because of it. Merit be damned. Capability and knowledge be damned. They don't have the letters after their name. Our pay scale is affected too. The fancier degree you have, not only can you get better jobs, but your pay range for those jobs is in a higher bracket.
I'd probably have expected that to be the case for faculty.....you want a very high % of faculty to be PhD's, of course. But staff.....I didn't know about all that before I worked here. Does it matter? They certainly think so. It's probably tied to State of Texas boards and agencies who govern us....probably the more advanced degrees employees have, the better it looks on some metrics I don't know about.
It's all bullcrap, and I hate it. And still, I keep that stupid addendum to my name on my email signature, because I've noticed people (professors, especially) respond to me better since I added it.
