Coming up next: luxury watches biggest scam in retail. (they serve the same function as an ivy league degree: signaling status)
Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
121–130 of 315 posts
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#122One 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…
> Most masters classes are simply just repackaged versions of undergraduate classes, maybe with a little more depth.
Depends on the country. Masters degrees can be research which are the first year of a Ph.D. or they can be taught degrees. In the latter they are usually called "conversion" courses where there's intensive focus on filling in gaps in education for somebody moving to the field. E.g. moving from an Economics B.Sc. to a Computer Science degree.
Where I was educated the Computing Science undergraduate degree is the equivalent of any Masters degree in the same subject. There is nothing in the subject matter that would be of value as another degree as it isn't advancement. It would be merely repackaged undergraduate courses like you suggest.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#123Bachelor degrees are the scam in higher education. It should be only masters.
Why?
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#124"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.
[deleted]
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#125The 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…
If testing for IQ works for your purposes, then why not use GMAT, GRE, SAT scores? I’m not sure any of this helps, though, since it would only prove you’re good at the test.
Standardized tests are highly predictive of IQ. https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/what-do-sat-and-iq-test... Here's a layman read. Here's a little more depth : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#126"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.
> Yes, having government involved always creates inflation.
No it doesn't.
> 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.
The government is less (EDIT: more) involved (proportionate to total expenditures in the domain) in healthcare lots of places outside the US without equal, much less greater, healthcare inflation.
It is the manner, not the mere fact of government involvement that produces inflation.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#127One 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…
[deleted]
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#128One 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…
> Most masters classes are simply just repackaged versions of undergraduate classes, maybe with a little more depth. Depends on the country. Masters degrees can be research which are the first year of a Ph.D. or they can be taught degrees. In the latter they are usually called "conversion" courses where there's intensive focus on filling in gaps in education for somebody moving to the field. E.g. moving from an Econo…
> In the latter they are usually called "conversion" courses where there's intensive focus on filling in gaps in education for somebody moving to the field.
Well, or they are first professional degrees (e.g., the MBA, MFA, etc.)
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#129My 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.
What was your undergraduate degree in?
Also Computer Science but from a much less prestigious state school.
It was also in a region with a much smaller tech sector.
It's actually hard to say how much of the career boost was from moving to Boston and how much from the degree. I did make some very useful connections during the degree as well as actually learning quite a lot in some of the classes.
Re: Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education?
#130"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.
The success of the more socialized approaches to healthcare relative to the partially-private US approach suggest we need more government involvement in healthcare. Much cheaper, better outcomes, more people covered.