Dont listen to drones (Score 1)

No offense, but there seems to be a lot of teachers, IT folks, and programmers from big dumb companies giving you advice. If you want to work as a teacher, an IT administrator, or a programmer at a big dumb company, by all means, listen to their advice. But my guess is you didn't start the CS program to have boring job...you started it to make cool things and hopefully make a lot of money in the process. None of the above qualify so ignore it. The most excited CS guys are usually the ones working for Google like companies. I say "Google like" because what you really want is a pre IPO Google. One that is still small and growing rapidly and building amazingly cool things, and oh yeah has the chance to go public and make everybody a lot of money. CS guys at a company like that aren't overhead, they are the lifeblood of the company. What does that have to do with a masters? Because cool companies like that are often (rightly) led by tech driven management, not lame HR. And tech driven management likely puts a premium on CS degrees, especially if it's a grad degree from a good school. How do I know? I run one of these companies and I have two open recs right now where I'm not even looking at your resume you unless you have a *Masters in CS/CE*.