Post Secondary Institutions have put undergraduate education on the back burner. It's all about graduate degrees now. More money, grants, and cheap student labour.
Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
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Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#72Is it really?
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#73Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#74One of the key issues I see is that we don’t place a high enough value on adult education. A philosophy professor of mine told me the word “andragogy”, which is the theory of adult education. It’s different from “pedagogy” which means the education of children. I always thought that learning is learning. It never occurred to me that there’s a difference between how and why children learn and that it could be differen…
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.…
There are schools that are much more oriented (or have programs that are much more oriented) towards people who are working or are otherwise not attending school full time. I'm not sure I can really fault the average undergrad program for orienting things towards the 95% case situation. (Some schools are also much more commuter-oriented than others are.)
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#75My masters degree in Computer Science was incredibly educating and opened many career doors for me. It filled in a lot of gaps that my undergraduate education left, and significantly raised my profile amongst recruiters. CS might be the exception to the rule about Masters degrees though.
Conversely, I don't even have a bachelor's degree in CS, and I haven't suffered at all because of it. I got a job offer before graduating, and decided my time was better spent earning money than learning stuff I would probably never have any use for.
Rather than focusing on degrees, I think it's a lot more important to focus on learning, however you don't know what's important to learn until you actually start working on real problems.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#76"We can’t just rely on the market to provide all of the quality discipline that master’s programs need." It seems like if the federal government stopped lending for master's degrees, and allowed students to file for bankruptcy to get out of private loans, then the market might very well sort everything out.
Yes, having government involved always creates inflation. It's no coincidence that the two areas with most government involvement, education and health care, are the things that have outpaced every other measure of inflation significantly.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#77I had a friend who was wanting to get a master's degree in poetry, and it cost about 45k a year, back in early 2000s. I strongly advised against it, my friend did not take well to my advice. Hope it all turned out well. I have no problem with people getting degrees in the arts. My spouse has a Master's in fine arts, from a university in Europe. But she didn't acquire any debt from that degree, while I did in the US w…
That said about federal student loans, it is a low interest unsecured type of debt. At a bank an unsecured loan is at least 11-16% depending on the amount. So if you as a student do have some of that debt leftover, it is much smarter to use that toward a car down payment or a deposit on an apartment. I feel like most college kids don't have even the slightest grasp on budgeting and how all transactions affect the acc…
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Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that recognized socially ? As in opening a business after passes these classes.
> As in opening a business after passes these classes. Where do you need a degree to open a business?
Lots of professions and trades require a qualification or license to practice.
So getting these qualifications are required for reskilling.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#79"We can’t just rely on the market to provide all of the quality discipline that master’s programs need." It seems like if the federal government stopped lending for master's degrees, and allowed students to file for bankruptcy to get out of private loans, then the market might very well sort everything out.
Yes, having government involved always creates inflation. It's no coincidence that the two areas with most government involvement, education and health care, are the things that have outpaced every other measure of inflation significantly.
Of course in both cases this is only true in the US.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that recognized socially ? As in opening a business after passes these classes.
You don't need a degree to open a business. And mostly it's for learning things for your own satisfaction, which I sense is what you mean?
Depends. If it's in a medical field, you might need a degree.