Is an M.Com Better After B.Com? What Parents Should Know Before Your Kid Decides
Last Sunday, my niece Riya spread her half-eaten pepperoni pizza across my dining table, laptop open to two tabs that had her staring at the screen like it held an impossible final exam question. One was the M.Com admission portal for our local state university. The other was a trainee offer letter from a downtown wealth management firm. Before I could pour her a refill of iced tea, she looked up and asked the question I’ve heard from half the parents of B.Com grads I know: “Is M.Com actually better after B.Com, or should I just take the job?”
Her dad, my brother Ajay, was leaning against the kitchen doorway, and said what most parents of my generation say: “What’s a B.Com worth these days? You need a master’s to stand out. Everyone I know who did commerce got their M.Com before looking for work.”
I thought of my own son, Arjun, who finished his B.Com five years ago, standing at that exact same crossroads. Back then, I was the one pushing for M.Com. I’d heard the same line over and over, that it’s better to get the degree done early than to try to go back to school later. Arjun got accepted to a good full-time program, showed up for the first semester, and came home one Friday saying he hated it. It was all the same theory he’d already studied in B.Com, no real-world practice, and he was turning down a bookkeeping job at a small firm that he’d actually really wanted. I argued with him for a week. He dropped out anyway, took the job, and did a part-time distance M.Com over three years. His employer covered half the tuition, and by the time he got his degree, he’d already been promoted twice. Today he makes 15% more than his classmate who did a full-time M.Com right after graduation, who started job hunting two years later.
I said to Riya and Ajay that “better” doesn’t mean the same thing for every kid. It depends on what Riya actually wants to do five years from now. I talked to a career counselor at the city’s commerce college a few months back, when a friend’s kid was in the same spot, and she broke it down pretty simply. M.Com is definitely the better call if your kid wants to teach commerce at the college level, go into research, or aim for a central or state government finance role that has a built-in pay bump or requirement for a master’s degree. If your kid is finishing their CA foundation and wants an exemption from some papers later, an M.Com also clears that path early.
But if your kid wants to go into corporate accounting, fintech, small business bookkeeping, wealth management, or retail banking, a full-time M.Com right after B.Com often isn’t the better choice. The counselor told me that most entry-level private sector roles these days care more about what you can do – do you know how to reconcile accounts, use QuickBooks, pull a clear financial report – than what degree you have. Two years of work experience will get you further than a master’s degree with no experience, more often than not.
I pulled Riya’s laptop toward me and showed her the first small step anyone can take instead of guessing: open 10 job postings for the exact role she wants in five years, and read the requirements line by line. She wants to be a wealth advisor, so we pulled a dozen postings. Half said B.Com required, M.Com preferred. None said M.Com mandatory. The starting salary for a B.Com trainee was 28,000 a month, and for a fresh M.Com grad it was 34,000. But if she stays in the trainee role for two years, the job description says she’d be making 42,000 by the time she would have graduated from a full-time M.Com, plus she has two years of client experience that most fresh M.Com grads don’t have.
The concrete thing I told them they can do this week, that doesn’t cost anything, is reach out to two people who already have the job Riya wants. One got their M.Com right after B.Com, one worked first then got their degree. Ask them two straight questions: how much did your M.Com help you get where you are, and would you do it the same way again? That’s way more useful than listening to uncles at family dinners repeat what they think is better.
Ajay was still worried that if she doesn’t do it now, she’ll never go back. I told him Arjun did it part-time, it’s slower, but it works. Riya can switch to full-time later if she finds she actually needs it. A lot of employers will cover at least part of the tuition if the degree is relevant to your job, so you don’t have to pay the full cost out of pocket.
Last I checked in, Riya made those two calls this week. The first, a wealth advisor at a big bank who did M.Com right out of college, told her it was worth it because the bank’s pay scale automatically bumps up for master’s holders. The second, who runs her own independent wealth advisory practice, told her she wasted two years of potential income and experience on her full-time M.Com, and would have been better off starting work first.
Now Riya’s leaning toward taking the trainee job, and enrolling in a part-time distance M.Com that lets her work and study at the same time. Ajay’s still not 100% sure it’s the right call, but he agreed to let her try it for a year. We won’t know for another five years if it was the better choice for her. But what I’ve learned from watching Arjun and Riya and a dozen other kids go through this is that there’s no one right answer. “Better” just depends on what your kid wants out of their degree and their career, not what was true when we were in college.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Is an M