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“ 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 def

“ 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.
    - lumost 5y ago
      This would likely just lead to oversupply of in demand fields and schools creating shoddy majors. If everyone with a psych major switched to comp sci tomorrow one of two things would happen. 1) we’d have more engineers than we’d know what to do with - wages would collapse and companies would stop trying to conserve engineering time. Innovation would slow and we’d head back towards the days of J2EE etc. 2) universities would create fake versions of the majors that are guaranteed, but easy to pass and unlikely to lead to employment.
      - mc32 5y ago
        Presumably as CS or engineering oversupplied the market, loan guarantees would be removed and other majors in higher would get a boost instead.
        lumost 5y ago
        Oversupply affects the current marginal negotiation power of employees. By the time loan guarantees are removed there can be massive gluts of workers who are locked into loans they can’t repay.
        mc32 5y ago
        It couldn’t be worse than what we have now with kids going into dead end degrees and coming out loaded with debt that they can’t unload.
  - lumost 5y ago
    The universities go out of their way to give this impression by presenting “success cases” and misleading statistics. Many of these students would rationally believe that studying “film” would lead to a shot in the film industry.
    - itronitron 5y ago
      I highly recommend this video, where CaptainSparklez (one of the YT millionaires) discusses his decision to turn down an offer to pay 70K a year to get a CS degree in gaming (starts at the 15 minute mark). https://youtu.be/TexLwzN_PiU https://youtu.be/TexLwzN_PiU
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    They never mention salary just the educational genres you could be studying. The way it is written I wouldn't think it was geared to studying hollywood movies nevermind a career. https://arts.columbia.edu/programs-study/ma-film-and-media-studies https://arts.columbia.edu/programs-study/ma-film-and-media-s... It does say: A few Teaching Assistantships are available. Student Service positions employ students as Programming Assistants and Research Assistants.
- ampdepolymerase 5y ago
  Academia is not elastic, many universities have limited spots for the in-demand classes like CS. For medicine, residencies are the limiting factor. Academia in general refuses to scale and be responsive to market demands.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Given what academia pays, I imagine that instruction jobs are hard to fill in CS.
baron816 5y ago
The average medical student graduates with >$200k in debt, with medical residents earning an average of about $60k. But med student debt isn’t a problem because doctors earn much much more after completing their residency. The article says “entering a job market that pays less than $30,000.” That doesn’t mean that masters holders earn that on average, or that that’s what they’ll be earning mid career. Not to say that masters degrees aren’t a scam, nor that the article is being intentionally deceiving. But my guess is that it’s not quite as life destroying as it appears.
- lazide 5y ago
  In many cases it’s disingenuous to argue that everyone will be in the same place as a medical student? I know someone who spent similar amounts on a UX masters degree, and almost decade later was only finally hitting 100k/yr - in the SF Bay Area. Which cost of living/free cash flow perspective is probably even worse than your $60k/yr med student.
  - baron816 5y ago
    I’m not. What I’m saying is that you can’t compare someone’s debt level to their expected earnings one or two years out. It still entirely possible that masters degrees are a very bad deal, but the figures they show don’t fairly demonstrate that.
legitster 5y ago
This is for a master's program in filmmaking at Columbia. For the most part we are talking about children of the elite and privileged being taken advantage of here.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  If you’ve got that kind of money to burn on sending your kids there for funsies, is it even “being taken advantage of”?
  - legitster 5y ago
    Exactly. My point was this group is very willingly exploiting themselves.
  - havelhovel 5y ago
    A degree from an "elite" school costs about the same as an expensive luxury watch or car, and I'm sure that many applicants see such a degree as a prestige symbol that defies utilitarian value. Just because the author doesn't see the logic doesn't mean that there isn't any there, or that anyone is being swindled.
    - cubano 5y ago
      Are you saying that a luxury watch costs the same as a luxury car? If that is true (which I find incredibly hard to believe) it literally makes no sense. The utility and the ability of a car to give you a ROI compared to a watch is almost infinitely more.
      - havelhovel 5y ago
        While the entry price for luxury watches is lower than it is for luxury cars, I see a fair amount of Pateks and APs that go for at least $100,000. There are many more exclusive models and companies that I know next to nothing about that are significantly more expensive, but you can get a sense of the wider market here: https://www.hodinkee.com/packages/all-the-new-watches-of-2021 https://www.hodinkee.com/packages/all-the-new-watches-of-202.... And yes, I agree that the utility of a car far outweighs that of a mechanical watch. It's also why I believe that paying $150,000 for a fancy master's degree at a world-famous school is a pretty sweet deal for the wealthy and vain.

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.
  - lumost 5y ago
    This would likely just lead to oversupply of in demand fields and schools creating shoddy majors. If everyone with a psych major switched to comp sci tomorrow one of two things would happen. 1) we’d have more engineers than we’d know what to do with - wages would collapse and companies would stop trying to conserve engineering time. Innovation would slow and we’d head back towards the days of J2EE etc. 2) universities would create fake versions of the majors that are guaranteed, but easy to pass and unlikely to lead to employment.
    - mc32 5y ago
      Presumably as CS or engineering oversupplied the market, loan guarantees would be removed and other majors in higher would get a boost instead.
      - lumost 5y ago
        Oversupply affects the current marginal negotiation power of employees. By the time loan guarantees are removed there can be massive gluts of workers who are locked into loans they can’t repay.
        mc32 5y ago
        It couldn’t be worse than what we have now with kids going into dead end degrees and coming out loaded with debt that they can’t unload.
- lumost 5y ago
  The universities go out of their way to give this impression by presenting “success cases” and misleading statistics. Many of these students would rationally believe that studying “film” would lead to a shot in the film industry.
  - itronitron 5y ago
    I highly recommend this video, where CaptainSparklez (one of the YT millionaires) discusses his decision to turn down an offer to pay 70K a year to get a CS degree in gaming (starts at the 15 minute mark). https://youtu.be/TexLwzN_PiU https://youtu.be/TexLwzN_PiU
- ipaddr 5y ago
  They never mention salary just the educational genres you could be studying. The way it is written I wouldn't think it was geared to studying hollywood movies nevermind a career. https://arts.columbia.edu/programs-study/ma-film-and-media-studies https://arts.columbia.edu/programs-study/ma-film-and-media-s... It does say: A few Teaching Assistantships are available. Student Service positions employ students as Programming Assistants and Research Assistants.
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
Academia is not elastic, many universities have limited spots for the in-demand classes like CS. For medicine, residencies are the limiting factor. Academia in general refuses to scale and be responsive to market demands.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Given what academia pays, I imagine that instruction jobs are hard to fill in CS.

baron816 5y ago

The average medical student graduates with >$200k in debt, with medical residents earning an average of about $60k. But med student debt isn’t a problem because doctors earn much much more after completing their residency. The article says “entering a job market that pays less than $30,000.” That doesn’t mean that masters holders earn that on average, or that that’s what they’ll be earning mid career. Not to say that masters degrees aren’t a scam, nor that the article is being intentionally deceiving. But my guess is that it’s not quite as life destroying as it appears.

lazide 5y ago
In many cases it’s disingenuous to argue that everyone will be in the same place as a medical student? I know someone who spent similar amounts on a UX masters degree, and almost decade later was only finally hitting 100k/yr - in the SF Bay Area. Which cost of living/free cash flow perspective is probably even worse than your $60k/yr med student.
- baron816 5y ago
  I’m not. What I’m saying is that you can’t compare someone’s debt level to their expected earnings one or two years out. It still entirely possible that masters degrees are a very bad deal, but the figures they show don’t fairly demonstrate that.

legitster 5y ago

This is for a master's program in filmmaking at Columbia. For the most part we are talking about children of the elite and privileged being taken advantage of here.

ashtonkem 5y ago
If you’ve got that kind of money to burn on sending your kids there for funsies, is it even “being taken advantage of”?
- legitster 5y ago
  Exactly. My point was this group is very willingly exploiting themselves.
- havelhovel 5y ago
  A degree from an "elite" school costs about the same as an expensive luxury watch or car, and I'm sure that many applicants see such a degree as a prestige symbol that defies utilitarian value. Just because the author doesn't see the logic doesn't mean that there isn't any there, or that anyone is being swindled.
  - cubano 5y ago
    Are you saying that a luxury watch costs the same as a luxury car? If that is true (which I find incredibly hard to believe) it literally makes no sense. The utility and the ability of a car to give you a ROI compared to a watch is almost infinitely more.
    - havelhovel 5y ago
      While the entry price for luxury watches is lower than it is for luxury cars, I see a fair amount of Pateks and APs that go for at least $100,000. There are many more exclusive models and companies that I know next to nothing about that are significantly more expensive, but you can get a sense of the wider market here: https://www.hodinkee.com/packages/all-the-new-watches-of-2021 https://www.hodinkee.com/packages/all-the-new-watches-of-202.... And yes, I agree that the utility of a car far outweighs that of a mechanical watch. It's also why I believe that paying $150,000 for a fancy master's degree at a world-famous school is a pretty sweet deal for the wealthy and vain.