141–150 of 315 posts
I managed two people with a masters degree at a previous position and they weren't any better then the person I hired with a high school diploma. In fact I'd say the death metal guy with the HS diploma ran circles around them.
Doesn't seem like a sound investment from my very limited perspective.
My 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.
The base problem is the idea that a given academic degree gives you access to some career. It's messy, because clearly some do work that way. With the film degree it should have been clear that there's only so many relevant jobs going each year, and thus your chance as a graduate is going to be minimal. It would certainly be in everyone's interest to have transparency about the destinations. Master's degrees are also…
I 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…
At least with some graduate programs—in areas of actually value—you might qualify for an RA or TA subsidy. But it’s not worth paying full freight.
"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.
There are course-based Masters and I consider them as a convenient solution to get around the unnecessary electives in Undergraduate studies. I recently transferred to a graduate diploma which serves the same purpose.
Bachelor degrees are the scam in higher education. It should be only masters.
Why?
Ie you need to gauge people based on their skill not their degree for bachelor level stuff anyways so instead of some mid degree that's useless we should get rid of it and push people to actually complete something useful, like a master's degree.
I 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…
On the other hand, degrees are "free" in Europe, and I don't want my tax money spent on people doing masters degrees on "poetry". The fact that you have to pay for your degree out of pocket may mean that more people will choose to do degrees that are worth something, which is a great thing for society overall. Having said that the prices of degrees in the US are outrageous. A middle ground should be found.
And to your point about "free" education in Europe. The act of decoupling the pursuit of education and knowledge, from a high financial cost, is a crucial mechanism to ensure that institutions retain the freedom to pursue knowledge for its own sake, and to not be (solely) steered by the industrial interests of the status quo.
I've seen that in CS programs at University of Buffalo and Yale, a majority of Masters students are from abroad, especially from Asia.
Basically, if you wanted to work in tech in the US, you could either:
- Find a multinational company in your home country, work for them for a year, and request a transfer (highly competitive)
- Find a job for a company in the US while abroad, ask them to sponsor you for a H-1B, and hope you win the visa lottery (unlikely, since companies don't like their chances on the lottery)
- Get a Masters degree. Sure, it's $50,000, but you're guaranteed a 3-year work visa (OPT with STEM extension) during which you can apply for the H-1B multiple times (it's a winner!)
This is actually completely rational, and benefits both the students, the school, and arguably the US since it gets some highly skilled workers who did not take out loans.
Are Masters degrees outside of STEM (and online ones, like the OPM-managed ones this article mentions) that cater to local Americans in low wage sectors a scam? Maybe!
Are Masters degrees in STEM (which definitely are cash cows) a scam? Almost definitely not; in fact, they're a great workaround until the US reforms its immigration system