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Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

nytimes.com

91–100 of 170 posts

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

#91
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s a double edged sword. The schools will charge exorbitant tuition if they know employers are paying for it. Did your employer reimburse you, or was it a direct payment? I took several classes after my MSEE, and employer reimbursed, with the downside that it was taxable.

i had to show them my grades, then they reimbursed me.

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

#92

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.

> This is why I'm so skeptical of the "free college" rhetoric I assume by "this" you are refering to the OP's statement that "This is what happens when there's 0 pressure on universities to price their programs competitively." One of the idea's behind free public college is to apply market pressure to private college's, so that they have to price their programs competitively. In a risk free debt financed system, pric…

I am not against free public education, and if I were starting a system from scratch I think making public universities free would be a great idea, for the reasons you point to.

The current proposals as I understand them will subsidize tuition at the current, severely inflated rate, letting the colleges get away with their price gouging, and I want to see accountability there. I wonder if as an incremental step attaching cost effectiveness conditions to school's ability to accept loan funds would be better. I believe this was Obama's general approach, though I will admit I have not looked into the issue deeply.

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

#93
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.

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

#94
post #57
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 the current context, the government is spending $X for education. We can say $X = $X_students + $X_schools + $X_lenders, where the subscripted variables represent the portion of the benefit each of the groups captures.

I don't necessarily want to change the level of $X. I just want to raise $X_students at the expense of the other two.

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

#95
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Yea thanks for the reply. Glad everything worked out for you, sounds like you had a solid plan from the get go and executed well

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

#96
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…

I’m a CE too and almost done with my PE. I want to stay engaged with learning after I’m done. And CS is definitely something I want to do afterwards but don’t really want to pursue a Master’s or any schooling. Can you recommend any CS books you loved? Anything iOS related would be great but I’ll take any recommendations from a fellow CE.

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

#97
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yea thanks for the reply. Glad everything worked out for you, sounds like you had a solid plan from the get go and executed well

Thanks! It was risky quitting to go to school full time but having professional work experience helped a lot to manage myself.

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

#98
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah this was during the height (well as far as advertising goes) of the situation where everyone was offering MBAs in every form. Like this guy couldn't manage a taco bell... maybe that should be the barrier to entry, to get into class you have to manage a taco bell for a time....

Actually, that's a really good idea.

Funny enough, many years ago I had a very aggressive candidate for a mid-level technical development manager position who was insistent that his newly minted, no computer experience required, MSCE certificate or some such plus his handful of years managing a Pizza Hut qualified him for the job, because "a good manager can manage anything". I disagreed he was right for the job.

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

#100
post #12
post #11

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.

Privately owned for-profit art school should be a giant warning to anyone thinking of enrolling.

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.
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