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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?

#291

Post by klipt »

digianarchist wrote: post #268
phsource wrote: post #150

One reason that often gets glossed over (including in this article) is how (non-online) Masters programs are huge moneymakers as a ticket to working in the US. 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, wo…

You forgot another option. Immigrate to Canada and then move to the US on a TN.

That may be an even better option because you can retire in Canada with free healthcare.

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

#292

Post by klipt »

mavelikara wrote: post #277
pclmulqdq wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did only hire from about 20 schools in the US. The unfortunate thing is that the masters programs did not filter nearly as exclusively as the undergrad programs.

Ok, so you were "shredding resumes" of students of all but 20 schools in US, IITs and Tsinghua. That's an extremely high hiring bar. I don't think this experience can be used to draw general conclusions on the quality of education across Masters programs in US.

Yeah, I know many people who wouldn't have passed that bar making bank working at FAANGS.

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

#293

Post by prewett »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #250
wirthjason wrote: post #14

One 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…

People in the US place extremely high values on education. What is lacking is people's ability to pay for it.

Having lived in a fairly rural area of the US, and having parents who live in a different, very rural area of the US, that the rural areas do not have much of a value for education. Particularly the type of Christians who are the 6-day creation types, although I also haven't found as many 6-day creation believers in urban areas.

(This isn't meant as a dig at those, just an observation. If your worldview places "belief in the Bible" as a high value and your interpretation requires a literal reading, then what would an institution full of people who preach evolution and old-earth have to offer? I have a friend who teaches physics part-time at a local college in one of these rural areas, but he is 6-day creation. I said that you'd have to believe that the scientists are incompetent at their jobs, and he said that of course they were. I was stunned because while I could imagine other people saying that, I didn't imagine that he would. I can't fathom how you can believe that people who have worked years to figure out how to most accurately date something would be so incompetent as to mistake days for thousands or millions of years. Especially when it's physics that underlies all the carbon dating... And to be fair, there are plenty of Christians who think 6-day creation is a rather silly abuse of a poetic account.)

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

#294

Post by yCombLinks »

parsecs wrote: post #200
yCombLinks wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Just wondering, as someone currently preparing for SAT - why is it so easy to drastically improve one's performance on standardized tests if they predict IQ? My score was pretty mediocre (due to a year of slacking off during COVID) but after some practice I improved it significantly - does that mean my IQ is greatly increasing as well? I know of some very, very clever people who do not perform well, and the opposite…

"SAT scores are predictive of IQ" is not the same as saying "if an individual gets a higher SAT score than another person they have a higher IQ than that person". If however you had a group of 100 people that had a fairly higher score, it is very likely they would have a higher mean IQ than a group of 100 people with a lower score. Nor is it the same as saying "the SAT is a perfect IQ test". A perfect IQ test, one that gives an individual the same score every time, and ranks everyone along an unquestioned scale, is likely impossible.

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

#295

Post by AJ1998 »

andrew_eit wrote: post #162

I disagree. Firstly, the question needs to be narrowed down. The topic of a master's degree in Europe vs in the UK and in the US varies, hugely: 1) The UK and the US have a great focus on the elitism of the university name. Countries like Germany do not, a masters from a (known) university with good grades, is pretty much as valuable as all the others. 2) Fees in Europe its free (as has been mentioned countless times…

And which country did you get your masters from? Do you think your experience would have been different had you chosen a different country to do your masters in?

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

#296

Post by R0b0t1 »

prewett wrote: post #293
R0b0t1 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US place extremely high values on education. What is lacking is people's ability to pay for it.

Having lived in a fairly rural area of the US, and having parents who live in a different, very rural area of the US, that the rural areas do not have much of a value for education. Particularly the type of Christians who are the 6-day creation types, although I also haven't found as many 6-day creation believers in urban areas. (This isn't meant as a dig at those, just an observation. If your worldview places "belie…

I have lived in a very rural part of the US as well. Typically there's a rundown part of a small town (or for very small towns, the entire town) that has people caught in it that may not appreciate education, but generally my experience is everyone does recognize the value of education but may resent the fact they have no access to it. They are also not usually overly religious.

Farmers especially respect education a great deal because the states pay professionals to go out and tell them how to make as much money as possible.

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

#297

Post by [deleted] »

gspr wrote: post #262
robomartin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me the most about US higher education is the sheer waste of time and money it can be. This is directly connected to how bad our secondary (say, middle to high school) education has become. In terms of secondary education, after a dozen years of schooling young adults are launched into the world with exactly zero marketable skills. Zero. What is the average US high school graduate good for? Stacking boxes…

Indeed. I was shocked when I learned how much American university students are treated as children (forced to take off-topic courses, living under high school-like rules).

[deleted]

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

#298

Post by laurent92 »

muststopmyths wrote: post #51

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 sa…

I went to a top-tier IT engineering school in France.

Despite programming (in GWBasic) since 7 years old, the IT school didn’t transform me into a good developer. In fact most of my colleagues became managers. It’s only 4 years AFTER school that I landed in a famous startup, where I learnt to recompile open-source and use Maven properly and understand the underlying concepts, what to study, what to look into.

And immediately, I created my startup which is now successful.

This whole beginning of career / engineering school has been a terrible waste of youth energy, along with stressing me out because I knew something wasn’t right, and making me intensely depressed. I’m enraged that studying is so hard, and yet, you’re left with absolutely no time to program on your own and discover the scroll of truth.

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

#299

Post by murderfs »

quantumofalpha wrote: post #167
murderfs wrote: post #94

The article doesn't mention one of the biggest draws: having a masters degree from an accredited U.S. institution improves your chances at getting an H-1B visa.

You meant STEM OPT? H1B masters pool only marginally improves H1B lottery chances, which are far too low today to begin with.

My understanding is that the masters pool is a rather significant improvement in your chances: some Googling finds a random source that claims your chances are 60% higher: https://www.waylit.com/post/what-are-my-chances-of-h1b-lotte...

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

#300

Post by majjgepolja »

mavelikara wrote: post #272
pclmulqdq wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has happened to me so many times that my last company shreds resumes from foreign students with a prestigious American masters where the undergrad is not similarly prestigious (eg IIT and Tsinghua are good, but not many other schools).

India has a population of well over a billion people. IITs admit only about 5000 students per academic year, from about 100K students applying, across all disciplines. If you find all other students from India not qualified, maybe there is something seriously wrong with your candidate outreach, or you hire from a very exclusive pool even stateside.

That's true, but having seen (non-IIT) Indian colleges, I am not surprised if 80%+ students they see are like that. Moreover, intelligent ones less commonly opt for masters degrees because they get good offers in campus placements, especially those from middle class or rural areas are already doing undergrad on loans.
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