The International Schools Review Forum

One of the schools I interviewed for is offering to subsidize a masters in education program (they apparently fly in professors to teach it). But the catch is that the program is three years... I was wondering how valuable these programs are? Has anyone done one? Was it worth it? Does it really increase your job prospects?

My school does the same thing, its a pretty good deal as long as the program is one that interests you and you plan to stick it out for the entire three years. If you do two and move you may lose some of your hours as many Masters programs will only accept a limited number of transfer credits.

I don't see the catch as a catch at all. Most MEd programs, done part-time, would take about the same amount of time to complete, and they wouldn't have the advantage of coming to your door and being subsidized.

But you do need to make sure that this MEd makes sense for you. How does it align with your career plans? Do you need an MEd that will prepare you for admin, or one that will make you a better teacher or teacher leader? What's your preferred work style? Would you prefer an on-line MEd program, which would allow you to spread out each course over a term, or what this one presumably does, which is typically compressing a course over a week to 10 days, so you'd either be meeting 4-5 hours a night after school, or having full-time classes during school holidays. So you need to know your style and whether you would flourish in this sort of set-up.

Are the programs useful? Generally yes. You can learn a lot, improve your career path and probably get a raise.

I agree in general with the previous posters. It really depends what your looking for, and what the focus and reputation of the program are.
You also need to ask yourself what the focus of the program is for you. Is it Leadership (admin preparation), of course it free so it might not matter to you. Curriculum/Instruction (classroom advancement)
While its unlikely youd be getting a diploma mill degree, understand that most programs are outsourced to schools of "average reputation". They arent going to overly impress anyone more then "having any masters would".
Of course a free masters is a nice perk, but your looking then at living your work life. Most of these programs have a very compressed lecture format as its long lectures over a few weeks, but then you have the outside work, papers that you have to do. Whats the value of your time and stress in that kind of format.

A masters generally does make you more marketable and does give you an increase in salary, but the differences vary a great deal. Some schools might give you a large increase ($10K) or a very small one ($1K), but again its free. There are schools that dont give anything at all.

Thanks everyone!!