Any advantage to an MFE over a Ph.D?

[Aaron Pereira]

I'm thinking about getting a Ph.D in mathematical finance from one of the universities offering strong MFE programs (such as CMU, Princeton or Cornell in their PMATH Phd in financial mathematics, ORFE, ORIE programs respectively). I was just curious whether the MFE program has any advantages over the corresponding Ph.D program or if the Ph.D was just all around better. I also heard that MFE programs generally prepare you to be a trader and/or use models instead of actually doing hard math and creating high quality models. To what extent are either of these true?

 

[Canuck]

https://www.quantnet.com/threads/mfe-v-phd-direction.6868/