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The $6,600 Master's Degree.

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Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#41

Post by yummyfajitas »

gambiting wrote: post #10
h1fra wrote: post #6

In Europe school actually cost this much (average), with campus and classroom. Maybe, the question is asked the wrong way in this article. Why does education cost student 50000$ a year in US?

I was going to say the same thing. I come from a country where Higher Education is free(yes yes I know - paid for by the taxpayer), but I have personally studied in the UK paying 3450 pounds a year (~5300 USD) in one of the best universities in that country. Yes I know it went up now to 9000 pounds(~13600 USD) but still, it's a lot less than what they charge for education in the US, which I don't understand.

What is the total cost of education in your country? I.e., amount paid by student + amount paid by govt?

I suspect the answer will be similar to the US, but scaled down a bit since high skill labor is much cheaper in Europe.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#42

Post by insertdisktwo »

Ihmahr wrote: post #14

I live in the netherlands and here you couldn't even pay more than $6.600 for a masters degree.

If you look up the prices for non-EU citizens you will see some places are prohibitively expensive, even in Netherlands.

In most places you have to have at least 10k EUR (13k USD) on your bank account for each year of the program, on top of the tuition fees.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#43

Post by jmduke »

insertdisktwo wrote: post #36
p4bl0 wrote: post #17

As a French person my first reaction to the title was "that's awfully expensive!". Then I thought about the US education system and thought "Oh, the title must actually imply that it's cheap…". I still had to go read the article to make sure. And then I learned that it's actually an online master. So my (second) first reaction was that it's cool to be able to get a master's degree from a top university from almost an…

re: Second-class degree Geogia Tech's engineering program ranks extremely high in the U.S. and the United States' academic institutions rank extremely high on various world-wide charts. Having spent a long time on the inside track of the Silicon Valley hiring processes, I can vouch that getting a degree from a prestigious institution really does fast-track your interview, at least when it comes to the screening or pr…

Re: FAFSA --

If you go into any community with a lot of college students / new grads you'll hear a lot of complaints about how its impossible to qualify for FAFSA, scholarships, financial aid, etc.

I'm a middle-class white male and was incredibly worried that I'd hit FAFSA's 'blind spot': our family has a home and a stable middle-class income, but not enough to comfortably afford even a public college education (for our European friends: public colleges offer lower tuition for students residing in the same state as the college because they are partially funded by the state -- instead of paying 50K tuition, I'd be paying around 20K). Furthermore, I was by no means a prodigy: I did well enough in high school to more or less choose the college I went to (I'm from Virginia, and our public colleges are some of the best in the country) I certainly wasn't being courted or showered with incentives.

I managed to still get a pretty fair shake from FAFSA (that 20K number was knocked down to around 11K) and was able to secure some elective scholarships. America's college system isn't some bureaucratic hellhole destined to crush the spirits of its entrants; its just coping with some changes it wasn't really designed to handle.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#44

Post by tseabrooks »

insertdisktwo wrote: post #38
tseabrooks wrote: post #9

Maybe this depends greatly on the particular discipline you're in. In the US it's not that difficult to get your Master's degree in C.S. for free + monthly stipend, at least in my experience. I know a number of people across the natural science disciplines who TA'd / RA'd their way through Grad School. I might be misunderstanding how common this is but it seems any discussion of Grad School cost should discuss the fa…

Please let me know if this applies in the case outside of being a PhD student. The US educational system has a tradition of issuing a Masters as a consolation price to PhD dropouts who've done enough of the coursework/research. Bona-fide Masters programs with scholarships/stipends are very hard to find. If there's counterexamples I would like to know about them. From my experience, these are very rare.

Thats a good point. Most of the folks I'm talking about were in my PhD cohort and we all decided the PhD wasn't for us (My PhD program left a very bad taste in my mouth towards higher ed). I've known a few Masters students who got stipends but the majority were PhD students.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#45

Post by jacques_chester »

insertdisktwo wrote: post #40
jacques_chester wrote: post #5

As an Australian gazing across the pond, it's weird to see what the fuss is about. My alma mater (UWA) has a Master of Professional Engineering degree which I can complete for $15k AUD (and since they guarantee entry to their BCompSci grads, I'm considering it). Sydney Uni have a Master of Project Management that I costed at 20k AUD (edit: I was quite wrong, it's closer to 45k). And the FEE-HELP program means that, i…

You have to keep in mind that Georgia Tech is one of the best engineering schools in the U.S. (disclosure: I am not in any way related to this institution) and consequently worldwide. $15K AUD is very close to ~$14.5K USD. This is less than half of that.

I'm really comparing it to the 50, 100, 200k figures I see bandied about. The order of magnitude.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#46

Post by ck2 »

Wouldn't a responsible government try to provide this to all high school graduates as a fallback minimum?

If bought by the millions the cost should be a fraction?

Would never fly in the US because we do not invest in the future anymore unless it's for corporate profit.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#47

Post by ghshephard »

insertdisktwo wrote: post #37
ghshephard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The variables obviously are Where are you getting the MBA (Ivy League MBAs, even evening ones, have more value), what is the price tag - there is a big difference between a $50K MBA and $200K MBA, and what field you'll be going into. MBA has very little (some might almost say negative) value in Silicon Valley startup world, but obviously more value in mature companies, or companies that are transitioning from startup…

I disagree that MBAs have a negative value in the Silicon Valley. Most investors I know value someone having one business person on the team early on. This person can help drive the validation/marketing/sales side of the business plan forward. People with hybrid skills (MBA + engineering degree) are from my personal experience highly appreciated.

I didn't say "negative value in Silicon Valley" (it definitely isn't), but, "Silicon Valley Startup world" (I.E. the first six-eighteen months when the technology is being built).

At one very prominent startup that I worked for, lead by some very, very well known executives (who are extraordinarily prominent in the valley today), there was a general position for the first two years of our company, "Hire no MBAs." They really believed that the MBA was a negative at that phase of the company's history, and were looking for Programmers, designers, coders, systems administrators, DBAs, etc.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#48

Post by codeonfire »

gambiting wrote: post #10
h1fra wrote: post #6

In Europe school actually cost this much (average), with campus and classroom. Maybe, the question is asked the wrong way in this article. Why does education cost student 50000$ a year in US?

I was going to say the same thing. I come from a country where Higher Education is free(yes yes I know - paid for by the taxpayer), but I have personally studied in the UK paying 3450 pounds a year (~5300 USD) in one of the best universities in that country. Yes I know it went up now to 9000 pounds(~13600 USD) but still, it's a lot less than what they charge for education in the US, which I don't understand.

There are no answers to the difference in tuition prices that don't lead to uncomfortable social comparisons of two countries. It depends on if you believe education markets are efficient or not, meaning the true value will be reflected in the price. Two things that would make a degree worth less are limited access to education and limited social mobility for degree holders. Free also does not mean unlimited access.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#49

Post by itsprofitbaron »

insertdisktwo wrote: post #36
p4bl0 wrote: post #17

As a French person my first reaction to the title was "that's awfully expensive!". Then I thought about the US education system and thought "Oh, the title must actually imply that it's cheap…". I still had to go read the article to make sure. And then I learned that it's actually an online master. So my (second) first reaction was that it's cool to be able to get a master's degree from a top university from almost an…

re: Second-class degree Geogia Tech's engineering program ranks extremely high in the U.S. and the United States' academic institutions rank extremely high on various world-wide charts. Having spent a long time on the inside track of the Silicon Valley hiring processes, I can vouch that getting a degree from a prestigious institution really does fast-track your interview, at least when it comes to the screening or pr…

I understand that EU-citizens get free Masters' education. This is somewhat a side-effect of the EU-wide Bologna process, which promoted everyone's Bachelors degree into a Masters by adding a year's worth more of education and introducing a credit-system.

This isn't true. I'm from England (hence EU Citizen) and Batchelors and Masters degrees are two different things.

I have had to pay for both my Batchelors and my Masters degree - having said that the government does offer a basic loan for Batchelors degrees BUT there isn't any funding for a Masters degree, you have to pay that yourself.

Re: The $6,600 Master's Degree.

#50

Post by Dewie »

h1fra wrote: post #6

In Europe school actually cost this much (average), with campus and classroom. Maybe, the question is asked the wrong way in this article. Why does education cost student 50000$ a year in US?

A two year Master where I'm from (Scandinavia) would probably cost me 400$ for the tuition.
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