What is the Point of Doing a Masters and a PhD?

As a (post)graduate student distracted from working on my masters thesis I have always wondered what the point of doing a masters or doctoral degree is. It seems to me that the MBA and JD are relatively straightforward and self-explanatory. Having done business administration as a major modeled to be like the first year of a proper American MBA, I can see how it gives a student the practical skills to run a business or develop in a commercial and entrepreneurial world. As for a law degree, they're for several types of people who include those that have no idea what they want do after their undergraduate studies, those who seriously committed to becoming lawyers or law professors, plus a good number of young, aspiring politicians. As a side note, I'm not convinced that having a law as an undergraduate subject without a liberal arts environment (like in England) makes for an interesting legal profession, though it certainly does produce great lawyers nonetheless.

But what about the masters and doctoral programs that make up the chunk of (post)graduate studies at major universities? Obviously some people have given thought to these things, the people who organize departments and those who created the Bologna Process. I've always thought that it should be a straightforward structure. After undergraduate studies you do a masters that makes you further specialized. Then if you want to become an academic or do research, you do a PhD. Yet at Cambridge I've met people who have doing multiple masters and are now doing yet another. Some have done a masters and a PhD and are back for a second masters in a completely different area. I suppose that's what makes individuals interesting and unique, reflecting their own life circumstances and distinct career paths (or lack of). Still, I'm a bit dismayed to hear about degree inflation. Whereas in the path a bachelors was quite a distinctive achievement, my German classmates tell me they're compelled to do a masters as a minimum and recognition only really comes with a PhD. I wonder if it has anything to with the German obsession for formal titles. Somehow I feel that  although education benefits the economy by producing a skilled labor force, at some point society goes beyond the minimum point of marginal benefits when young people only leave school way past their productive youth. Maybe that's a PhD dissertation for someone studying education to spend several years of their life writing up.

Medical school is a world I know nothing about, but that seems quite straightforward as well: after several years you become a physician, surgeon, researcher, etc.

Living in Financial Times

My article for the Cambridge University Journal of Politics is now up on the the journal's website.