17 ms·

Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

152 points by joker3 7y ago

duxup 7y ago
I wonder as far as education goes if graduating college, working, and then returning for a masters or similar things would be a better pattern. Or even graduating high school, working, college, working, college, or something else would be a better pattern. I've worked with some folks with MBAs who have no clue about how to work with people / think they're just "the boss" and what they say goes because no reason at all. Worked with folks with CS degrees who I don't think really like to code / can't troubleshoot at all. Front heavy education seems efficient on the surface, but I'm not sure makes sense without having a perspective on what life is like after that.
- joker3 7y ago
  I really don't like the idea that education is a thing you do once in your late teens/early twenties and then finish. There are good reasons to do something then, but there's no good reason to stop.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    Some sort of continuing education would be ideal, but once you settle into a career and the financial obligations of being an adult, stopping your income and ramping up your outgo to go back to school for a year or two becomes very untenable for most people. A master's degree isn't a particularly valuable credential, either, except in a few cases where it does directly unlock a higher pay grade. A lot of the industries that do require continuing ed, it's often at best a rubber stamping process, or an excuse for junkets - at least from what I have seen from friends and family in education, law and medicine. What doctors do to get their continuing ed credits blows away even the fat old days of tech shows like Lotusphere. With software, you can't just stop learning, but I'm not convinced that formal education is of much use. An RSS reader and a curated Twitter list would probably be a better investment of time.
  - duxup 7y ago
    I changed careers via a bootcamp. I've got VERY mixed feelings on how that industry works... But just the idea of going back to school to sort of "retool" or expand your toolset for 3 months full time, or 6 or something and get something worthwhile IMO could be the future. The question is if employers will support it. Granted going back for a more traditional school experience could be a very legitimate route too.
    - bunderbunder 7y ago
      I don't like the bootcamp model. I also don't like what a lot of graduate programs have become, insofar as they're jockeying to become souped-up bootcamps by making ever more grand career promises while trying to minimize the amount of time it takes to earn a degree. Just no. Schools shouldn't be selling jobs. They should be selling education. To that end, what I really want to see is more schools than just community colleges allowing you to take classes without being enrolled in a degree program. Once upon a time I contacted a university to see about taking some additional classes to fill in some gaps I didn't manage to fill while I was getting my bachelor's, and they told me that I couldn't just take a few classes; I'd have to enroll in a bachelor's program, become a major in the school, and go through earning a second bachelor's degree in a field for which I already held a bachelor's, just to get access to one or two classes. That's ridiculous. And anachronistic. It's a model that's designed for an era when postsecondary education was primarily reserved for children of a privileged elite class, and a very few people who were trying to break into the wealthy elite class. There's a huge gap between that model and what we actually need nowadays. In failing to adapt, the orthodox educational establishment is doing society a huge disservice, because the only other people to address it are a bunch of for-profit organizations who see the demand, first and foremost, as an arbitrage opportunity to exploit.
      - duxup 7y ago
        >Schools shouldn't be selling jobs. They should be selling education. I think that is what we have now... the education is disconnected from the jobs in the sense that the price makes no sense. I think a lot of what you describe is what happens when an education system thinks they're just selling "an education" without consideration that their student's are can't afford it.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Paying for education (and doing education full time) might well be things that you stop. They can be a good idea for a while without being a good idea forever.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    Totally agree. A career should be a constant mix between learning and working. But only a few get the chance to learn on the job and going to school while working on a job (and making needed money) is very hard.
- wil421 7y ago
  Not by choice exactly I’ve done College -> Work -> Work/College -> Professional Job. The first 6 months of my “real” career job in tech I learned almost as much as the first 2 years of college. I couldn’t imagine having a masters especially an MBA without having worked professionally, internships aside. I’m excluding the medical professions where the minimum to employment is a masters/doctorate. Even non-doctors have a lot of clinical/hospital experience before/during a masters. I’m about to start looking at Masters or MBA programs in my area. I’ll have almost 10 years of experience by then and happy I didn’t do it straight after school.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The good MBA programs basically require professional work experience at a reputable firm. Generally, you graduate perhaps at age 21 to 23, then work for a few years, then go get an MBA, and finish around 26 to 28. Edit: See Wharton class stats, shows a mean work experience of 5 years. https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/class-profile/ https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/class-profile/ MIT/Harvard/Stanford show similar: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/admissions/class-2020-profile https://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/admissions/class-2020-profile https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/default.aspx https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/defau... https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/class-profile https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/class-pr...
    - duxup 7y ago
      That makes a lot of sense. I worked with an MBA who couldn't seem to iron his shirts (or just didn't) for a while. Slowly his job duties were shifted to me... the guy he was supposedly help manage after he proved he couldn't figure out scheduling a 24/7 schedule. He clearly had no experience beyond school and some internships.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        I would actually assume someone with an MBA without professional work experience either couldn't get a (decent) job, and/or is not smart enough to research the difference between an MBA that's worth something vs another excuse for schools to make money.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  This is a quite solid concept. Especially regarding MBA's there's a lot of people management concepts where you can't really get the proper context without having seen in practice the environment in which they'd be applied, and you can't get that environment in a classroom. There are professional MBA programs which require a few years of work experience to join, and it makes quite a difference IMHO. I'm not that certain about CS. If you're doing software engineering (or research on 'meta-SE' e.g. methodology, architecture, programming languages), then yes, it'd make all sense to get some industry experience between college and masters; however if you're going to grad school for theoretical CS or machine learning or cryptography or quantum algorithms or any other directions of primarily academic research, then industry experience is helpful but definitely isn't necessary.
raleigh_user 7y ago
I did school => work => now going back to school. Granted I didn’t study CS undergrad but taught myself a lot. Since, I’ve learned and worked on some interesting problems. I want to work in big tech or in consulting. To do so, I need to be a lot better and/or have great grades. So spending 2 years going back to school and improving seems worth it to me. I have 0 student loans from undergrad and very minimal commitments as is.
rongenre 7y ago
Grad school really needs to have a cost/benefit analysis applied. I'd have loved to go and really deepen my understanding, but it's pretty clear that both in terms of income lost and not a huge premium paid by the industry over my BS and experience it's not worth it. It is something I may pursue if I get a windfall and am no longer concerned about retirement.
- duxup 7y ago
  I think maybe the only real way to know what the cost benefit might be for an individual is to just ... go work for a while and then see what you find in your experience and life. Then you're making a much more educated calculation as far as what you think it might get you, and if you want to go back to school and that. Just throwing that all on the front end while you're in school seems a bit like gambling.
  - rongenre 7y ago
    The only advantage I can see to going for an MS straight out of undergrad is that your lifestyle should be pretty low-rent. But doing grad school because you're good at school and don't know what else to do is a trap lots of otherwise smart people fall into.
    - duxup 7y ago
      >But doing grad school because you're good at school and don't know what else to do is a trap lots of otherwise smart people fall into. I suspect that is very much a thing. School is a great system that if you're good at it provides very clear paths to lots of affirmation and ... a good time. I don't blame anyone for being hesitant to step out of that bubble.... but not doing so can be pretty terrible too.
    - fma 7y ago
      It's a major advantage. I went to the same state university for my masters, so to me it was a continuation of my undergrad but in classes I was actually interested in. Even dumping money into a startup, I graduated with a low amount of debt. I lived a thrifty lifestyle, made money from internships, and after my sign on bonus for my full time job, I was debt free after graduation. My concentration for my MS was AI & Computer Networks...which I've never used :) Because of market forces I'm an application developer. I graduated 11 years ago and between then and now (married, 2 kids) I doubt I would have found the time and motivation to go back to school. It was around the housing crisis and jobs were crappy/not available so that was another motivation to do my MS. I also had the connections to form a startup (which failed) with other peers which has lead me to my current career.
kurthr 7y ago
tldr The Academy of Art (San Francisco) is just another place that figured out how to scam the loan system by labeling itself a Graduate School where the $limits are higher. Yale is substantially lower priced so it's not about quality or student degree choice... it's about scamming.
- sct202 7y ago
  Privately owned for-profit art school should be a giant warning to anyone thinking of enrolling.
  - kjs3 7y ago
    Absolutely this. My stepson (quite talented visual artist) was looking at going to SCAD. We met with the counselor, realized very quickly that they were more than happy to pile him up with a debt load that based on the odds of his getting a job in-field and his earning prospects if he did would see him still paying off his loans should he be fortunate to live into his second century.
  - musicale 7y ago
    No kidding. And foisting massive debt on art students just seems abusive.
  - anonuser123456 7y ago
    "But I'm following my passion."
crsv 7y ago
As someone who's hiring folks right now, a shocking trend is applicants who chained expensive middle tier private college expenses with middle to low tier private college masters programs - often times unrelated to the ultimately role they're applying to now. These investments aren't setting them up to be compelling candidates against folks who have equal and sometimes lesser tier schools as their undergraduate education coupled with meaningful real world experience. This carries over to performance in interviews as it related to applied knowledge as well. I'd say when putting a risk lens to this, it doesn't bode well for the likelyhood of timely repayment of this debt at scale.
- mediaman 7y ago
  How much of what you see is people who had pursued master degrees during the economic downturn? I heard that there was an enormous amount of people exiting the workforce to pursue education when there were few jobs available. Instead they likely got a pile of debt with no real furtherance of career goals as the economy recovered.
  - crsv 7y ago
    This is a great question. There may be some variability by role type, but for the last two hires where I started noticing this trend usually the masters was acquired 17-18 or 18-19 on the resume (2 year masters programs). These are also for mid-level roles as opposed to entry level or senior. Probably a lot of factors but I'd wonder if the readily available access to student loans was the biggest enabler. Just off the cuff I'd be curious if these decisions involved the perception of necessity for masters degrees or in how many cases they simply wanted to prolong the experience of undergrad (college is often a good time, I get it), and with the barrier being no more frictive than the student loan process they navigated for under grad, the decision just being the path of least resistance more than a calculated risk/reward decision.
  - joker3 7y ago
    The relationship between the business cycle and demand for graduate school is complicated. Some programs have a very strong countercyclical component to their demand, and others don't. See http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.648.7093&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.648... (and section 5 in particular).
ghobs91 7y ago
This is what happens when there's 0 pressure on universities to price their programs competitively. If the government is backing every loan, the schools get paid up front, and the risk is then transferred to the gov to collect, why WOULDN'T a university charge as high a tuition as possible and hop on the gravy train? Their non-profit status hasn't even done much to keep costs low, as they can just keep hiring tons of redundant administrators and have never-ending construction, thereby justifying higher tuitions as "operating costs". The dept of education needs to treat universities the same way Medicaid treats healthcare providers. Determine what it actually costs per student per year to run a university, and tell the schools "Accept $x or shove off". If they're going to benefit from gov backed loans, they should play by the govs rules. Look no further than this chart (https://i.imgur.com/B3sVMjg.png https://i.imgur.com/B3sVMjg.png), around 2010 was when the gov started fully backing and giving the loans directly, and conveniently it's when students needs for loans skyrocketed. It's so obvious that colleges took advantage of it. Enough is enough, this college cost situation is entirely the fault of the gov for allowing it to happen, and it's a massive drag on our economy and the potential of our citizens.
- freewilly1040 7y ago
  This is why I'm so skeptical of the "free college" rhetoric from Elizabeth Warren and the like... The underlying problem is the giant wealth transfer to colleges, and the progressive fixes seem to be to transfer even more wealth to them.
  - dd36 7y ago
    Or to do exactly as the OP said: this is what we’ll pay per student.
    - freewilly1040 7y ago
      Is this what is being proposed though? I agree with this approach, but I haven't seen the proposals being framed this way.
    - conanbatt 7y ago
JackFr 7y ago
I'm not sure what societal purpose is being served by Federal student loans as a class for graduate school. Eliminate them entirely. The primary effect will be to reduce the disconnect between the cost and the value. As an added benefit prices should come down, schools at the margin will fail.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  And number of graduate degrees conferred should come down. I'm not sure what purpose is being served by the vast majority of graduate degrees other than being a requirement to get your "foot in the door" because everyone else has one, too.
madengr 7y ago
Who the hell pays for an MS? At least back when I was in engineering grad school, everyone was covered by RA or TA grants, in addition to being paid by those. Of course in-state tuition at KU in 1996 was under $100/credit-hour, so if I did pay, those 9 credits/semester would be under $1k total.
- __full_pint 7y ago
  I’m confused as well, I’ve known a few MS CS students who didn’t do the RA TA Route, but were paying out of pocket. I never asked why because it seemed to be an infringement on their privacy.
  - bitcoinmoney 7y ago
    RA TA requires you are a slave of the professor. If you just want that degree by taking classes and doing a small project then you gotta pay up. Trafeoff
    - __full_pint 7y ago
      Yeah but RA or TA requirements are A) pretty beneficial B) worth the thousands of dollars that are in exchange especially when considering A
- novok 7y ago
  There are 2 tiers of graduate studies. Ones paid by grants and are more PhD style and are mostly free as you said. They are selective and do not have a lot of slots. And the 'free standing' ones that have a lot more slots, are not research focused and cost a lot more. Often seen for professionally licensed professions like psychology, law, or medicine. Sometimes to a degree where it's a really bad idea. Like in psychology where private grad school costs 5-7 years of your life and $200-$400k of %6-%8 debt for a job that pays $100-150k/yr.
- misiti3780 7y ago
  or your company pays, which is how i got an MS in applied math.
permatech 7y ago
In engineering the quip was always "if you're paying for graduate school you're doing it wrong" ... to even get in the door for most hardware jobs fresh out of school you need a MS. A PhD may be preferred, and will start with a higher salary -- but put in ~5yrs instead of 2. As long as the tuition is covered and you make money as a TA or RA in a low-cost of living area you should come out ahead in the engineering field. Not sure how that translates to software.
- Ocerge 7y ago
  I did undergrad research in school (CS, moved on to industry after I got my BS) and I heard the same thing; all of the grad students I worked with (Masters as well as PhDs) were paid by grants and the like. I went to a large state university that was pretty good at CS but not elite, yet all the people I worked with managed to not go into debt to get their advanced degrees. It's anecdotal I know, but I thought it was a given to never go into debt as a CS/engineering grad student if you can help it.
  - bitcoinmoney 7y ago
    It’s not anecdotal. Some schools even don’t accept you if you don’t have a scholarship for a PhD.
- iamatworknow 7y ago
  >In engineering the quip was always "if you're paying for graduate school you're doing it wrong" This is what I faced pursuing graduate studies in physics as well. Problem was, I graduated from undergrad in 2009 and the only grad school willing to pay for me during the economic downturn had a new, very poorly run program. I (voluntarily) dropped out after a year.
- verall 7y ago
  HW is a bit like this but with some good internship experience and a bachelors at a (>=good public state tier) school companies are interested. Of 4 HW friends I know just getting their bachelors 2 are going to do verif in industry and 2 are planning on PHds.
F_J_H 7y ago
Something I've speculated on - being a student provides a person with an identity that is reasonably "high status", or certainly higher status than an entry level position one might be forced to take in absence of a finding a job in one's chosen field of study upon earning a Bachelor's degree. (Especially if it's a Master's program.) So, for some, continuing on with a master's degree is preferable, despite the questionable marginal return. On the other hand, degree inflation is now a thing. In some fields, those you are competing with you for a job likely have master's degrees already, and you'll suffer by comparison. *edit: typos
GcVmvNhBsU 7y ago
Mentioned in the article is a company called 2U. The Huffington post had an article not too long ago about how online program managers like 2U contribute to the high cost of programs, and how masters programs are specifically targeted because there are not reporting requirements on admissions. https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeover-college/ https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeove...
diogenescynic 7y ago
This is a big reason I chose a cheap state university for my MBA and have paid for it in cash while taking classes part-time. I absolutely wasn’t willing to take out $165,000 at a 9% I test rate for some of the top tier programs and private schools.
prions 7y ago
I went back for my masters in CS after being a civil engineer for two years and learning cs my free time. These articles panning formal education don't fully grasp how difficult it is to get your foot in the door as a non-cs person whose also working full time. I also wanted to do something more technical than just web dev, which most career changers seem to land up in. Being a grad student opened a lot of doors into more technical roles in companies that are _only_ reserved for grad students. Grad school is expensive, but I went in with a solid plan. I mitigated some of this by going to an in-state school with a good CS program and commuting to class. I was very focused in my course choices and was a 4.0 student, which unlocked even more opportunities. I was able to land two good internships (one in embedded development and one in machine learning) and used that experience to springboard into a high paying role in NYC. I have no problems living alone in the city, paying my loans, and still saving a significant amount of money per paycheck. This is completely anecdotal but what I'm arguing is that grad school can be a good idea if you have a solid plan of how to get the most out of your education. The people I see who haven't gotten their money's worth came into school and just drifted through while assuming that opportunities would come to them just by virtue of being a grad student.
- geodel 7y ago
  Well it is not news that it would work out fine for 1% motivated/extraordinary/well-off people. It's the rest who need more caution and be realistic about their prospects.
- roymurdock 7y ago
  What kind of role are you in now? I'm curious as I work with a lot of embedded devs but see that most of the salary money is flowing towards AI (very unclear what many of these roles actually are) and its less sexy but more concrete counterpart of cloud devops
  - prions 7y ago
    The embedded work was just for an internship at Nokia/Bell Labs. I work at the place where I did my second internship; started doing ML engineering then pivoted to more data engineering work. You're right about embedded though. Most telecom hardware is a race to the bottom and there were a lot of layoffs at Nokia when I was there.
deleted 7y ago
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noodlesUK 7y ago
Every time the topic of universities comes up, I’m reminded of how the staffing makeup of my university has changed, even just in the past 5 years. It’s gone from the majority of staff being academic to a majority being non-academic. Whether this is a symptom or a cause is as yet unclear, but at least here in the UK, a trend towards the wastefulness I hear about in US institutions seems clear. Just this month we’ve started an academic restructure which adds an additional layer of administration staff across the university, replacing the few specifically departmental administrators with a much larger body of admin staff who have a much larger remit.
blockchainman 7y ago
“To quote an official of the U.S. Department of Education, many colleges “choose to increase tuition because they can get away with it.” - The scandal of tuition by Thomas Sowell
dpflan 7y ago
I think a good example of good economic value are the growing offerings for M.S. in C.S., like Georgia Tech's OSMCS program which is offered completely online at a price less than $10K total. """ Tuition & Fees for OMS CS: Tuition: $510 per 3-credit hour course (most OMS CS courses will be 3 credit hours) Fees: $301 per academic term of enrollment ($194 institutional fee + $107 technology fee). Fees are assessed only for those terms in which students are enrolled in courses. """ > https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/cost-payment-schedule https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/cost-payment-sched... There are other programs, like Data Analytics.
blockchainman 7y ago
Excellent article by my hero Thomas Sowell: http://thelawofentropy.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-scandal-of-college-tuition-by.html http://thelawofentropy.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-scandal-of-c...
s1mon 7y ago
Academy of Art is a real estate company with an education problem. They have countless illegally modified buildings around SF (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Academy-of-Art-agrees-to-60-million-settlement-10804028.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Academy-o...), with a ton of diesel buses spewing pollution to cart around wanna-be artists from all over the world. Note that these students didn't have to show any portfolio to get in, they just needed to come up with the $$$$$ somehow. The owners have a showroom for their classic car collection which isn't generally accessible to even the transportation design students (https://thebolditalic.com/just-how-much-is-academy-of-art-s-vintage-car-collection-worth-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-32cc8bfa70ac https://thebolditalic.com/just-how-much-is-academy-of-art-s-...).
heroHACK17 7y ago
One thing I wish the article touched on: Why aren't we asking ourselves how current tuition rates got so high in the first place? If the federal government allows public universities to get away with creating administrative roles like 'Director of Picking Blue or Yellow Gatorade for the Football Team', that demands close to six-figure salaries, there's no wonder students have to incur debt to go to school. They aren't paying for their degree, they are paying the salaries of ballooning administrative chaff.
Merrill 7y ago
A Master's Degree seems most useful in two cases: 1. to change field if you made a mistake with your Bachelor's, or 2. to enter the US after getting a Bachelor's in your home country.
ratling 7y ago
For 90% of people a Masters degree is a great way to educate yourself out of employability.
deepakhj 7y ago
California already had free education. See the "California Master Plan for Higher Education." We had to stop because of prop 13. "The State’s higher education and prison systems are a study in opposites. The prison system saw its state funding in dollars leap 436% between 1980 and 2011. Back then, spending on prisons was a mere 3% of California’s budget; it’s now 10%." https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/california-public-university-higher-education/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/california-publ... https://time.com/4276222/free-college/ https://time.com/4276222/free-college/ https://senate.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2017-02/Reclaiming-Californias-Master-Plan-for-Higher-Education.pdf https://senate.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2017-02/Reclaimi...
Stay_frostJebel 7y ago
Let's face it, most humans do not want to think about financial reality, look at Greece, look at a substantial number of the debtors owing that 1.5 Trillion in loans for 'education'. It's one thing to get a meaningful degree, and something entirely different to get a MFA at a school that didn't even review an application portfolio. We try to have some standards for mortgage borrowing, wouldn't it make sense to do the same for education borrowing?
techpop10 7y ago
What an idiotic story for the NYT. OK, so you have a really awful Masters program for art at a for-profit school. So that damns all masters programs? The problem isn't the school or the loan program... it's that someone would be so ignorant to think there is any sort of return on that kind of investment in education. It's not like the school is lying (that's not the allegation at least). There has got to be some level of personal accountability here. I'm assuming people incurring the debt at this school are adults with an undergraduate degree and I'm assuming if you've made it that far in life, you probably understand debt, the job market and how you might repay that debt. Normally I'd say a Masters in Journalism is a waste of money but clearly this author might have benefited from learning some critical thinking.

152 points by joker3 7y ago

I wonder as far as education goes if graduating college, working, and then returning for a masters or similar things would be a better pattern. Or even graduating high school, working, college, working, college, or something else would be a better pattern. I've worked with some folks with MBAs who have no clue about how to work with people / think they're just "the boss" and what they say goes because no reason at all. Worked with folks with CS degrees who I don't think really like to code / can't troubleshoot at all. Front heavy education seems efficient on the surface, but I'm not sure makes sense without having a perspective on what life is like after that.

joker3 7y ago
I really don't like the idea that education is a thing you do once in your late teens/early twenties and then finish. There are good reasons to do something then, but there's no good reason to stop.
- thrower123 7y ago
  Some sort of continuing education would be ideal, but once you settle into a career and the financial obligations of being an adult, stopping your income and ramping up your outgo to go back to school for a year or two becomes very untenable for most people. A master's degree isn't a particularly valuable credential, either, except in a few cases where it does directly unlock a higher pay grade. A lot of the industries that do require continuing ed, it's often at best a rubber stamping process, or an excuse for junkets - at least from what I have seen from friends and family in education, law and medicine. What doctors do to get their continuing ed credits blows away even the fat old days of tech shows like Lotusphere. With software, you can't just stop learning, but I'm not convinced that formal education is of much use. An RSS reader and a curated Twitter list would probably be a better investment of time.
- duxup 7y ago
  I changed careers via a bootcamp. I've got VERY mixed feelings on how that industry works... But just the idea of going back to school to sort of "retool" or expand your toolset for 3 months full time, or 6 or something and get something worthwhile IMO could be the future. The question is if employers will support it. Granted going back for a more traditional school experience could be a very legitimate route too.
  - bunderbunder 7y ago
    I don't like the bootcamp model. I also don't like what a lot of graduate programs have become, insofar as they're jockeying to become souped-up bootcamps by making ever more grand career promises while trying to minimize the amount of time it takes to earn a degree. Just no. Schools shouldn't be selling jobs. They should be selling education. To that end, what I really want to see is more schools than just community colleges allowing you to take classes without being enrolled in a degree program. Once upon a time I contacted a university to see about taking some additional classes to fill in some gaps I didn't manage to fill while I was getting my bachelor's, and they told me that I couldn't just take a few classes; I'd have to enroll in a bachelor's program, become a major in the school, and go through earning a second bachelor's degree in a field for which I already held a bachelor's, just to get access to one or two classes. That's ridiculous. And anachronistic. It's a model that's designed for an era when postsecondary education was primarily reserved for children of a privileged elite class, and a very few people who were trying to break into the wealthy elite class. There's a huge gap between that model and what we actually need nowadays. In failing to adapt, the orthodox educational establishment is doing society a huge disservice, because the only other people to address it are a bunch of for-profit organizations who see the demand, first and foremost, as an arbitrage opportunity to exploit.
    - duxup 7y ago
      >Schools shouldn't be selling jobs. They should be selling education. I think that is what we have now... the education is disconnected from the jobs in the sense that the price makes no sense. I think a lot of what you describe is what happens when an education system thinks they're just selling "an education" without consideration that their student's are can't afford it.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Paying for education (and doing education full time) might well be things that you stop. They can be a good idea for a while without being a good idea forever.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  Totally agree. A career should be a constant mix between learning and working. But only a few get the chance to learn on the job and going to school while working on a job (and making needed money) is very hard.
wil421 7y ago
Not by choice exactly I’ve done College -> Work -> Work/College -> Professional Job. The first 6 months of my “real” career job in tech I learned almost as much as the first 2 years of college. I couldn’t imagine having a masters especially an MBA without having worked professionally, internships aside. I’m excluding the medical professions where the minimum to employment is a masters/doctorate. Even non-doctors have a lot of clinical/hospital experience before/during a masters. I’m about to start looking at Masters or MBA programs in my area. I’ll have almost 10 years of experience by then and happy I didn’t do it straight after school.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  The good MBA programs basically require professional work experience at a reputable firm. Generally, you graduate perhaps at age 21 to 23, then work for a few years, then go get an MBA, and finish around 26 to 28. Edit: See Wharton class stats, shows a mean work experience of 5 years. https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/class-profile/ https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/class-profile/ MIT/Harvard/Stanford show similar: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/admissions/class-2020-profile https://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/admissions/class-2020-profile https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/default.aspx https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/defau... https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/class-profile https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/class-pr...
  - duxup 7y ago
    That makes a lot of sense. I worked with an MBA who couldn't seem to iron his shirts (or just didn't) for a while. Slowly his job duties were shifted to me... the guy he was supposedly help manage after he proved he couldn't figure out scheduling a 24/7 schedule. He clearly had no experience beyond school and some internships.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      I would actually assume someone with an MBA without professional work experience either couldn't get a (decent) job, and/or is not smart enough to research the difference between an MBA that's worth something vs another excuse for schools to make money.
PeterisP 7y ago
This is a quite solid concept. Especially regarding MBA's there's a lot of people management concepts where you can't really get the proper context without having seen in practice the environment in which they'd be applied, and you can't get that environment in a classroom. There are professional MBA programs which require a few years of work experience to join, and it makes quite a difference IMHO. I'm not that certain about CS. If you're doing software engineering (or research on 'meta-SE' e.g. methodology, architecture, programming languages), then yes, it'd make all sense to get some industry experience between college and masters; however if you're going to grad school for theoretical CS or machine learning or cryptography or quantum algorithms or any other directions of primarily academic research, then industry experience is helpful but definitely isn't necessary.

raleigh_user 7y ago

I did school => work => now going back to school. Granted I didn’t study CS undergrad but taught myself a lot. Since, I’ve learned and worked on some interesting problems. I want to work in big tech or in consulting. To do so, I need to be a lot better and/or have great grades. So spending 2 years going back to school and improving seems worth it to me. I have 0 student loans from undergrad and very minimal commitments as is.

rongenre 7y ago

Grad school really needs to have a cost/benefit analysis applied. I'd have loved to go and really deepen my understanding, but it's pretty clear that both in terms of income lost and not a huge premium paid by the industry over my BS and experience it's not worth it. It is something I may pursue if I get a windfall and am no longer concerned about retirement.

duxup 7y ago
I think maybe the only real way to know what the cost benefit might be for an individual is to just ... go work for a while and then see what you find in your experience and life. Then you're making a much more educated calculation as far as what you think it might get you, and if you want to go back to school and that. Just throwing that all on the front end while you're in school seems a bit like gambling.
- rongenre 7y ago
  The only advantage I can see to going for an MS straight out of undergrad is that your lifestyle should be pretty low-rent. But doing grad school because you're good at school and don't know what else to do is a trap lots of otherwise smart people fall into.
  - duxup 7y ago
    >But doing grad school because you're good at school and don't know what else to do is a trap lots of otherwise smart people fall into. I suspect that is very much a thing. School is a great system that if you're good at it provides very clear paths to lots of affirmation and ... a good time. I don't blame anyone for being hesitant to step out of that bubble.... but not doing so can be pretty terrible too.
  - fma 7y ago
    It's a major advantage. I went to the same state university for my masters, so to me it was a continuation of my undergrad but in classes I was actually interested in. Even dumping money into a startup, I graduated with a low amount of debt. I lived a thrifty lifestyle, made money from internships, and after my sign on bonus for my full time job, I was debt free after graduation. My concentration for my MS was AI & Computer Networks...which I've never used :) Because of market forces I'm an application developer. I graduated 11 years ago and between then and now (married, 2 kids) I doubt I would have found the time and motivation to go back to school. It was around the housing crisis and jobs were crappy/not available so that was another motivation to do my MS. I also had the connections to form a startup (which failed) with other peers which has lead me to my current career.

kurthr 7y ago

tldr The Academy of Art (San Francisco) is just another place that figured out how to scam the loan system by labeling itself a Graduate School where the $limits are higher. Yale is substantially lower priced so it's not about quality or student degree choice... it's about scamming.

sct202 7y ago
Privately owned for-profit art school should be a giant warning to anyone thinking of enrolling.
- kjs3 7y ago
  Absolutely this. My stepson (quite talented visual artist) was looking at going to SCAD. We met with the counselor, realized very quickly that they were more than happy to pile him up with a debt load that based on the odds of his getting a job in-field and his earning prospects if he did would see him still paying off his loans should he be fortunate to live into his second century.
- musicale 7y ago
  No kidding. And foisting massive debt on art students just seems abusive.
- anonuser123456 7y ago
  "But I'm following my passion."

crsv 7y ago

As someone who's hiring folks right now, a shocking trend is applicants who chained expensive middle tier private college expenses with middle to low tier private college masters programs - often times unrelated to the ultimately role they're applying to now. These investments aren't setting them up to be compelling candidates against folks who have equal and sometimes lesser tier schools as their undergraduate education coupled with meaningful real world experience. This carries over to performance in interviews as it related to applied knowledge as well. I'd say when putting a risk lens to this, it doesn't bode well for the likelyhood of timely repayment of this debt at scale.

mediaman 7y ago
How much of what you see is people who had pursued master degrees during the economic downturn? I heard that there was an enormous amount of people exiting the workforce to pursue education when there were few jobs available. Instead they likely got a pile of debt with no real furtherance of career goals as the economy recovered.
- crsv 7y ago
  This is a great question. There may be some variability by role type, but for the last two hires where I started noticing this trend usually the masters was acquired 17-18 or 18-19 on the resume (2 year masters programs). These are also for mid-level roles as opposed to entry level or senior. Probably a lot of factors but I'd wonder if the readily available access to student loans was the biggest enabler. Just off the cuff I'd be curious if these decisions involved the perception of necessity for masters degrees or in how many cases they simply wanted to prolong the experience of undergrad (college is often a good time, I get it), and with the barrier being no more frictive than the student loan process they navigated for under grad, the decision just being the path of least resistance more than a calculated risk/reward decision.
- joker3 7y ago
  The relationship between the business cycle and demand for graduate school is complicated. Some programs have a very strong countercyclical component to their demand, and others don't. See http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.648.7093&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.648... (and section 5 in particular).

ghobs91 7y ago

This is what happens when there's 0 pressure on universities to price their programs competitively. If the government is backing every loan, the schools get paid up front, and the risk is then transferred to the gov to collect, why WOULDN'T a university charge as high a tuition as possible and hop on the gravy train? Their non-profit status hasn't even done much to keep costs low, as they can just keep hiring tons of redundant administrators and have never-ending construction, thereby justifying higher tuitions as "operating costs". The dept of education needs to treat universities the same way Medicaid treats healthcare providers. Determine what it actually costs per student per year to run a university, and tell the schools "Accept $x or shove off". If they're going to benefit from gov backed loans, they should play by the govs rules. Look no further than this chart (https://i.imgur.com/B3sVMjg.png https://i.imgur.com/B3sVMjg.png), around 2010 was when the gov started fully backing and giving the loans directly, and conveniently it's when students needs for loans skyrocketed. It's so obvious that colleges took advantage of it. Enough is enough, this college cost situation is entirely the fault of the gov for allowing it to happen, and it's a massive drag on our economy and the potential of our citizens.

freewilly1040 7y ago
This is why I'm so skeptical of the "free college" rhetoric from Elizabeth Warren and the like... The underlying problem is the giant wealth transfer to colleges, and the progressive fixes seem to be to transfer even more wealth to them.
- dd36 7y ago
  Or to do exactly as the OP said: this is what we’ll pay per student.
  - freewilly1040 7y ago
    Is this what is being proposed though? I agree with this approach, but I haven't seen the proposals being framed this way.
  - conanbatt 7y ago

JackFr 7y ago

I'm not sure what societal purpose is being served by Federal student loans as a class for graduate school. Eliminate them entirely. The primary effect will be to reduce the disconnect between the cost and the value. As an added benefit prices should come down, schools at the margin will fail.

elliekelly 7y ago
And number of graduate degrees conferred should come down. I'm not sure what purpose is being served by the vast majority of graduate degrees other than being a requirement to get your "foot in the door" because everyone else has one, too.

madengr 7y ago

Who the hell pays for an MS? At least back when I was in engineering grad school, everyone was covered by RA or TA grants, in addition to being paid by those. Of course in-state tuition at KU in 1996 was under $100/credit-hour, so if I did pay, those 9 credits/semester would be under $1k total.

__full_pint 7y ago
I’m confused as well, I’ve known a few MS CS students who didn’t do the RA TA Route, but were paying out of pocket. I never asked why because it seemed to be an infringement on their privacy.
- bitcoinmoney 7y ago
  RA TA requires you are a slave of the professor. If you just want that degree by taking classes and doing a small project then you gotta pay up. Trafeoff
  - __full_pint 7y ago
    Yeah but RA or TA requirements are A) pretty beneficial B) worth the thousands of dollars that are in exchange especially when considering A
novok 7y ago
There are 2 tiers of graduate studies. Ones paid by grants and are more PhD style and are mostly free as you said. They are selective and do not have a lot of slots. And the 'free standing' ones that have a lot more slots, are not research focused and cost a lot more. Often seen for professionally licensed professions like psychology, law, or medicine. Sometimes to a degree where it's a really bad idea. Like in psychology where private grad school costs 5-7 years of your life and $200-$400k of %6-%8 debt for a job that pays $100-150k/yr.
misiti3780 7y ago
or your company pays, which is how i got an MS in applied math.

permatech 7y ago

In engineering the quip was always "if you're paying for graduate school you're doing it wrong" ... to even get in the door for most hardware jobs fresh out of school you need a MS. A PhD may be preferred, and will start with a higher salary -- but put in ~5yrs instead of 2. As long as the tuition is covered and you make money as a TA or RA in a low-cost of living area you should come out ahead in the engineering field. Not sure how that translates to software.

Ocerge 7y ago
I did undergrad research in school (CS, moved on to industry after I got my BS) and I heard the same thing; all of the grad students I worked with (Masters as well as PhDs) were paid by grants and the like. I went to a large state university that was pretty good at CS but not elite, yet all the people I worked with managed to not go into debt to get their advanced degrees. It's anecdotal I know, but I thought it was a given to never go into debt as a CS/engineering grad student if you can help it.
- bitcoinmoney 7y ago
  It’s not anecdotal. Some schools even don’t accept you if you don’t have a scholarship for a PhD.
iamatworknow 7y ago
>In engineering the quip was always "if you're paying for graduate school you're doing it wrong" This is what I faced pursuing graduate studies in physics as well. Problem was, I graduated from undergrad in 2009 and the only grad school willing to pay for me during the economic downturn had a new, very poorly run program. I (voluntarily) dropped out after a year.
verall 7y ago
HW is a bit like this but with some good internship experience and a bachelors at a (>=good public state tier) school companies are interested. Of 4 HW friends I know just getting their bachelors 2 are going to do verif in industry and 2 are planning on PHds.

F_J_H 7y ago

Something I've speculated on - being a student provides a person with an identity that is reasonably "high status", or certainly higher status than an entry level position one might be forced to take in absence of a finding a job in one's chosen field of study upon earning a Bachelor's degree. (Especially if it's a Master's program.) So, for some, continuing on with a master's degree is preferable, despite the questionable marginal return. On the other hand, degree inflation is now a thing. In some fields, those you are competing with you for a job likely have master's degrees already, and you'll suffer by comparison. *edit: typos

GcVmvNhBsU 7y ago

Mentioned in the article is a company called 2U. The Huffington post had an article not too long ago about how online program managers like 2U contribute to the high cost of programs, and how masters programs are specifically targeted because there are not reporting requirements on admissions. https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeover-college/ https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeove...

diogenescynic 7y ago

This is a big reason I chose a cheap state university for my MBA and have paid for it in cash while taking classes part-time. I absolutely wasn’t willing to take out $165,000 at a 9% I test rate for some of the top tier programs and private schools.

prions 7y ago

I went back for my masters in CS after being a civil engineer for two years and learning cs my free time. These articles panning formal education don't fully grasp how difficult it is to get your foot in the door as a non-cs person whose also working full time. I also wanted to do something more technical than just web dev, which most career changers seem to land up in. Being a grad student opened a lot of doors into more technical roles in companies that are _only_ reserved for grad students. Grad school is expensive, but I went in with a solid plan. I mitigated some of this by going to an in-state school with a good CS program and commuting to class. I was very focused in my course choices and was a 4.0 student, which unlocked even more opportunities. I was able to land two good internships (one in embedded development and one in machine learning) and used that experience to springboard into a high paying role in NYC. I have no problems living alone in the city, paying my loans, and still saving a significant amount of money per paycheck. This is completely anecdotal but what I'm arguing is that grad school can be a good idea if you have a solid plan of how to get the most out of your education. The people I see who haven't gotten their money's worth came into school and just drifted through while assuming that opportunities would come to them just by virtue of being a grad student.

geodel 7y ago
Well it is not news that it would work out fine for 1% motivated/extraordinary/well-off people. It's the rest who need more caution and be realistic about their prospects.
roymurdock 7y ago
What kind of role are you in now? I'm curious as I work with a lot of embedded devs but see that most of the salary money is flowing towards AI (very unclear what many of these roles actually are) and its less sexy but more concrete counterpart of cloud devops
- prions 7y ago
  The embedded work was just for an internship at Nokia/Bell Labs. I work at the place where I did my second internship; started doing ML engineering then pivoted to more data engineering work. You're right about embedded though. Most telecom hardware is a race to the bottom and there were a lot of layoffs at Nokia when I was there.

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noodlesUK 7y ago

Every time the topic of universities comes up, I’m reminded of how the staffing makeup of my university has changed, even just in the past 5 years. It’s gone from the majority of staff being academic to a majority being non-academic. Whether this is a symptom or a cause is as yet unclear, but at least here in the UK, a trend towards the wastefulness I hear about in US institutions seems clear. Just this month we’ve started an academic restructure which adds an additional layer of administration staff across the university, replacing the few specifically departmental administrators with a much larger body of admin staff who have a much larger remit.

blockchainman 7y ago

“To quote an official of the U.S. Department of Education, many colleges “choose to increase tuition because they can get away with it.” - The scandal of tuition by Thomas Sowell

dpflan 7y ago

I think a good example of good economic value are the growing offerings for M.S. in C.S., like Georgia Tech's OSMCS program which is offered completely online at a price less than $10K total. """ Tuition & Fees for OMS CS: Tuition: $510 per 3-credit hour course (most OMS CS courses will be 3 credit hours) Fees: $301 per academic term of enrollment ($194 institutional fee + $107 technology fee). Fees are assessed only for those terms in which students are enrolled in courses. """ > https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/cost-payment-schedule https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/cost-payment-sched... There are other programs, like Data Analytics.

blockchainman 7y ago

Excellent article by my hero Thomas Sowell: http://thelawofentropy.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-scandal-of-college-tuition-by.html http://thelawofentropy.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-scandal-of-c...

s1mon 7y ago

Academy of Art is a real estate company with an education problem. They have countless illegally modified buildings around SF (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Academy-of-Art-agrees-to-60-million-settlement-10804028.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Academy-o...), with a ton of diesel buses spewing pollution to cart around wanna-be artists from all over the world. Note that these students didn't have to show any portfolio to get in, they just needed to come up with the $$$$$ somehow. The owners have a showroom for their classic car collection which isn't generally accessible to even the transportation design students (https://thebolditalic.com/just-how-much-is-academy-of-art-s-vintage-car-collection-worth-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-32cc8bfa70ac https://thebolditalic.com/just-how-much-is-academy-of-art-s-...).

heroHACK17 7y ago

One thing I wish the article touched on: Why aren't we asking ourselves how current tuition rates got so high in the first place? If the federal government allows public universities to get away with creating administrative roles like 'Director of Picking Blue or Yellow Gatorade for the Football Team', that demands close to six-figure salaries, there's no wonder students have to incur debt to go to school. They aren't paying for their degree, they are paying the salaries of ballooning administrative chaff.

Merrill 7y ago

A Master's Degree seems most useful in two cases: 1. to change field if you made a mistake with your Bachelor's, or 2. to enter the US after getting a Bachelor's in your home country.

ratling 7y ago

For 90% of people a Masters degree is a great way to educate yourself out of employability.

deepakhj 7y ago

California already had free education. See the "California Master Plan for Higher Education." We had to stop because of prop 13. "The State’s higher education and prison systems are a study in opposites. The prison system saw its state funding in dollars leap 436% between 1980 and 2011. Back then, spending on prisons was a mere 3% of California’s budget; it’s now 10%." https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/california-public-university-higher-education/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/california-publ... https://time.com/4276222/free-college/ https://time.com/4276222/free-college/ https://senate.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2017-02/Reclaiming-Californias-Master-Plan-for-Higher-Education.pdf https://senate.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2017-02/Reclaimi...

Stay_frostJebel 7y ago

Let's face it, most humans do not want to think about financial reality, look at Greece, look at a substantial number of the debtors owing that 1.5 Trillion in loans for 'education'. It's one thing to get a meaningful degree, and something entirely different to get a MFA at a school that didn't even review an application portfolio. We try to have some standards for mortgage borrowing, wouldn't it make sense to do the same for education borrowing?

techpop10 7y ago

What an idiotic story for the NYT. OK, so you have a really awful Masters program for art at a for-profit school. So that damns all masters programs? The problem isn't the school or the loan program... it's that someone would be so ignorant to think there is any sort of return on that kind of investment in education. It's not like the school is lying (that's not the allegation at least). There has got to be some level of personal accountability here. I'm assuming people incurring the debt at this school are adults with an undergraduate degree and I'm assuming if you've made it that far in life, you probably understand debt, the job market and how you might repay that debt. Normally I'd say a Masters in Journalism is a waste of money but clearly this author might have benefited from learning some critical thinking.