6 ms·

The Great Master’s-Degree Swindle

43 points by andrewl 5y ago

andrewl 5y ago
If you don't want to sign up for the free account, you can read the text at: https://outline.com/FLJHjc https://outline.com/FLJHjc
- brutus1213 5y ago
  Thx. I have heard the, it is easy to bypass signup-walls, pay-walls, etc. argument. I personally think that argument is foobar. But why can HN not have a filter option to simply not show such walled links? Surely, I'm not the only one peeved by these.
  - the__alchemist 5y ago
    It would be nice to have an algorithm that shows you before clicking the link. Eg grays the text, and/or adds a moneybag unicode symbol. However... this is muddied by the presence of workaround links like outline.com one in the comment you replied to.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Or disable JavaScript, or use the reader view in Safari.
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    I won’t bother. If they want fewer readers, fine by me. A shame to see the chronicle sink as it has but that’s capitalism for you.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Journalists need to eat too.
      - jareklupinski 5y ago
        and pay off their masters degree loan :^)
newbamboo 5y ago
“ Columbia were typically borrowing $181,000 apiece before entering a job market that pays less than $30,000” The sickening part is hearing people not only defend this, but to attack and defame the good people who are speaking truth to power on this. It’s David and Goliath and the usual suspects, wealthy elite, attack David for trying to warn youngsters who will destroy their lives by taking on a debt burden that guarantees a lifetime of wage slavery. No honorable person can defend this.
- mc32 5y ago
  And then people wonder why people get angry and want to burn the system down. This is the fault of universities not setting the right expectations. Drive students to where demand will be not fields with artificial cachet that have little return on investment. These kids then sulk and bemoan society while they work at a coffee dhop that affords them higher pay than the degree they studied for affords them.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Are students really being driven to film or are there just enough people who want to be in film that they will do and try anything to succeed in it, no matter what it costs? I have a really hard time believing Columbia made a credible argument that you can make a good salary in film.
    - mc32 5y ago
      The loans for low demand majors should not be guaranteed and those students should be allowed to default. Majors in high demand and good with prospects can have guarantees. These can be re-evaluated periodically to adjust to demand.
      - newbamboo 5y ago
        Put more simply, loans should not be given out when there is a low chance they can be repayed. The term is “loan shark”. That this disproportionally enslaves minority and first generation college students makes it all the more outrageous.
hall0ween 5y ago
I find it wild how often people choose online degrees and how that limits one of the most important features of education: exposure to other people and networking.
- irrational 5y ago
  Does this depend on the field you are studying? I have 2 bachelors and a masters, all from in-person schooling when I was in my early to mid 20s. I’ve never had any contact with anyone I knew or worked with since leaving the university. Looking back, I can’t think of anyone I would have wanted to keep in touch with.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    It might also depend on your school. My school has a great alumni culture, so randomly messaging other Queen’s alumni to get job intel and a referral is fairly common. My friend at a different school has rarely received a reply doing that. There is no shared bond between U of Toronto people.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    I think you are supposed to join a fraternity, or skull and bones, or quill and dagger. Think of how much power the Harvard network wields.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    Not really, it mostly depends on ability to network. The main advantage some universities have is the degree to which they emphasize networking. Some fields I imagine do this as well. If you didn't network in college, it's not surprising you graduated without one.
  - cubano 5y ago
    I am almost positive this depends upon how socially active and adept the individual is, and if they specifically seek and join internal societies that work at promoting this sort of post-grad networking. I graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology and although I notice that Amazon is currently loaded with alumni from there, when I applied I received absolutely no "insider help" or whatever from anyone employed there.
hereforphone 5y ago
It should be obvious that the recent deluge of (online) Master's programs from Harvard and other well known universities is a scam. I think most people here are technical and would pursue a degree in a technical field so here's my personal criteria of what does and does not constitute an actual worthwhile Master's degree in science / engineering: it requires heavy calculus and other advanced math. Programs that don't do that are generally decorated with "management" titles and/or implications, for example "Master's in Engineering Management" or "Master's in Cyber Security." An online IT degree is how I got my foot in the door. Then I saved up money and went to engineering school. Which do you guess made the biggest difference to my world outlook and career? Buyer beware.
- JackFr 5y ago
  What’s surprising to me is that these are not fly-by-night for profit scams. This is Columbia purely monetizing the name “Columbia”. I guess the feeling is as long as the undergraduate program is among the most competitive in the country and the PhD’s are high quality, it doesn’t really dilute the brand. But it feels kind of scummy. On another note I have a friend who was a professor of film studies at USC, who was truly very bothered by their masters program, that it was predicated on a lie, and that for god’s sake, you’re in LA already - if you want to work in movies, get a job working in movies. A USC masters degree won’t hurt you certainly, but it’s a hell of a lot of money to spend.
  - hereforphone 5y ago
    Absolutely. But again my first degree came from an online program, and that was the only choice I had at the time (poor and deployed in Afghanistan much of that time). So they have a place. They're just not going to teach you to be an economist / engineer.
- madengr 5y ago
  Agreed. My MSEE was invaluable, and the math in my Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics course was pretty hairy.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Do people getting a Masters in Film genuinely think that they will get a six figure job after it? Or a Masters in Positive Psychology? Sure they aren’t just willing to be in debt forever to pursue their dreams like a lot of starving artists?
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  This is a bit of a catch-22. They need to be stupid so they don't realize it's a worthless degree. They also need to be smart because the admissions office only wants smart kids.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  They're kids that don't know any better and these schools seem almost fraudulent by not being upfront about those career prospects. It would be good to teach a class in high schools about degrees, careers and salaries so that they aren't just guessing based on feel.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
    If you are pursuing a Masters degree, I don't think you get the protection defined by being a "kid".
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      Young adults or whatever you want to call them. They don't know what they are signing up for.
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  When you’re 17 and many adults in your life say “follow your dreams,” and there is a low barrier to you and your classmates to taking out 200k loans, that skepticism would be low.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    There are remarkably few 17 year olds signing up for Master's Degrees. There's a tremendous difference in development between a highschool grad and a 22 year old with 4 years of undergrad.
mettamage 5y ago
Does an online master degree allow for an easier H1B visa? Genuinely asking.
- djmips 5y ago
  I think that a masters degree always helped with an H1B visa. In addition, credentialism, as far as am aware has been proposed for the Green Card process and it is a point based system IIRC. In that case I think a masters degree would improve your standing*. I'm not clear how the Trump administration changed things in relation to visas and immigration so I'd also like to know where things stand now especially since perhaps the Biden administration may have rolled back or made additional tweaks. An notable factor in the merit based system is that it discriminates against middle aged or older. * A US based degree would be preferred according to the proposal.
paulpauper 5y ago
Ppl have been calling it unsustainable since 2013. As long as the college wage premium keeps widening, and there is zero evidence to suggest it isn't, then demand and tuition will keep going up.there are plenty of ppl here and on reddit making solid incomes and paying off student loan debt and also own home and other investment. Not all poverty as media portrays it.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Useful degrees like computer science are.. useful. Some of the other ones are almost (or maybe full on) fraudulent and prospects are dim for lots of people. People agree to pay for college out of the expectation that they will receive a salary that justifies that cost. Colleges have a pretty good idea of whether or not someone will have a good chance at a solid career and it seems really fraudulent to hide that from their students. I think students could benefit greatly if high schools had a class about various degrees, career paths and their salaries. Kids are mostly just picking a track at random without knowing what it entails. I recall having a vague notion of being some kind of business man later in life so I decided to go that route. Thankfully it was boring enough to push me to computer science.
  - angmarsbane 5y ago
    The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out an occupational handbook that outlines industries, jobs, expected job growth, salaries, credentials needed etc. It isn’t well known which is a shame because it’s important information for anyone career / education planning.
Avalaxy 5y ago
Needs a title update: only applies to the US. In almost any other civilized country a master degree is (nearly) free.
wolverine876 5y ago
I know people who have wasted resources on useless masters degrees, usually from for-profit schools who offer little learning and a credential with little value. I don't doubt there's a problem. But I think there's a grave error in the framing of the issue, which is to measure degrees by only the latter, earnings, and not by the former, learning. It hands over to the markets, and those who have influence in markets, the power to decide what is worth learning. While I think markets are powerful tools, we need to view them with a grain of salt - i.e., critically, the way we learn to examine things in school: they are distorted in reality (i.e., they are not theoretical ideal markets, some very far from it), and they yield many odd results. As one example, professional athletes, even those who never see the field, usually earn more than doctors and nurses saving lives, or more than the diplomatic and military leaders who are responsible for world peace and security, or more than the scientists discovering new states of matter. Wall Street employees make more than every teacher. Etc. Our markets as they are don't reward arts, the study of history, the promotion of many social goods, basic science research, open source software, engineering privacy rights, any service to people who are poor and don't provide much revenue. That doesn't define the value of those things, or of learning those things. It's entangled with market-based education, which requires schools to focus resources on revenue rather than on education. Again, it hands power to the markets, and to those who have influence in markets. It leads to schools investing in upgrading dorms or football programs, which attract wealthy people, rather than scholarships and assets that provide a return in education, not revenue. And it leads to useless masters degrees, but I certainly wouldn't include in that category a degree in film from Columbia, no matter how much the future earnings of the student (though market-based pricing certainly makes it too expensive).
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  You're citing that looking at earnings from different fields as the place the "market" doesn't belong. If the market has no place in labor compensation, the where does the market belong?
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > You're citing that looking at earnings from different fields as the place the "market" doesn't belong. If the market has no place in labor compensation, the where does the market belong? I'm not sure what you are interpreting from my post, or what your first sentence means, but I will try to answer: The 'market', such as it is, determines earnings. It is deeply flawed but please don't take that to a logical extreme, that the market has "no place". For very many things, I think markets are the best solution; they are also 'free', as in freedom - not constraining individual's rights to act as they wish. I am not an economist. My guess is that reducing distortions in the market mechanism might do wonders, particularly the distortion of imbalanced market power. For example, a single large employer has much greater power than a single employee, and thus has great leverage over them that doesn't yield economic outcomes. Also, some things are not well served by market pricing. For example, the market serves those most motivated to pay, which is good, but also those most able to pay. Health care and education should not be distributed based on ability to pay. Another example is that the market serves work that is directly profitable. Some things don't generate profit or not quickly enough, such as basic scientific research.
legitster 5y ago
This article misses out on some of the most insidious behavior, exclusive PHD programs that require a Master's degree. They know they are asking a large pool of students to pay for the privilege to compete for a small number of spots.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  Wow. I hadn't thought of that wrinkle. That's a particularly sleezy way to limit access.
  - legitster 5y ago
    A school may offer 6-8 PHD openings a year in a department, but have 3-4 times as many students enter the Master's degree program knowing most of them will never get into the PHD program.
etothepii 5y ago
At Oxford and Cambridge in the UK one gets their Bachellor's degrees upgraded to Master's 2-3 years after graduating provided one hasn't been arrested or divorced.
- hmsshagatsea 5y ago
  What
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  Huh, I looked it up and that's sort of the case. But I don't think they "upgrade" your degree, they just award you the rank of "Master of Arts". This would appear to be entirely different from earning a Master of Engineering/Science/etc, or even an MA at any other school, which is an actual degree.
  - etothepii 5y ago
    There was a whole ceremony and I have a certificate that says Master of Arts, it looks exactly the same as my certificate that says I have the degree Bachelor of Arts.
    - etothepii 5y ago
      None of this is helped by the fact that the primary requirement for your degree is to be "touched by grace" after holding one of 5 fingers while a man called a Praelector says in Latin something to the effect of, "These 5 people holding my fingers are jolly good chaps and chapettes and should be given the degree of ..."
havelhovel 5y ago
> Regulations that disqualify programs with high debt and low earnings from receiving federal aid would force universities to reappraise master’s degrees that frequently leave graduates in dire straits. I think this is reasonable. My non-STEM Master's program was tuition free, because my field isn't particularly lucrative, but it is considered important enough to merit large numbers of scholarships. The only programs that would be hurt are those that are neither in the interest of the student nor society at large.
beej71 5y ago
My CS MS paid for itself in under a year of work. In 1997. It wasn't always awful, but now it's awful. This is why my last teaching gig was at a place that used income share agreements; alternate payment methods need to be promoted. Starting a house in debt is a ball and chain that doesn't help anyone. Accreditation is a major issue that needs addressing, as well. "Anything different is good." --Phil, Groundhog Day
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/Qv2Ba https://archive.is/Qv2Ba
dang 5y ago
Recent and related: Of 55 students in my class at Columbia’s Film program, 4 made a career out of it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827592 - July 2021 (448 comments)

43 points by andrewl 5y ago

If you don't want to sign up for the free account, you can read the text at: https://outline.com/FLJHjc https://outline.com/FLJHjc

brutus1213 5y ago
Thx. I have heard the, it is easy to bypass signup-walls, pay-walls, etc. argument. I personally think that argument is foobar. But why can HN not have a filter option to simply not show such walled links? Surely, I'm not the only one peeved by these.
- the__alchemist 5y ago
  It would be nice to have an algorithm that shows you before clicking the link. Eg grays the text, and/or adds a moneybag unicode symbol. However... this is muddied by the presence of workaround links like outline.com one in the comment you replied to.
FabHK 5y ago
Or disable JavaScript, or use the reader view in Safari.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  I won’t bother. If they want fewer readers, fine by me. A shame to see the chronicle sink as it has but that’s capitalism for you.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Journalists need to eat too.
    - jareklupinski 5y ago
      and pay off their masters degree loan :^)

newbamboo 5y ago

“ Columbia were typically borrowing $181,000 apiece before entering a job market that pays less than $30,000” The sickening part is hearing people not only defend this, but to attack and defame the good people who are speaking truth to power on this. It’s David and Goliath and the usual suspects, wealthy elite, attack David for trying to warn youngsters who will destroy their lives by taking on a debt burden that guarantees a lifetime of wage slavery. No honorable person can defend this.

mc32 5y ago
And then people wonder why people get angry and want to burn the system down. This is the fault of universities not setting the right expectations. Drive students to where demand will be not fields with artificial cachet that have little return on investment. These kids then sulk and bemoan society while they work at a coffee dhop that affords them higher pay than the degree they studied for affords them.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Are students really being driven to film or are there just enough people who want to be in film that they will do and try anything to succeed in it, no matter what it costs? I have a really hard time believing Columbia made a credible argument that you can make a good salary in film.
  - mc32 5y ago
    The loans for low demand majors should not be guaranteed and those students should be allowed to default. Majors in high demand and good with prospects can have guarantees. These can be re-evaluated periodically to adjust to demand.
    - newbamboo 5y ago
      Put more simply, loans should not be given out when there is a low chance they can be repayed. The term is “loan shark”. That this disproportionally enslaves minority and first generation college students makes it all the more outrageous.

hall0ween 5y ago

I find it wild how often people choose online degrees and how that limits one of the most important features of education: exposure to other people and networking.

irrational 5y ago
Does this depend on the field you are studying? I have 2 bachelors and a masters, all from in-person schooling when I was in my early to mid 20s. I’ve never had any contact with anyone I knew or worked with since leaving the university. Looking back, I can’t think of anyone I would have wanted to keep in touch with.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  It might also depend on your school. My school has a great alumni culture, so randomly messaging other Queen’s alumni to get job intel and a referral is fairly common. My friend at a different school has rarely received a reply doing that. There is no shared bond between U of Toronto people.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- newbamboo 5y ago
  I think you are supposed to join a fraternity, or skull and bones, or quill and dagger. Think of how much power the Harvard network wields.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Not really, it mostly depends on ability to network. The main advantage some universities have is the degree to which they emphasize networking. Some fields I imagine do this as well. If you didn't network in college, it's not surprising you graduated without one.
- cubano 5y ago
  I am almost positive this depends upon how socially active and adept the individual is, and if they specifically seek and join internal societies that work at promoting this sort of post-grad networking. I graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology and although I notice that Amazon is currently loaded with alumni from there, when I applied I received absolutely no "insider help" or whatever from anyone employed there.

hereforphone 5y ago

It should be obvious that the recent deluge of (online) Master's programs from Harvard and other well known universities is a scam. I think most people here are technical and would pursue a degree in a technical field so here's my personal criteria of what does and does not constitute an actual worthwhile Master's degree in science / engineering: it requires heavy calculus and other advanced math. Programs that don't do that are generally decorated with "management" titles and/or implications, for example "Master's in Engineering Management" or "Master's in Cyber Security." An online IT degree is how I got my foot in the door. Then I saved up money and went to engineering school. Which do you guess made the biggest difference to my world outlook and career? Buyer beware.

JackFr 5y ago
What’s surprising to me is that these are not fly-by-night for profit scams. This is Columbia purely monetizing the name “Columbia”. I guess the feeling is as long as the undergraduate program is among the most competitive in the country and the PhD’s are high quality, it doesn’t really dilute the brand. But it feels kind of scummy. On another note I have a friend who was a professor of film studies at USC, who was truly very bothered by their masters program, that it was predicated on a lie, and that for god’s sake, you’re in LA already - if you want to work in movies, get a job working in movies. A USC masters degree won’t hurt you certainly, but it’s a hell of a lot of money to spend.
- hereforphone 5y ago
  Absolutely. But again my first degree came from an online program, and that was the only choice I had at the time (poor and deployed in Afghanistan much of that time). So they have a place. They're just not going to teach you to be an economist / engineer.
madengr 5y ago
Agreed. My MSEE was invaluable, and the math in my Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics course was pretty hairy.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Do people getting a Masters in Film genuinely think that they will get a six figure job after it? Or a Masters in Positive Psychology? Sure they aren’t just willing to be in debt forever to pursue their dreams like a lot of starving artists?

xhkkffbf 5y ago
This is a bit of a catch-22. They need to be stupid so they don't realize it's a worthless degree. They also need to be smart because the admissions office only wants smart kids.
bostonsre 5y ago
They're kids that don't know any better and these schools seem almost fraudulent by not being upfront about those career prospects. It would be good to teach a class in high schools about degrees, careers and salaries so that they aren't just guessing based on feel.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  If you are pursuing a Masters degree, I don't think you get the protection defined by being a "kid".
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Young adults or whatever you want to call them. They don't know what they are signing up for.
vegetablepotpie 5y ago
When you’re 17 and many adults in your life say “follow your dreams,” and there is a low barrier to you and your classmates to taking out 200k loans, that skepticism would be low.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  There are remarkably few 17 year olds signing up for Master's Degrees. There's a tremendous difference in development between a highschool grad and a 22 year old with 4 years of undergrad.

mettamage 5y ago

Does an online master degree allow for an easier H1B visa? Genuinely asking.

djmips 5y ago
I think that a masters degree always helped with an H1B visa. In addition, credentialism, as far as am aware has been proposed for the Green Card process and it is a point based system IIRC. In that case I think a masters degree would improve your standing*. I'm not clear how the Trump administration changed things in relation to visas and immigration so I'd also like to know where things stand now especially since perhaps the Biden administration may have rolled back or made additional tweaks. An notable factor in the merit based system is that it discriminates against middle aged or older. * A US based degree would be preferred according to the proposal.

paulpauper 5y ago

Ppl have been calling it unsustainable since 2013. As long as the college wage premium keeps widening, and there is zero evidence to suggest it isn't, then demand and tuition will keep going up.there are plenty of ppl here and on reddit making solid incomes and paying off student loan debt and also own home and other investment. Not all poverty as media portrays it.

bostonsre 5y ago
Useful degrees like computer science are.. useful. Some of the other ones are almost (or maybe full on) fraudulent and prospects are dim for lots of people. People agree to pay for college out of the expectation that they will receive a salary that justifies that cost. Colleges have a pretty good idea of whether or not someone will have a good chance at a solid career and it seems really fraudulent to hide that from their students. I think students could benefit greatly if high schools had a class about various degrees, career paths and their salaries. Kids are mostly just picking a track at random without knowing what it entails. I recall having a vague notion of being some kind of business man later in life so I decided to go that route. Thankfully it was boring enough to push me to computer science.
- angmarsbane 5y ago
  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out an occupational handbook that outlines industries, jobs, expected job growth, salaries, credentials needed etc. It isn’t well known which is a shame because it’s important information for anyone career / education planning.

Avalaxy 5y ago

Needs a title update: only applies to the US. In almost any other civilized country a master degree is (nearly) free.

wolverine876 5y ago

I know people who have wasted resources on useless masters degrees, usually from for-profit schools who offer little learning and a credential with little value. I don't doubt there's a problem. But I think there's a grave error in the framing of the issue, which is to measure degrees by only the latter, earnings, and not by the former, learning. It hands over to the markets, and those who have influence in markets, the power to decide what is worth learning. While I think markets are powerful tools, we need to view them with a grain of salt - i.e., critically, the way we learn to examine things in school: they are distorted in reality (i.e., they are not theoretical ideal markets, some very far from it), and they yield many odd results. As one example, professional athletes, even those who never see the field, usually earn more than doctors and nurses saving lives, or more than the diplomatic and military leaders who are responsible for world peace and security, or more than the scientists discovering new states of matter. Wall Street employees make more than every teacher. Etc. Our markets as they are don't reward arts, the study of history, the promotion of many social goods, basic science research, open source software, engineering privacy rights, any service to people who are poor and don't provide much revenue. That doesn't define the value of those things, or of learning those things. It's entangled with market-based education, which requires schools to focus resources on revenue rather than on education. Again, it hands power to the markets, and to those who have influence in markets. It leads to schools investing in upgrading dorms or football programs, which attract wealthy people, rather than scholarships and assets that provide a return in education, not revenue. And it leads to useless masters degrees, but I certainly wouldn't include in that category a degree in film from Columbia, no matter how much the future earnings of the student (though market-based pricing certainly makes it too expensive).

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
You're citing that looking at earnings from different fields as the place the "market" doesn't belong. If the market has no place in labor compensation, the where does the market belong?
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > You're citing that looking at earnings from different fields as the place the "market" doesn't belong. If the market has no place in labor compensation, the where does the market belong? I'm not sure what you are interpreting from my post, or what your first sentence means, but I will try to answer: The 'market', such as it is, determines earnings. It is deeply flawed but please don't take that to a logical extreme, that the market has "no place". For very many things, I think markets are the best solution; they are also 'free', as in freedom - not constraining individual's rights to act as they wish. I am not an economist. My guess is that reducing distortions in the market mechanism might do wonders, particularly the distortion of imbalanced market power. For example, a single large employer has much greater power than a single employee, and thus has great leverage over them that doesn't yield economic outcomes. Also, some things are not well served by market pricing. For example, the market serves those most motivated to pay, which is good, but also those most able to pay. Health care and education should not be distributed based on ability to pay. Another example is that the market serves work that is directly profitable. Some things don't generate profit or not quickly enough, such as basic scientific research.

legitster 5y ago

This article misses out on some of the most insidious behavior, exclusive PHD programs that require a Master's degree. They know they are asking a large pool of students to pay for the privilege to compete for a small number of spots.

xhkkffbf 5y ago
Wow. I hadn't thought of that wrinkle. That's a particularly sleezy way to limit access.
- legitster 5y ago
  A school may offer 6-8 PHD openings a year in a department, but have 3-4 times as many students enter the Master's degree program knowing most of them will never get into the PHD program.

etothepii 5y ago

At Oxford and Cambridge in the UK one gets their Bachellor's degrees upgraded to Master's 2-3 years after graduating provided one hasn't been arrested or divorced.

hmsshagatsea 5y ago
What
jakeinspace 5y ago
Huh, I looked it up and that's sort of the case. But I don't think they "upgrade" your degree, they just award you the rank of "Master of Arts". This would appear to be entirely different from earning a Master of Engineering/Science/etc, or even an MA at any other school, which is an actual degree.
- etothepii 5y ago
  There was a whole ceremony and I have a certificate that says Master of Arts, it looks exactly the same as my certificate that says I have the degree Bachelor of Arts.
  - etothepii 5y ago
    None of this is helped by the fact that the primary requirement for your degree is to be "touched by grace" after holding one of 5 fingers while a man called a Praelector says in Latin something to the effect of, "These 5 people holding my fingers are jolly good chaps and chapettes and should be given the degree of ..."

havelhovel 5y ago

> Regulations that disqualify programs with high debt and low earnings from receiving federal aid would force universities to reappraise master’s degrees that frequently leave graduates in dire straits. I think this is reasonable. My non-STEM Master's program was tuition free, because my field isn't particularly lucrative, but it is considered important enough to merit large numbers of scholarships. The only programs that would be hurt are those that are neither in the interest of the student nor society at large.

beej71 5y ago

My CS MS paid for itself in under a year of work. In 1997. It wasn't always awful, but now it's awful. This is why my last teaching gig was at a place that used income share agreements; alternate payment methods need to be promoted. Starting a house in debt is a ball and chain that doesn't help anyone. Accreditation is a major issue that needs addressing, as well. "Anything different is good." --Phil, Groundhog Day

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/Qv2Ba https://archive.is/Qv2Ba

dang 5y ago

Recent and related: Of 55 students in my class at Columbia’s Film program, 4 made a career out of it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827592 - July 2021 (448 comments)