Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees • Hacker News Board

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#61

Post by smogcutter » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #7

duxup wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

In LA, UCLA Extension fills the bill of a la carte classes for working adults. They have a huge variety of courses available, and a number are offered online.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#62

Post by ngngngng » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #41

freewilly1040 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Free college works just fine elsewhere.

Yes, but do other places have the complication of having to replace systems that are sucking billions of dollars out of students to line the pockets of university presidents?

This is what makes me skeptical. A solution in the United States for our education, healthcare, or other problems has to involve removing the leeches from the system. But political bribery is legal in the US, and the leeches have more than enough money to bribe the politicians.

So insurance companies will keep existing. University presidents will keep taking home 7 figures. Turbotax won't go away anytime soon. You can either find a way to suck money away from the vulnerable, or you can be poor.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#63

Post by secabeen » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

ghobs91 wrote: post #25

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…

>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".

Is there any evidence of non-profit universities doing that? Here's the best expenditure data I have from the Department of Education. Per-student real expenditures are up about 20% over 17 years. That doesn't seem like "hop(ping) on the gravy train".

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_334.30.a...

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#64

Post by zamfi » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

ghobs91 wrote: post #25

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…

> 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.

This sounds appealing, but healthcare and education are different in some fundamental ways.

People (generally) don't end up in the hospital, on Medicaid, by choice. So there is a moral argument to be made in regulating pricing to avoid the exploitation of sick people who need medical care to survive, by capping prices for that care.

But people do choose to attend Masters degree programs -- they aren't forced to by circumstances outside their own control. The moral argument for preventing exploitation by capping price is much weaker compared with other avenues: transparency about outcomes, truth in advertising, required financial projections, etc. -- give people more data about what a Masters' degree is actually worth, and hopefully they'll make better choices. When you're in the back of an ambulance unconscious you are not able to make any choices, justifying societal intervention.

In education, limiting the amount of loans available / backed by the government for a single individual would do just as much as artificially capping prices. (From the article: "there are no hard caps on how much someone can borrow for graduate school".)

Let the crappy Masters' programs that aren't worth it get exposed and lose enrollment. By capping prices you're implicitly also saying that every Masters' program that charges this much is worth this much, an implication that is very much false. The value of a degree is not really correlated with the cost to provide it -- why base the price on cost rather than value? (Plus, how would you even "determine what it actually costs per student per year to run a university"? This probably depends on a zillion factors like endowment, cost of living, faculty salaries -- and their alternative job prospects -- availability of land and housing, etc. Would you average it across the country? Good luck running a school in NYC or SFBA, then.)

Telling a university how much it can charge for a Masters degree is like telling Tesla how much it can charge for the Model 3.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#65

Post by ghobs91 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #64

ghobs91 wrote: post #25

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…

> 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. This sounds appealing, but healthcare and education are different in some fundamental ways. People (generall…

If all people were buying Teslas using government-backed loans that the gov was then responsible to collect, while Tesla got paid up front and claimed to be a non-profit, they would absolutely have the right to tell them what they could charge.

If a university is going to call itself non-profit, they should only be charging whatevers needed to cover costs of operating. Tuition has skyrocketed in the last 10-20 years, with no reasonable explanation for what aspect of operating costs has gone up enough to justify that.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#66

Post by lostcolony » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

mertd wrote: post #57

JackFr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This. Either eliminate Federal aid entirely, or if you want aid, here's the price you're gonna charge.

How do you reckon that the government won't keep cutting the cost to make budget for the next shiny fighter jet?

In other countries that have free education, students get very involved with politics whenever the government tries to do that.

The very best thing to create an engaged electorate is to make policies that affect the people you want voting. This is why Democrats are pushing for these changes (and Republicans resist). It's also why even though Republicans will cut the budget, and cut social programs, they always promise (not necessarily promises they intend to keep) to leave Medicare alone (old people vote, and are more Republican than young people).

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#67

Post by misiti3780 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

madengr wrote: post #35

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.

or your company pays, which is how i got an MS in applied math.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#68

Post by roymurdock » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

prions wrote: post #50

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…

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

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#69

Post by resoluteteeth » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

throwayEngineer wrote: post #43

resoluteteeth wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A masters degree doesn't pay in dollars, but experience that can set you apart in the future. Surely "experience that can set you apart in the future" can be captured in calculations of lifetime earnings?

Go ahead then. My website is unprofitable but it's a conversation piece. Did my website get me a 6 figure job or my undergrad in engineering?

I'm honestly not sure what point you're trying to make.

If you're saying your website is unprofitable but helped you get a 6 figure job then it isn't really "unprofitable" in a broad sense because despite not generating revenue directly it contributed to your lifetime earnings, so I don't think this conflicts with the idea of trying to capture indirect benefits by looking at lifetime earnings.

If you're saying your website is unprofitable and will never help you get a job (even as a conversation starter or indirectly through experience you obtained creating it) but is nonetheless an "experience that will set you apart" like grad school, I would disagree about whether it is really "setting you apart" after all.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#70

Post by ac29 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

secabeen wrote: post #63

ghobs91 wrote: post #25

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…

>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". Is there any evidence of non-profit universities doing that? Here's the best expenditure data I have from the Department of Education. Per-student real expenditures are up about 20% over 17 years. Th…

The data you linked to is for private non-profit universities.

At least in the state I went to public university at, its not so much that per-student expenses went up (though they did to some degree), its that the State started funding a far lower percentage of costs, leaving the student (and the student's ability to take loans) to pay for a larger share.