Should I go for a Masters in Geography / GIS?
August 3, 2010 8:05 PM   Subscribe

Should I go for a Masters in Geography / GIS? What will the future hold career-wise?

I have been a graphic designer for the last 7 or 8 years, and have increasingly become disillusioned with the whole marketing/advertising side of design (and design in general). I have always been interested in maps and geography, and have been seriously considering for the past few weeks getting a masters in geography specializing in GIS.

I am interested in nature conservation / environmental protection & planning and the mapping aspect of it, and I think this is the route that I would go. Not having any science classes (or math classes) past high school, would/should I go into a Masters program, and would they accept me? It seems like the right choice, instead of getting a second bachelors, but the only grad students I know are lawyers and MBA students, so they aren't much help.

Also, is there a future in that career path? Is it even a career path? I can't find any good data on something specialized like that, and it seems like the GIS aspect is fairly new anyways. Everything else I find about GIS seems to be 5 years old. I have a variety of interests that tie in to geography, and its only been in the last two or three weeks that I realize that they all mesh together - cartography, transportation design, emergency planning, geopolitics, etc.

I am planning on moving to the Boston area, so I have been looking at colleges in Mass. I've already reached out to a few professors and I have a advising session in a few weeks with a professor where I currently live (NYC), but I'd like to have a firmer grasp as to what I should be asking them about.

Any feedback is welcome. Thanks!
posted by cavs33 to Education (9 answers total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
GIS and especially GIS-based data aggregation and interpretation among different sensors is a tremendous career path. Here is a simple example:

Silas Hogwinder has a section of land planted in potatoes. He wishes to maximize the profit gained from the land. He notices the yield varies by position within the section. He must decide whether to accept the yield if he applies fertilizer uniformly (cheap) or varies the deposition by position (more expensive, given that GPS is probably the way to figure out position and thereby vary how much fertilizer goes on each bit of land). Advise Mr. Hogwinder which is the more profitable approach.

Now: multiply the simple example by the number of discrete operations on a potato field (planting, tillage, fertilizing, spraying, watering, harvesting, spraying for nematodes) and you wind up with a set of overlays which represent the variation of profit by operation. You have at hand satellite data (free and paid for); yield maps; aerial photography; cartography; perhaps moisture sensors in the field.

Farmers cannot do without this information any longer. As farms get bigger and more agri-business-like they increasingly rely on it; and there aren't many people who can gather all these threads and present them to the user in a form that shows what action results in what yield or profit. It is a difficult and under-appreciated milieu.
posted by jet_silver at 8:53 PM on August 3, 2010


My fiancee is in a doctorate program for geography, but she's doing human geography and is essentially trying to become a professor - so I have pretty limited information. My fiancee got a bachelor's in art history and a masters in women's studies, so I don't know if science and math are the biggest prerequisites out there, although she was applying as a human geographer.

A masters student that started the same year as her recently did an internship at a consulting firm that works with developers and architects. Most of the time that I use GIS (as an architect) is in mapping programs for overlay zones the building department wants us to locate ourselves in, so someone's doing that input work - this is probably your future career path with a masters.

When my fiancee was applying, Clark seemed to be a big deal, but she's saying now that most of the really good schools are out on the west coast.
posted by LionIndex at 9:05 PM on August 3, 2010


I am finishing up the final year of a Masters by coursework in geospatial science, and chosing this course was a great decision. I chose to specialize in GIS but there were options to study cartography, remote sensing, natural resource management as well. There'd be lots of ways for someone with a design background to put GIS to good use.

There's heaps of demand in the field - GIS seems to be exploding everywhere at the moment. I got a good government job halfway through the course (after 6 classes or the equivalent of a semester and a half full time study). The work is really interesting and varied so far.

The course I'm doing is 3 years part time, with many classes running in the evenings after work. The school asked for a Bachelor degree as entry, but they were pretty flexible about what area (and were also happy to consider work/life experience). I did undergrad in maths and earth science, but haven't really needed any of that to complete the coursework so far. This is in Australia however, so YMMV. Can't help you with US schools, sorry.

Good luck with whatever you choose!
posted by procrastinator_general at 10:02 PM on August 3, 2010


We employ many GIS specialists at my department of environment, and there's a big shortage, good employees are hard to come by. They're used for all sorts of conservation related purposes.
posted by wilful at 10:16 PM on August 3, 2010


I've been a GIS Specialist / cartographer for about 10 years with no regrets. I set my own timelines, I create my own projects, and my boss and colleagues are always happy with my work as long as they get their maps. The job market has always been excellent, and I'm sure it's still growing. Even municipal governments of towns with 10,000 or less people have GIS departments now. Corporations like WalMart and Starbucks employ GIS Specialists to help determine optimal store locations. I think the CIA employs the most cartographers of any agency in the US. Not to mention all the conservation organizations and engineering firms. I could go on and on.

My primary gripe with my job though is that ESRI's GIS software is horribly buggy and glitchy. Learning all the errors and bugs and the workarounds necessary to deal with them is as important as just learning the tools of the software. Seriously, what the fuck does "segmentation violation" mean? Couldn't they program error boxes that even make a little sense? And I really love when I click on a button in 9.x while that globe is spinning and the entire goddam program crashes. Anyway, it's a great field, so I say go for it.
posted by Beardsley Klamm at 11:42 PM on August 3, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks guys! I was surprised I'd get so many responses by the morning. It makes me feel better about everything.

I can understand about esri - I did some 3d modeling for a while and had the same type of problems. We always said "PC load letter? What the fuck does that mean?" Ha ha. I love office space. It's too bad esri has a strangle hold on the industry
posted by cavs33 at 6:06 AM on August 4, 2010


GIS is huge and it can only get bigger with all our phones and computers becoming location aware. It's definitely in its infancy.

But...I wouldn't pursue a degree strictly in GIS. If you're interested in natural area preservation, find a natural resources management degree. If it's social issues, public policy. Cities and development? Urban planning. All those programs will give you as much GIS experience as you want.

The risk with focusing on GIS specifically is that you risk getting stuck in that role. Would you rather be an engineer that uses AutoCAD, or a drafter that does nothing but AutoCAD? Would you rather be a photographer that uses Photoshop, or a photo editor who does nothing but Photoshop?

A degree focused on GIS would be fine if what you want to do is create better GIS software (god knows we need it) or run a big GIS department somewhere. Otherwise, I'd stay away. No one cares where your software skills come from as long as you have them. You'll pick up GIS just as fast doing it in parallel with whatever your main interest is. Maybe faster. A side benefit is that you'll just be learning the practical aspects of GIS and avoiding some of the more math/computer science heavy stuff. The really nerdy stuff is incredibly interesting, but only useful for 1% of real-world GIS work.

Just my $.02. I know a lot of people who have gotten hung up on their career paths because of being pigeonholed as techies. I also know geographers doing very cool stuff that goes way beyond their training...it's not that it's a dead end, just that it might not be the most direct route to where you want to go.
posted by pjaust at 6:17 AM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Being pigeonholed is one thing I'm worried about, so I've been looking at getting a masters in overall geography and maybe getting some kind of certification in Gis concurrently. I'm more interested in using Gis with my job than developing Gis.
posted by cavs33 at 6:41 AM on August 4, 2010


GIS software keeps getting easier and easier to use. So much so, that I believe a lay person will soon be able to make adequate maps for most tasks. They will be able to do this without the months/years of training it used to take in order to do the job properly. You should try to market yourself as something different than a guy/girl who knows how to work the mapping program if you decide to go down this path.
posted by maxpower at 7:10 AM on August 4, 2010


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