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Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

nytimes.com

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

#101

Post by vharuck »

Shivetya wrote: post #75
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.

if they want government to pay for college then government should decide what is worthy of being paid for and how much. after all that is the attitude with regards to medical care. However I feel a better solution is for the government to still do it as loans but set the rates and required classes for each degree type. simply put there are valueless degree programs out there which only enrich the schools. Colleges wo…

I don't like the idea that only career-focused degrees are important. I studied math not to get a job with those skills, but because I enjoyed math and wanted to add to the world's knowledge.

Money is a means to quality of life, sure. But you can't ignore the things that are part of the "quality" because they're not profitable.

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

#102

Post by calhoun137 »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #92
calhoun137 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 attac…

> 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

This is great point in my opinion. Solving this issue in the real world is not simple, it comes down more to the political power of various competing factions than it does to coming up with a "big idea". Once you have a "big idea" (like free public college), unless your faction has sufficient political power, then how are you going to implement it?

The problem is not that we are lacking big ideas that will work, there are many of them. The problem is we don't have the political power to implement a single one of them.

Consider this statement from the OP:

"Look no further than this chart (https://i.imgur.com/B3sVMjg.png), around 2010 was when the gov started fully backing and giving the loans directly, and conveniently it's when students needs for loans skyrocketed. It's so obvious that colleges took advantage of it."

Right now the gov't intervene's in public education by "fully backing and giving the loans directly". My position is that not all forms of government intervention are inherently bad, for example, the way the government intervenes in public high school is something we both agree is good.

I believe that the current way the gov't intervenes in college education is deeply problematic, and that instead of completely removing the role of gov't, we should copy the model from high school which has proven to work very well.

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

#103

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

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…

If you have strong computer science fundamentals, you are not limited to just web development. You might start there, but it certainly isn't the be-all and end-all.

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

#104

Post by randomdata »

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.

With much lower post secondary attainment, achieved by having much more stringent entrance requirements, limited to the best students who are already given free ride scholarships in America anyway. So, really, nothing needs to change other than the idea that everyone needs to go to college. Which, as we have seen in the rest of the world, is unnecessary anyway.

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

#105

Post by leetcrew »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #92
calhoun137 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 attac…

I think I agree. instead of having the federal government back loans for students to attend private college, why not just double down on funding for public universities?

there are already some very high quality state universities in the US where you can get a first rate education. fund these schools to the point where tuition is somewhere between $0 and $5000 a year and see how the elite private schools justify their prices.

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

#106

Post by leetcrew »

conanbatt wrote: post #73
dd36 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to do exactly as the OP said: this is what we’ll pay per student.

School vouchers. Still bad for college: why give free money to the richest of society?

it's not really giving them free money when they've already paid way more than the value of a single voucher in taxes that year.

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

#107

Post by iamatworknow »

permatech wrote: post #37

In engineering the quip was always "if you're paying for graduate school you're doing it wrong" ... to even get in the door for most hardware jobs fresh out of school you need a MS. A PhD may be preferred, and will start with a higher salary -- but put in ~5yrs instead of 2. As long as the tuition is covered and you make money as a TA or RA in a low-cost of living area you should come out ahead in the engineering fie…

>In engineering the quip was always "if you're paying for graduate school you're doing it wrong"

This is what I faced pursuing graduate studies in physics as well. Problem was, I graduated from undergrad in 2009 and the only grad school willing to pay for me during the economic downturn had a new, very poorly run program. I (voluntarily) dropped out after a year.

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

#108

Post by dpflan »

I think a good example of good economic value are the growing offerings for M.S. in C.S., like Georgia Tech's OSMCS program which is offered completely online at a price less than $10K total.

""" Tuition & Fees for OMS CS: Tuition: $510 per 3-credit hour course (most OMS CS courses will be 3 credit hours) Fees: $301 per academic term of enrollment ($194 institutional fee + $107 technology fee). Fees are assessed only for those terms in which students are enrolled in courses. """

> https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/cost-payment-sched...

There are other programs, like Data Analytics.

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

#109

Post by SilasX »

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.

It does, but by being different in ways America wouldn't like: much more spartan accommodations, stricter entrance criteria, valid alternate middle-class career paths that sop off the demand, and (IIUIC) price controls.

It's not like Europe has a carbon copy of the American system but with a greater commitment to throwing money at it.

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

#110

Post by PeterisP »

duxup wrote: post #2

I wonder as far as education goes if graduating college, working, and then returning for a masters or similar things would be a better pattern. Or even graduating high school, working, college, working, college, or something else would be a better pattern. I've worked with some folks with MBAs who have no clue about how to work with people / think they're just "the boss" and what they say goes because no reason at al…

This is a quite solid concept. Especially regarding MBA's there's a lot of people management concepts where you can't really get the proper context without having seen in practice the environment in which they'd be applied, and you can't get that environment in a classroom. There are professional MBA programs which require a few years of work experience to join, and it makes quite a difference IMHO.

I'm not that certain about CS. If you're doing software engineering (or research on 'meta-SE' e.g. methodology, architecture, programming languages), then yes, it'd make all sense to get some industry experience between college and masters; however if you're going to grad school for theoretical CS or machine learning or cryptography or quantum algorithms or any other directions of primarily academic research, then industry experience is helpful but definitely isn't necessary.

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