Debra W. Stewart, President of the Council of Graduate Schools, is quoted: “Several years ago, it became very clear to us that the master’s degree was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions.”  She further states that the degrees are not “generic” master’s degrees but are profession specific such as a Master’s degree in Supply Chain Management or a Master’s in Skeletal and Dental Bioarcheology.

Ms. Pappano interviews a number of individuals for their opinions as to whether or not bachelor’s degrees are being devalued or that employers are increasing qualifications.  The opinions seem to support a little of both.

The topic reminds me of an article published in the July/August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review.  Written by Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher, and Tommy Johns, “The Big Idea: The Age of Hyper-specialization” takes the concept of credentialing one step further by stating that employers in the future will look increasingly for workers who have a very unique specialty.  Knowledge worker jobs will “atomize” into global networks of workers able to perform highly specialized tasks.  The authors provide an example of TopCoder, a software firm, that breaks up clients’ IT projects into small chunks that freelance developers compete for the best design, coding, systems integration, bug fixing, etc.  With a network of 300,000 developers world-wide, TopCoder is able to identify specialists and complete the projects for a fraction of the cost of a firm required to employ generalists and specialists.

Malone, Laubacher, and Johns further state that the ability of companies like TopCoder to increase the specialization of its workers will require that managers will have to increase their level of expertise in order to assign the work, manage the intermediaries, and verify that complex problems have been solved properly.  The authors propose that cultivating communities of specialized workers will likely be the key discipline of managers in the 21st century.

Predicting major changes in the employment base is no easy task and none of the authors of these articles attempt to quantify the impact of the trend that they are predicting.  Improving your qualifications, whether through the completion of a master’s degree or a specialized certificate, would be prudent if you can afford the time and the cost of obtaining those credentials.

Michael Rabjohns sent me a note informing me of an article in the July Harvard Business Review written by Anita Elberse.  Elberse is an associate professor of business administration in the marketing department at Harvard Business School.  Her article leads off with a portrayal of Grand Central Publishing, a company that lists 275-300 books each year in its catalog and identifies two (my emphasis) for which it will pull out all the stops in marketing.  Grand Central pursues a blockbuster strategy for which Elberse gives credit to economists Robert Frank and Phillip Cook (an economist at my alma mater, Duke University) for endorsing in their 1995 book, The Winner-Take-All Society. 

Elberse states that this strategy conflicts with the long tail theory espoused by Chris Anderson.  She reviewed sales data from Rhapsody (used by Anderson) and Quickflix (an Australian DVD rental company).  She states that the data shows that seldom rented DVD’s shift into the tail and their usage doubles over a five year period of time.  However, the number of DVD’s with no usage quadruples over the same period of time.  She states that the tail is becoming longer and flatter, not bulkier.  During the same period of time, the number of titles in the top 10% dropped by 50% which demonstrates that the “winner-take-all” strategy is winning.  Elberse’s data for music tracks confirms a similar trend where the tail lengthens, but grows flatter and fewer tracks are in the top 10%.

Elberse concludes her article with recommendations to producers and retailers.  The only finding where she directly supports the long tail is in her recommendation to retailers stating that if the goal is to cater to the heaviest volume customers, include a diverse assortment of titles since her research indicates that the buyers of the obscure titles tend to be the heaviest users of the online services.

Anderson doesn’t dispute Elberse’s research; in fact, he praises it.  But he claims that Elberse’s portrayal of the “head” of the tail at 32% and the tail at 68% confirms his theory about the size of the tail.  Elberse responds to Anderson’s comments by stating that he is inconsistent about the definition of size of the tail and head and that consistency in definition would verify her findings that the tail is bigger but flatter and that analysis has repercussions for producers and retailers in the strategy that they should pursue.

All in all, this is a great debate and I thank a reader for pointing this out to me.  I’m sure the dialogue will continue.  I think Anderson and Elberse are accurate in their claims and I like Elberse’s caution to certain businesses, particularly producers.