Table 2-5, 36 percent of those who earn master’s degrees will eventually work in for-profit firms in industry; 20 percent will work in four-year colleges and universities; 17 percent will work in government; and 13 percent will work in either K–12 education or community colleges. Indeed, there are slightly more master’s-level biologists employed by for-profit firms than there are doctorates. In industry, master’s-educated biologists may work in research alongside Ph.D.s, but they work more frequently in other areas. One source reports that within the biotechnology workforce as a whole (not just the research segment of it), 19 percent have a Ph.D., 17 percent have a master’s, 50 percent have a baccalaureate, and 14 percent have a degree from a vocational/community college.¹¹

Master’s-educated biologists in the biotechnology sector work in both research and non-research areas of firms and are presumably substitutable for MBAs, JDs, or Ph.D.s in many instances. Science-educated professionals trained at the master’s level who can bring particular business skills along with their scientific knowledge to the workplace may even be superior to others for certain positions—in what has been a Ph.D.-intensive industry. We would argue, then, that master’s degree programs should be developed to produce individuals who have those skills.

The natural sciences have been “among the few academic areas that have persisted with the ‘traditional’ model of the master’s degree,” according to the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).¹² The fields of computer science, applied mathematics, and the geosciences—fields sometimes classified as engineering rather than science—are the exceptions to this generalization. In 2005 the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) coordinated surveys conducted by three scientific societies on master’s programs as a gateway to the workforce. Data from the American Geological Institute, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Society for Industrial Microbiology provide a glimpse of the variations in master’s education in the sciences. It is robust in the geosciences (with 122 departments and 700-plus graduates in 2004) compared to microbiology/biotechnology and applied mathematics (with about 50 programs/departments in each, but barely double digits in graduates). Applied math was seen as primarily business/industry oriented, typically not requiring a thesis but encouraging an off-campus internship. Student quality and employment placements were seen as key