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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

#151

Post by david38 »

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…

Yes, adults can make poor choices. Agreed.

Said choices should be constrained though. She wouldn't be allowed to buy a 300k car with no possibility of bankruptcy.

The lender is made of adults as well. They also made poor choices. Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?

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

#152

Post by austincheney »

BizarroLand wrote: post #122
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 don't know if there is a solution to this, but it seems like the cost should be somehow equivalent to the average payout. I feel that college in general would serve the country better if the results were tied to the expenses and efforts required. A Sociology degree that empowers people to make life changes for disadvantaged and neglected people (while living on subsistence wages) would serve our future better if it…

I don’t blame the school for that at all. Mental health requires a masters degree and pays next to nothing. You can make more as a teacher. This isn’t a secret.

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

#153

Post by jamestimmins »

alex504 wrote: post #148
jamestimmins wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting the 60% number? I have an extremely hard time believing this is anywhere close to accurate.

From the article: >The social-work school was contractually required to share about 60% of revenue with 2U and ran into financial trouble. My impression was that most of what 2u did was marketing, I might be wrong about that though. It seems like a combination of marketing and their online platform.

Ah ok, I missed that. I thought you meant 60% of USC funds were getting redirected 3rd parties like that; my mistake.

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

#154

Post by Zircom »

hpoe wrote: post #19
hackermailman wrote: post #13

Cheapest online US regional accreditation is WGU, which you can do at own pace so if you know calculus you can just write the exam. UK open u is probably the next cheapest but not by much. UoP is on regional accreditation path but only national right now. Everything else is going to be min $40k bachelor or $20k+ Masters but even Arizona pricey online deg is cheaper than this article or Florida U, both have real curri…

I'm going to take a minute to plug WGU I got my undergrad and grad from there and it is fantastic. I would recommend it for anyone that is already working and needs a piece of paper. They work on a competency based model where you either take a test, or do a project/paper (or both) for the class to pass it. If it takes you 3 weeks to study and pass the test it takes 3 weeks, if it takes 2 days you can pass the class…

I just enrolled this past weekend actually, I got my associate's in CS a few years ago and am finally in a financial situation to finish up my the bachelor's.

What exactly is the course content like? From previous online courses I've taken from Coursera/Pluralsight/other platforms video lectures seem to be the the norm which I actually really hate, I rarely attended lectures and instead would just read the material, turn the HW in, and come in for quizzes/exams. Watching and listending is just not the way I learn, something about reading it makes it sink it better. And do they still require you to buy additional textbooks or is all the necessary content included in the course modules?

How engaged/competent are the instructors assigned to the courses? If I have questions is it easy to get a hold of them, and do they actually know the material enough to be able to adequately explain things and guide students to better understand the material?

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

#155

Post by nsxwolf »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #62
nsxwolf wrote: post #58

Seems like people have been warned about this stuff for over a decade now and we keep hearing about it. When will students stop taking the bait?

When people can make middle class livings again without being shut out of a job for lack of a college degree. My previous job I worked at required a Bachelors in business of any kind. I got it because I worked at the company and basically beat out external candidates even though I didn't have a degree. Know what it paid? $15/hr. This is why people are duped into college degrees.

You're making the case that you don't actually need the degree. You're far better off without it, if you're going to end up with a job that pays the same regardless. The problem seems to be no one is being properly warned before making the decision, or those warnings aren't being heeded.

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

#156

Post by BizarroLand »

jeffy90 wrote: post #139
BizarroLand wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But as it stands right now, people are equally incentivized to take degrees for passion as they are for profit, possibly to their own detriment when one comes with misery from poverty and the other with misery from golden handcuffs.

Not everyone is cut out for a STEM career. You can't turn cavemen into electrical engineers if the aptitude isn't there, right?

It's not a big leap to say that some people will prioritize greed over compatibility and end up risking being able to cheat their way through or flunking out / being expelled if they fail with nothing but either a degree they aren't qualified to possess or a debt they aren't able to repay.

A lot of people in IT would be happier as truck drivers, a lot of engineers would be happier as welders. It always boils down to balancing the money with the passion, and the current system is balanced to the college's coffers.

I did preface my original statement by saying that I don't know if there is a good solution. I proffered a solution knowing that it wasn't a good solution because there are things I with my single brain simply am not capable of calculating for, but I believe we can all agree that the current system has some significant flaws that should be addressed, right?

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

#157

Post by ativzzz »

echelon wrote: post #23
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/

This is the university that started it all. They've had the program for about a decade now, and they do a ridiculously good job. [1] It's a rigorous degree, they only admit a limited number of students (so your application has to be reasonable), and it's completely affordable. It's also indistinguishable from their on-campus MS in CS. It doesn't say you took it "online" after you graduate. Georgia Tech is a pretty ou…

> It's also indistinguishable from their on-campus MS in CS

This isn't exactly true. Only a fraction of all classes are available for the online program. The computational perception & robotics specialization for instance has a very limited selection of classes available. Plus, you don't get the benefit of in-person networking with your peers and professors, but that's just the price of being remote.

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

#158

Post by opinion-is-bad »

jeffy90 wrote: post #126
opinion-is-bad wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the colleges had to take a stake in the debt repayment, or lack thereof, they probably would do a better job ensuring their graduates don’t take out impossible loans. Adults can make bad decisions, but many that are getting trapped in student loan debt are making the decisions while still technically underage.

I really like this idea, only edge case I wonder about is if such a policy would incentivize colleges to avoid letting in students from low income backgrounds.

It’s possible. A lot of top universities already do need-blind admissions, so I don’t think it’s an unsolvable hurdle.

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

#160

Post by nickff »

david38 wrote: post #151
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…

Yes, adults can make poor choices. Agreed. Said choices should be constrained though. She wouldn't be allowed to buy a 300k car with no possibility of bankruptcy. The lender is made of adults as well. They also made poor choices. Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?

>"Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?"

The piece of paper is the law, which does not allow for defaults on these loans. These laws were created to allow students to take massive loans, and transfer their future earnings to a school. I would agree that something should change, but the schools will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.

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