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USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

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Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#131

Post by rauljordan2020 »

999900000999 wrote: post #106

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 3…

> If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it.

Eh, I feel like this isn't true. Most of top schools in the US offer full, need-blind financial aid. This means no scholarship that can be taken away nor student loans. Many fellow classmates were there completely free of charge. The best schools have money, and they're interested in making sure their talent attends.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#132

Post by adamredwoods »

999900000999 wrote: post #106

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 3…

I think the article is pointing towards USC-specific predatory behavior for social-worker degrees.

>> In increasing enrollment in its social-work program, USC benefited from federal loan dollars: Graduates from 2015 through 2018 collectively borrowed more than half a billion dollars in federal student loans, more than those at any other graduate program in the country, the Journal found. USC had an endowment of $5.9 billion last year, making it one of the 20 wealthiest private schools in the country.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#133

Post by alex504 »

999900000999 wrote: post #106

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 3…

The school spends 60% of its revenue selling itself as an elite education to people who don't qualify or need an elite education. They employ salesmen and incentivize them to be as aggressive as they legally can. They then deliver a subpar education, by every metric, compared to schools that cost half as much.

This is a predatory scam that targets low-income individuals who want an education and a career and pretty much guarantees an outcome of long-term financial instability.

Of course the victims have some of the responsibility, but

>Adults have a right to make poor choices.

Puts these supposedly prestigious schools at about the same ethical level as a casino, a tobacco company or a pay day loan operation. What USC is doing is arguably worse than a casino because it's using the reputation of a prestigious university to take advantage of people who want an education, while simultaneously siphoning money from taxpayers.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#134

Post by WalterSear »

aserdf wrote: post #128
999900000999 wrote: post #106

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 3…

- Adults have a right to make poor choices. agree however the vast majority of high school kids are marketed to and forced to make decisions about college, while having little to no comprehension of the magnitude and permanence of their decision, when they are 17 years old (minors). graduate school of course being a different story.

The career counselor at my expensive private school didn't know what an engineer does.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#135

Post by zdragnar »

BizarroLand wrote: post #127
eindiran wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This creates an incentive structure that is exactly the opposite of what you want.

How so? Take a lower paying course that benefits society for little or no cost to you or a higher paying course that will push you into the upper middle or lower upper class that costs more. The only losers here would be the colleges that no longer get to charge the same $300k for every degree they stamp. Where is my logic wrong?

It funnels poor people into low paying jobs, and those who are better off into higher paying jobs, as they can afford the risk of taking out the loans (and likely have parents with good credit to back them).

Of course, that's assuming that the cost of lost tuition on cheapo degrees is made up by bumping up the cost of good job degrees. If you merely cut the tuition of some without raising the rest, then you will need to deal with all the school's who have wildly outsized budgets that were being subsidized by the cheapo degrees.

Or, the government will end up paying for it, and there'll be a glut of social worker degrees flipping burgers because social work and library sciences have a relatively fixed number of positions available.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#136

Post by ndesaulniers »

999900000999 wrote: post #106

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 3…

> Adults have a right to make poor choices.

Perhaps, but I do think we should defend the stupid from predators and predatory behaviors.

> Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?

Takes money to make money. What's the break-even point? That 300k is a one time cost; that 50k is recurring yearly.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#137

Post by mikemac »

Whinner wrote: post #96
m0lecules wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, you have schools like (the actual) Georgia Tech offering an online MS in CS for an affordable price: https://omscs.gatech.edu/

They also started an online MS in Cybersecurity in 2019. Three different tracks. The policy track only needs 1 CS'ish class. The Information Security track students would probably be better off just going for the MS in CS instead. A lot of students start in the Information Security track but switch over to Policy once they take the intro to info security class. All the classes in the Info Sec track are the same as th…

I assume you're in the CS track? How do you like it so far, and was your undergrad in CS?

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#138

Post by eindiran »

BizarroLand wrote: post #127
eindiran wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This creates an incentive structure that is exactly the opposite of what you want.

How so? Take a lower paying course that benefits society for little or no cost to you or a higher paying course that will push you into the upper middle or lower upper class that costs more. The only losers here would be the colleges that no longer get to charge the same $300k for every degree they stamp. Where is my logic wrong?

Loosely, jobs which pay poorly have a lot of labor supply relative to demand and jobs that pay well have a lot of demand relative to supply.

If you artificially change the price of degrees to match the expected lifetime ROI of that degree, you are decreasing the barrier to jobs that we already have too many people attempting to do and increasing the barrier to jobs we need more people to do.

Of course this analysis overlooks that some jobs are "good for society" on some metric, but no one wants to pay for them. But then the approach should be to directly incentivize those jobs eg through grants or government-funded work programs.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#139

Post by jeffy90 »

BizarroLand wrote: post #127
eindiran wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This creates an incentive structure that is exactly the opposite of what you want.

How so? Take a lower paying course that benefits society for little or no cost to you or a higher paying course that will push you into the upper middle or lower upper class that costs more. The only losers here would be the colleges that no longer get to charge the same $300k for every degree they stamp. Where is my logic wrong?

There's a shortage of software engineers and we need more students to enroll in STEM. When deciding between an expensive STEM degree or a free liberal arts degree, students are incentivized to chose the free degree in your proposed solution.

Re: USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

#140

Post by 999900000999 »

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #131
999900000999 wrote: post #106

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 3…

> If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. Eh, I feel like this isn't true. Most of top schools in the US offer full, need-blind financial aid. This means no scholarship that can be taken away nor student loans. Many fellow classmates were there completely free of charge. The best schools have money, and they're interested in making sure their talent…

Um USC is still considered one of the top schools.

The full rides you're referring to are often reserved to students from very low income backgrounds. Let's say your mom and your dad make 150 combined, that doesn't mean they have a spare $60,000 for you to go to school. Meaning you might have to take out some student loans.

I still think student loans are an amazing program, and no they don't need to be forgiven. As long as you take out loans the right way, for example in my case I went to the cheapest possible School, and I finished college at my own pace. It worked out very well for me. With student loans I was able to get away from my horrible family. When I see these stories of insanely irresponsible people who take out a quarter million in loans I the good student loans do is lost.

Regardless in this case the students only took on so much debt because they wanted that sweet sweet USC degree.

When you're 25 you can do a bunch of stupid things. That doesn't mean we need to pass a law to stop everyone from doing anything silly.

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