Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?

it's been a long, long time for me, but graduate school (for Master's) was where I actually learnt a lot. I was too swamped under a load of undergraduate coursework to deeply absorb anything. Lighter coursework and deeper dives into subjects were so much better for my brain during my Master's.

It might have helped that I was too young and stupid to have any well-considered career goals and enjoyed learning for the sake of it.

This was engineering/CS though, and the article seems to be about MFAs.

The two factors are:

Credentialism the worship of credentials throughout many industries when other cheaper metrics are available, but may be illegal (like testing for IQ in USA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

and inability to declare bankruptcy so as to include student loans. Bankruptcy says that the _lender_ has responsibility to not enslave people with debt -- or rather the _lender_ may only enslave a borrower for a limited amount of time, after which it is ultimately the lenders problem that they gave that person too much money and that they should have known that the borrower would have never been able to repay. Debt is a useful tool, but the ability to enslave people with debt should be limited by the law.

I wish schools got audited for that very thing. Schools are extremely discriminatory against adults not at application time, but when they offer classes. Not only do they not accommodate either, a lot of professors still pull BS where you need to hand in assignments at the end of class! There is absolutely nothing in the education system today that requires you to hand in something with such a short term time table.

I say this as a mid 20s return college student. My experience going back to college without the "stars in my eyes" so to speak, has really left me embittered by the system altogether. Schools act like autocratic bureaucracies that when they make a mistake all you get is an "oops sorry. Now deal with it lol." Also student employment is not only predatory (cause the pay is just garbage), but it's like they don't even train students either. If you want any answers, you have to wait to talk to one of the few people who has actually been hired on as an employee.

Higher education is structured for students going from high school to their institutions. They also assume students don't have full time employment or a family. So basically if you have either of those, the school doesn't care at all about your plight. They know your gonna pay off your loans and complete your degree. They prefer younger impressionable kids who are gonna waste a lot of time and money there instead.

> for example it was the system in Poland when I graduated but it became more popular to do 3+2 since then

In France, there is the "3+2" system, but that's just on paper. Basically, there are two types of bachelor's: a practical one that's supposed to be the last in line, and another, more "theoretical" one that's supposed to be followed with a Master's.

Students have to choose between the two fairly early, so if your goal is a Master's, you'll take the bachelor that's supposed to be followed by the Master. You do get a piece of paper at the three-year mark saying you've got a Bachelor's, but that's unusable if you want to get a job (as in no-one will hire you).

You technically can go to a Master's after the practical one, but there are extra steps, and it's not as easy.

It's probably generally true of engineering degrees. While there's obviously an opportunity cost, there's usually not a big out of pocket expense other than living expenses. In my case, it wasn't so much that I really used a lot of specific things I learned getting the Master's but I still think it was a useful supplement to what I learned undergrad--the thesis in particular.

The same applies to some degree of the sciences in general but, there, you probably have to get to a PhD for the opportunities to be significantly elevated relative to a BS.

In any case, this meme about Master's degree scams is mostly directed at high-cost degrees in journalism and the like where the career opportunities aren't great with or without the degree.