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Doing an MA at a program that also grants a PhD

Brian Leiter

In the brief section of the PGR on MA programs, in addition to listing terminal MA programs with unusually strong faculties, the PGR has also included the following remarks about MA programs in PhD-granting departments:

Many Ph.D. programs also admit M.A. students.  Students should be more wary of the M.A.  programs at schools in roughly the top 25 that grant the PhD:  often M.A. students take a back seat to the  Ph.D. students (in terms of faculty attention), and students with weak  philosophy backgrounds may find the pace and level of seminars geared to Ph.D.  students daunting.  Students considering  M.A. programs in top-ranked Ph.D.-granting institutions should investigate the  situation of M.A. students at the school carefully before enrolling.  However, some PhD programs that are less  highly ranked, but still have strong faculties, may in fact turn out to be very  good choices for the MA.  

So, for example, Prof. Piers Rawling, Chair of the Department at Florida State University, recently wrote to me:

The philosophy department at Florida State University offers (as it has for some years) the opportunity for well-qualified students to pursue a terminal MA with full TA funding for up to three years. MA students take the same courses as entering PhD students, and are in no way considered to be “second-class citizens.” We are particularly interested in good students who do not want (initially at least) to commit to a PhD program, or who are interested in studying philosophy but did not major in the subject, and thus lack the background to pursue a PhD right off the bat. 

Prof. Rawling also confirms that they make financial aid (basically TAships) available to MA students, as they do with PhD students.  I invite Chairs or Graduate Program Directors at other PhD programs that also admit MA students to post here with information about their MA programs and especially about how they fund the MA students.  (Because I am on the road, comments may take awhile to appear, so plesae be patient.)  All comments must be signed and include a valid e-mail address.

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3 responses to “Doing an MA at a program that also grants a PhD”

  1. Christopher Stephens

    In addition to our Ph.D. program, we (at the University of British Columbia) have a robust M.A. program. As with our Ph.D. students, all of the M.A.s we admit are funded. M.A. funding is approximately $20,000 per year for two years, with half of that money coming from Teaching Assistantships, the rest from fellowships. Students have the option of doing less teaching, or, sometimes, a bit more, which affects the precise amount of funding. There is occasionally additional research money for MA students from various faculty grants.

    Our M.A. students tend to be a mixture of three basic types: students who are coming from an interdisciplinary background and want more philosophy before entering a Ph.D. program, students who have a lot of philosophy background but simply want to improve their chances of getting into a better Ph.D. program, and students who are pursuing the M.A. in philosophy for its own sake (two recent graduates from the third category are now in Medical School).

    In recent years, our M.A. students have gone on to pursue the Ph.D. in philosophy in many programs, including Indiana HPS, UC Riverside, Boston University, U of Miami, U of Maryland, U of Toronto, Penn, as well as here at UBC.

    I should add that many of the other Ph.D. programs in Canada have robust M.A. programs as well. But I’ll let faculty from those schools speak to the details.

    Reply
  2. Tom Tuozzo

    The Philosophy Department at the University of Kansas encourages applications to their terminal MA program. The department offers both thesis and non-thesis options for the MA degree; we also offer a joint JD / MA degree with KU Law School. MA students take the same courses and seminars as Ph.D. students. Full GTA funding is available for well-qualified MA students.

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  3. Sherri Irvin

    The philosophy department at the University of Oklahoma offers a terminal MA as well as a PhD. MA students can choose to write either an exam or a thesis in addition to coursework.

    We have just begun to re-allocate some of our graduate teaching assistantships toward the MA program. MA students take all of the same courses as PhD students, are well-integrated members of our departmental community, and receive full faculty attention.

    We have a good track record of placing our MA students in PhD programs when that is their goal. We are strongly committed to improving the diversity and inclusiveness of the profession and are very interested in receiving MA and PhD applications from members of underrepresented groups.

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