Grad school can be a very, very dangerous trap. An M.S. isn't necessarily a risky thing to do, though, since they an be completed relatively quickly, and from

Grad school can be a very, very dangerous trap. An M.S. isn't necessarily a risky thing to do, though, since they an be completed relatively quickly, and from a reputable CS or Engineering school, the grads are employable. At state colleges, they tend to be relatively affordable too. Professional degrees at UC schools come with very high surcharges that don't apply to academic degrees, so an MS in CS or engineering at Berkeley is $15k a year (in state tuition) instead vs ~$50k a year for the Law School (tuition is only a little higher for out of state for professional degrees). An M.S. at Berkeley does make it a easier to get on the radar of a lot of tech companies for recruiting, so that can be an advantage. That's probably not a big factor to you if you're already an undergrad at Berkeley or other well known tech feeder school, but if that's not the case for you, it could help, it's not especially expensive, and you can often do it in a year if you crank the coursework. Actually, if this was the profile of the typical student debtor, I doubt anyone would care. I read the NYTimes article, and I don't understand how anyone can say a $90k debt for art school with a starting salary of $35k is what was intended here. I mean, wow, they really did feed the beast, didn't they?