Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees • Hacker News Board

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#121

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

rongenre wrote: post #23

duxup wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe the only real way to know what the cost benefit might be for an individual is to just ... go work for a while and then see what you find in your experience and life. Then you're making a much more educated calculation as far as what you think it might get you, and if you want to go back to school and that. Just throwing that all on the front end while you're in school seems a bit like gambling.

The only advantage I can see to going for an MS straight out of undergrad is that your lifestyle should be pretty low-rent. But doing grad school because you're good at school and don't know what else to do is a trap lots of otherwise smart people fall into.

I continue to debate if my Masters (MEng) was a good idea in hindsight. My University's program was targeted at an "accelerated" MEng rather than a BS with grad and undergrad classes overlapped, so finish the MEng was a lot of momentum from when I signed up for undergrad. I was pretty certain I'd never have finished a Masters if I didn't finish straight through like I did.

On the one hand, I learned a lot from graduate classes and also used graduate school lifestyle/loans/insurance situation as an excuse/umbrella to explore a startup opportunity (that didn't succeed).

On the other hand, I sometimes regret the opportunity cost of not seeking paid employment sooner, especially given the non-success of that startup attempt versus how much I loved the last employer I interned with in undergrad versus graduating in a major recession I likely couldn't have predicted. The majority of my student loans have been from the graduate semesters and it does often leave me wondering if it was worth even the financial cost.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#122

Post by s1mon » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

Academy of Art is a real estate company with an education problem. They have countless illegally modified buildings around SF (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Academy-o...), with a ton of diesel buses spewing pollution to cart around wanna-be artists from all over the world. Note that these students didn't have to show any portfolio to get in, they just needed to come up with the $$$$$ somehow. The owners have a showroom for their classic car collection which isn't generally accessible to even the transportation design students (https://thebolditalic.com/just-how-much-is-academy-of-art-s-...).

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#123

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #118

sjg007 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most public colleges had significant funding guarantees in the State budget. A consequence of the 2008 financial crisis was that most State legislatures cut these obligations significantly. Accordingly, colleges had to raise tuition prices to compensate for the lost funding. I see student loans as basically a tax on the middle class. Get an education and a better job and pay an additional 6.5% tax on what you borrowe…

From what I've seen, State Universities seem to be awash in cash, and use it for enormous amounts of expensive construction.

[deleted]

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#124

Post by randomdata » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

ghobs91 wrote: post #65

zamfi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dept of education needs to treat universities the same way Medicaid treats healthcare providers. Determine what it actually costs per student per year to run a university, and tell the schools "Accept $x or shove off". If they're going to benefit from gov backed loans, they should play by the govs rules. This sounds appealing, but healthcare and education are different in some fundamental ways. People (generall…

If all people were buying Teslas using government-backed loans that the gov was then responsible to collect, while Tesla got paid up front and claimed to be a non-profit, they would absolutely have the right to tell them what they could charge. If a university is going to call itself non-profit, they should only be charging whatevers needed to cover costs of operating. Tuition has skyrocketed in the last 10-20 years,…

> they should only be charging whatevers needed to cover costs of operating.

Effectively that is the case. The problem is that when you have more to spend, your costs go up. You might opt to buy higher quality equipment, for example. But most especially, when you have more money to spend, your workers want to receive more money. A lot of the income gains that the colleges have seen have gone straight back out as administrative costs.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#125

Post by sjg007 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #118

sjg007 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most public colleges had significant funding guarantees in the State budget. A consequence of the 2008 financial crisis was that most State legislatures cut these obligations significantly. Accordingly, colleges had to raise tuition prices to compensate for the lost funding. I see student loans as basically a tax on the middle class. Get an education and a better job and pay an additional 6.5% tax on what you borrowe…

From what I've seen, State Universities seem to be awash in cash, and use it for enormous amounts of expensive construction.

Well, they raised tuition and have record enrollments due to demographic change.. The construction to take advantage of continued revenue trends (to put it in financial terms)... but maybe I missed your point?

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#126

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #109

jimmaswell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free college works just fine elsewhere.

It does, but by being different in ways America wouldn't like: much more spartan accommodations, stricter entrance criteria, valid alternate middle-class career paths that sop off the demand, and (IIUIC) price controls. It's not like Europe has a carbon copy of the American system but with a greater commitment to throwing money at it.

Then tax-funded colleges could be just like that. Some states already have free community college.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#127

Post by SilasX » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #126

SilasX wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but by being different in ways America wouldn't like: much more spartan accommodations, stricter entrance criteria, valid alternate middle-class career paths that sop off the demand, and (IIUIC) price controls. It's not like Europe has a carbon copy of the American system but with a greater commitment to throwing money at it.

Then tax-funded colleges could be just like that. Some states already have free community college.

I get that. It's just a mammoth caveat that somehow gets lost in the debate over free college and, if advocated, makes it a much more fundamental and far-reaching change than any candidate is letting on.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#128

Post by prions » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

iscrewyou wrote: post #96

prions wrote: post #50

I went back for my masters in CS after being a civil engineer for two years and learning cs my free time. These articles panning formal education don't fully grasp how difficult it is to get your foot in the door as a non-cs person whose also working full time. I also wanted to do something more technical than just web dev, which most career changers seem to land up in. Being a grad student opened a lot of doors into…

I’m a CE too and almost done with my PE. I want to stay engaged with learning after I’m done. And CS is definitely something I want to do afterwards but don’t really want to pursue a Master’s or any schooling. Can you recommend any CS books you loved? Anything iOS related would be great but I’ll take any recommendations from a fellow CE.

One of my favorites when I was a CE and looking for interesting usecases for my job was Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. I was able to automate and speed up lot of slow, manual processes like signing and stamping shop drawings.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#129

Post by roymurdock » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

prions wrote: post #97

roymurdock wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea thanks for the reply. Glad everything worked out for you, sounds like you had a solid plan from the get go and executed well

Thanks! It was risky quitting to go to school full time but having professional work experience helped a lot to manage myself.

I'm actually considering doing something similar...would love to have a quick chat if you have time, my email is murdock.roy@gmail.com - thanks.

Re: Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Master’s Degrees

#130

Post by geebee » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

rongenre wrote: post #23

duxup wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe the only real way to know what the cost benefit might be for an individual is to just ... go work for a while and then see what you find in your experience and life. Then you're making a much more educated calculation as far as what you think it might get you, and if you want to go back to school and that. Just throwing that all on the front end while you're in school seems a bit like gambling.

The only advantage I can see to going for an MS straight out of undergrad is that your lifestyle should be pretty low-rent. But doing grad school because you're good at school and don't know what else to do is a trap lots of otherwise smart people fall into.

Grad school can be a very, very dangerous trap.

An M.S. isn't necessarily a risky thing to do, though, since they an be completed relatively quickly, and from a reputable CS or Engineering school, the grads are employable. At state colleges, they tend to be relatively affordable too. Professional degrees at UC schools come with very high surcharges that don't apply to academic degrees, so an MS in CS or engineering at Berkeley is $15k a year (in state tuition) instead vs ~$50k a year for the Law School (tuition is only a little higher for out of state for professional degrees).

An M.S. at Berkeley does make it a easier to get on the radar of a lot of tech companies for recruiting, so that can be an advantage. That's probably not a big factor to you if you're already an undergrad at Berkeley or other well known tech feeder school, but if that's not the case for you, it could help, it's not especially expensive, and you can often do it in a year if you crank the coursework.

Actually, if this was the profile of the typical student debtor, I doubt anyone would care. I read the NYTimes article, and I don't understand how anyone can say a $90k debt for art school with a starting salary of $35k is what was intended here. I mean, wow, they really did feed the beast, didn't they?