New ways to master your destiny

After completing his undergraduate degree in medicine and working as an intern at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in his home town of Perth, then travelling to Melbourne and working in public hospitals, Dr Rohan Hockings had undeniably done himself and his family proud. But he wasn’t entirely satisfied.

His next step was a stint as team doctor for the famous VFL side Port Melbourne. It was an exciting and colourful option, particularly in a peerless 2011 season when the Borough, as they’re affectionately known, won every game of the home-and-away season and capped it off with a premiership.

But he still wasn’t satisfied.

“In 2010 I cut down my hours and worked for Port Melbourne on a part-time basis while studying the Juris Doctor at Melbourne,” says Dr Hockings. “I decided to do postgraduate law as a bridge to the commercial sector because that is where my longer-term employment interests lie.”

Experiences like these are becoming increasingly common for Bachelors degree holders. According to Graduate Careers Australia’s Beyond Graduation 2010 report, being in full-time employment – even if in a managerial or professional capacity – does not necessarily mean that a graduate is in employment related to their ultimate career goals.

“I have just been admitted to the Supreme Court,” says Dr Hockings, who is now a solicitor at legal firm Freehills. “I don’t have a clearly determined career path mapped out at this stage. I’m just trying to get some exposure to the corporate environment, which is a very different one from practising medicine in a public hospital, and I’ll then work out what I want to do next.”

Pro-Vice Chancellor of Participation and Engagement, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne Professor Richard James says the Masters degree is gradually becoming the natural career entry point in many professional fields.

“This reflects the growing complexity of professional work and the need for graduates to have a deeper and wider set of skills as they commence their professional careers,” he says.

“For employers, recruiting Masters graduates allows them to secure highly trained people with premium skills.”

Last year in Australia 97,000 domestic students studied Masters programs by coursework, a staggering increase of 57,000 from those who did so 10 years earlier. In fact, the latest government statistics (for 2009) indicate that of the total number of some 300,000 domestic and international postgraduates, over half – 176,000 – were in Masters by coursework programs. In the USA, the trend is even more marked, with Masters now the fastest-growing degree. Over 600,000 were awarded in 2009 – more than doubling in number since the 1980s.

In the Australian context Sarah Fortuna, who now works as a strategy adviser in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne, came from a diametrically different discipline but, like Dr Hockings, found moving on to Masters study helped cement her career goals. It also gave her the opportunity to acquire the skills she wasn’t picking up on the job working with the United Nations Development fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Aceh.

“I think the most valuable thing about the Executive Master of Arts (EMA), which I studied at Melbourne while working part time at the Department of Justice, was that it gave me time and space to think seriously and creatively about management, leadership and communication,” says Ms Fortuna. “I came out of the EMA with a clearer sense of what I wanted to achieve and what I can offer an organisation. I’m quite sure all those things improved my employment prospects.”

For Dr Hockings, having come from a scientific background at undergraduate level, the method of studying postgraduate law was very different. “It broadened my perspective with respect to the approaches that can be taken to critical analysis.”

Professor Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education says programs like the EMA are innovative because they are extended and of high intellectual quality.”

For his colleague, Professor James, the strong message is that Australians will need to engage in more years of study to secure professional employment and to remain professionally relevant.

“More people will study Bachelors and Masters back-to-back, and more people will return to university for Masters-level study after their initial years in the professional workplace,” Professor James says.

“Overall though, the Masters degree is unlikely to ever replace the Bachelors degree for professional entry in certain fields. Rather, we’re likely to see the emergence of multiple pathways and career entry points, and a more dynamic and fluid relationship between study and work.”

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