Many hold a master's degree

Question

"Many of our employees hold a master's degree."

"Many of our employees hold master's degrees."

"Many of our employees hold masters' degrees."

Which of the above is the correct expression, assuming none of the employees have more than one master's degree? (You can either have 1 or none).

For me, I feel #1 sounds the most natural, but I'm not sure it is correct.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: This isn't a duplicate as the question isn't about whether or not you need an apostrophe at all (all three of my examples given have apostrophes in them)!

This is only a 'half-duplicate', namely as it concerns the apostrophe. However, the present question also asks about singular vs plural, which is not addressed at all in the Is there an apostrophe in a master's degree? question. — linguisticturn, Jan 15 '19 at 17:12

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 15 '19 at 11:21

Personally, I'm ruling out the third one as it just doesn't sound right!

I think with the second constraint given (i.e they can either have one degree or none), the first one seems appealing. The second one partly gives room for us to assume that they can either have one or two degrees.

Many hold a master's degree

1 Answers1