America’s Most Popular Graduate Degrees

Not surprisingly, the MBA was the most popular master’s degree program for both men and women. What I found interesting, however, was how quickly the most popular master’s degree programs diverge for men and women.

Women clustered around master’s programs involving education. Seven of the top 10 master’s degree programs for women involved education. For men, only two program in the top 10 were education related.

In contrast, men focused on technical degrees such as computer science, accounting and mechanical engineering.

Law is the most popular professional degree for men and women and medicine is a distant No. 2.

Tomorrow I’m going to share advice on how to pick master’s degree programs.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

So this shouldn’t come as a surprise:  Harvard tops the list of business school that have produced the most Wall Street scoundrels in our current financial mess.

Here are the top three winners:

1. Harvard
2. New York University
3. Cornell University

Do business schools turn future investment bankers into sharks or do they attract a certain kind of capitalist? A study conducted by a Harvard professor of his school’s MBA students suggests the latter.

Scott Snook studied 50 students from before they enrolled until they graduated in 2006. Using psychological tests and interviews, he found that one-third were still, in respects, stuck in adolescence, and had trouble empathizing.

Snook found another third inclined to define right or wrong in terms of what everybody else is doing. That might explain why even well-educated executives have fallen prey to the subprime- mortgage debacle, he said.

“They can’t really step back and take a critical view,” he said. “They’re totally defined by others and by the outcomes of what they’re doing.”

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also write a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.