USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts
wsj.com
wsj.com
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 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad.
Adults have a right to make poor choices.
That said, having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea.
The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money.
Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
I see the same problem with boot camps, instead of accepting that building a six-figure career just takes a while, people want a shortcut. I got to six-figure figures without even having a BA, but it took a long time in a lot of very hard work.
Actually it only took me about 3 years from dropping out of college to my first six-figure job, but I was programming at least 40 hours a week back then. This was after work of course. Even now I'm off and happiest when I'm building my side projects.
I took on $65k of loans for my BS but make six figures myself, so it was worth it for me. I can't image 5x the cost for 1/3rd the reward. That's just stupid.
I admit that the person who took this path is to blame for some of it, but a college tying $300,000 to a degree that earns $5/hr more than a fry cook is also at some level to blame along with the path society took to enable this scenario to exist in the first place.
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?
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.
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.
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?
Free tuition.
Germany has had zero tuition university for quite some time. And though they allowed charging tuition again a while ago, it was capped at something like 600EUR (?) per semester. Many universities apparently also went back to not charging tuition again.
It works well enough if you ask me. I got a great education with zero student debt. Was it Harvard? No. Was it a great education? Absolutely. Masters degree. I have a good job and of the people in my study group more than one is working at Tesla, Facebook and Google. More than one of them also have a PhD.
The very concept of student loans is mind-boggling for them.
I only know how it works in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but students loans are super common there. Even though tuition is free you still have food, rent, books and other living expenses that all have to be paid for. How do most German students pay those costs?
It's a lot easier to stomach covering a grand a month (shared housing, student works for spending money) by comparison.
"Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz" which is just the name of the law but shortened to "BAföG" to refer to the loan itself. You "apply for BAföG".
However this is a loan directly from the government and its meant to pay for housing and food and such. If you get it you also get priority in student housing for example. Of course there is still not enough student housing in most universities and that means if you don't get BAföG you have to sort out paying for housing yourself and getting it on the open market and even if you do get BAföG you might still need to. So in most university cities there's also a lot of cheaper housing geared towards students and living together ("Wohngemeinschaft").
There's an eternal debate over how much BAföG is enough and who should get how much. It's tied to your parents' income basically (unless you worked before, which basically would mostly apply to people that did an "Ausbildung" i.e. were in the vocational system before and have had their own income but now want to go to university.
You have a certain period after leaving university to pay it back and if you pay it back in one shot (or maybe a few larger payments IIRC) then you have to pay back less.
In 2012, 24% of all students in Germany received financial support via BAföG
The happy path might be the same or better, but the sad path gets grimmer. All that said, the completion rate fiasco is it's whole own can of worms.
Maybe a social work degree has positive externalities that far exceed the earnings. But there's also a lot of crap that doesn't, and incentivizing the landslide of crap and disincentivizing the skills that are in shortage will do a lot of damage.
Stuff that pays well tends to be stuff that's actually valued by society. Structural engineers and surgeons get paid lots of money because they actually value add and their skills are in short supply.
But, student loans dont behave like standard loans, the payoff of expected utility is a long way down the track, and Universities cultivate/market these intangibles like prestige and networking as a justification for the higher prices.
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.
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.
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.
This is true only by an extremely expansive definition of top school. It's not even a top 20 school.
>> 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.
Want to pursue a pre-medical degree at USC? Great! The government will loan you up to some large amount. Want to pursue a humanitarian degree at XYZ tech online? Great! The government will loan you a small amount. Remove the externality on society.
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.
>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.
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.
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?
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.
Because rich people lending money to poor people needs to be a risk-free endeavor backed up by the state. This way, it's easier for the banks to make money.
And at the same time, it's easy to spin predatory lending as "helping out" when it shouldn't exist to begin with, and victim-blame people who are taken advantage of (which, in the case of student loans, is children: college applications are sent out well before a typical freshman turns 18).
In other words, the purpose is not to help the banks, but to help people get the loans in the first place.
However, the unintended consequences are that the banks are incentivized to make way to many loans. Obviously, there need to be better limits placed on lending for education.
This is an absurd proposition, since the legislation that makes student loans indismissable with bankruptcy is unique to student loans (and quite recent). Yet lending still happens.
Surely you don't mean to say that an educational loan is always a loss, do you? But let's play along for a second, and imagine that lenders back out of the very lucrative business.
And that would be bad... why again?
Because then the education would be priced affordably if the universities wanted to have any students?
Because the government would not have much headroom in defunding higher education (look at state college funding percentage in the 70s vs now?
Because the universities would be incentivized to provide education, and wouldn't have an obscene admin-to-professor ratio that they have attained since then?
Because the universities would not have the cash to burn on ever-expanding construction projects, like stadiums, luxury residence halls, hotels, etc, and would catch some flak for building them at students' expense?
Because the people would be incentivized to demand free, or near-free higher education the way Europe does it, and "just take out a loan like everyone does" won't be an excuse to not provide it anymore?
Because fewer university degrees would mean a higher status and acceptance for trade schools, and would lead to trade schools being acceptable for white-collar higher-pay jobs (...without having to rebrand them as "Boot Camps" like we do in software)?
Because the universities would then be able to focus on teaching critical thinking and research skills that advance our civilization, and emphasize growth instead of having the students see it as an investment into a salaried position?
>However, the unintended consequences
Oh, you mean it is just an unfortunate accident that making student loans non-dischargeable in 1976 by the Nixon administration (renowned for integrity)[1] simply coincided with inflation-adjusted education cost starting to grow after a long period of not growing[2]?
And, by pure chance, after that 1976 legislation, inflation-adjusted federal education funding remained stagnant and decreased over the subsequent decades[3] in spite of number of students nearly doubling[4]?
And that all of that simply coincided with education becoming accessible to Black people (in 1976, the first generation that didn't go to segregated schools would be going to colleges)?
And that nobody would have guessed that non-dismissal of loans in case of bankruptcy, and simultaneous effective decrease in higher ed funding as the number of students steadily grows would result in costs and loans ballooning?
And that all of that was unintentional, somehow, though the profit and political motives are not only known, documented, and openly admitted, but have been a part of the platform of the party that enacted that legislation?
In that case, I might disagree.
[1]https://www.tateesq.com/learn/student-loan-bankruptcy-law-hi...
[2]https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
[3] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002129.pdf
[4]https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...
Far better for the government to decide how many of each profession it’s willing to subsidize than the current free for all. It would give people a rough idea of the value of their debt.
The reason she isn't able to get a crazy car loan is because there's no government program giving anyone unlimited loans, no questions asked. Private lenders understand not all degrees are made equal, so if you go to LendingClub or similar and ask for a student loan for a top tier law school, they'll gladly give you a loan and charge you less than the government. Bonus is that you can dismiss the debt in bankruptcy.
The simplest answer would just be to severely restrict or eliminate federal loans for school and let private lenders fill in the gaps.
Either allow the government to turn down most of these loans and charge higher interest rates based on credit-worthiness or make bankruptcy very difficult. What you want is the bankrupcty rights of a non-government guaranteed loan in which credit worthiness is taken into account, but interest rates and credit availability of a loan in which the bankruptcy rights are substantially reduced.
That's not possible. I agree we should abolish these lending guarantees entirely and let the private sector provide loans and charge whatever interest rate they want if people can just walk away from the loan. But that's not the interest rate people are paying now, so that's not an option for existing borrowers.
I absolutely believe in bankruptcy. I also believe the government can fund state schools and community colleges in such a way as to improve access without building more palaces.
Just by improving the rigor of community colleges students can save massive amounts of money by paying $2k/y instead of $30k and live at home instead of $15k for housing.
This cuts the cost basically in half.
There are two ways to interpret what you said:
1. Allowing bankruptcy would basically eliminate student loans as a thing, for the typical "moral hazard" reasons. So it's not a realistic proposition.
2. Limiting the amount to something more reasonable, that's something I would actually support. Say, 15-20K/yr, inflation adjusted? Education cost for those financing themselves would also drop considerably.
Why would that be a problem?
First, your "typically" needs a citation. The average student loan is about $40K.
Second, it's not a problem to help struggling people if a percentage of people who are not struggling benefits too. Nothing is 100% efficient, and the inefficiency of not checking tax forms at a soup kitchen to make sure only the Actually Poor™ get the soup is made up tenfold by the outcome of nobody needing to be hungry.
>Adults have a right to make poor choices.
Yeah, unless it's buying alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana.
Somehow that doesn't apply to enlisting in armed forces or taking on a lifetime debt that, unlike anything else, won't be erased in a bankruptcy, and thus is nearly risk-free for the lender.
i personally think we should make federal loans highly progressive, both in amount and interest rate, and make them dischargeable via ordinary bankruptcy proceedings (also, revert the bankruptcy-tightening laws that were passed in the mid-oughts). that would be something like loans for 100% of tuition, room & board for those from families under median income (~$68K in recent years) smoothly varying (but not linear) down to 0% for those above 3× median household income (~$200K). same for interest rates: risk-free rate (~2.5%) for under median to market rate for unsecured personal loans (in the 10-20% range) at 3× median income. anyone above 3× median will likely have an established banking relationship somewhere to be able to get private loans.
this would put downward pressure on tuition, while still meeting the objective of providing opportunity for the less privileged majority. same goes for loan forgiveness--make them highly progressive based on recent earnings/wealth (including unrealized gains).
The idea for total loan forgiveness is that for a reasonable progressive scheme, the difference between that and total forgiveness may be marginal.
We have plenty examples of how drug-testing for government benefits ends up costing more than simply giving those benefits to all who qualify even if they are drug users. Same applies here. It'd be interesting to see the actual numbers.
But sure, I'd take a progressive scheme like the one you proposed. Hell, just your first sentence (re: bankruptcy) warms my heart and fills my soul with glee :)
The proportion stayed low for about 20 years.
The "original sin" in 1976 was just one of many acts of legislation that were "compensating" for the Civil Rights reforms by cutting down the funding available to Black students.
It's amazing how little one has to peel in all things that suck in the US to find racism behind it. And now all of us are screwed.
[1]https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/muj/article/download/20...
Those with college degrees make more. So if you forgive student loan debt, you're giving a ton of money to people who are largely doing very well.
One can make a large variety of very stupid life-altering choices at 25, these people should have known better. I would say, again unless you're trying to be a doctor or a lawyer your student loans should be capped at 100k. That would eliminate most of the most outrageous behavior. I know for myself I took a modest 20,000 or so in loans and that changed my life forever. That allowed me to go to college, and escape my horrible family who like not paying bills and getting evicted.
If you forgive the student loans, the counter argument becomes get rid of the student loans and then people who are responsible with them. Like myself, no longer have a ladder out of poverty. Honest to God, I have no sympathy for someone who with a college education decides it would be a good idea to take out another $200,000 in loans in order to get into a low paying field. Likewise if someone went and took their inheritance and bet it all on bitcoin, I wouldn't want a law passed reimbursing them.
Make more =/= "doing real well".
Some are doing well, some aren't, many are struggling. And the ones who are just getting by aren't having kids, which is really going to bite this nation in the long run.
>One can make a large variety of very stupid life-altering choices at 25
Where's that 25 coming from, eh? People apply to colleges when they're 17. That determines how big of a loan they'll end up with.
>these people should have known better
> I know for myself I took a modest 20,000
When? Did you bother to check tuition costs today?
Better than what? Than not go to a university that aligns with
> I would say, again unless you're trying to be a doctor or a lawyer your student loans should be capped at 100k.
"Should" is a nice word. My double-major undergrad took me five years, and I ended up with over $20K in loans while my tuition was free, because neither dorms (or off-campus housing) nor food were free, and that $25K didn't even cover those expenses.
And no, commute was not an option; and it was, indeed, a good choice of school (not to mention, free tuition).
$100K over 5 years barely covers living expenses[1], but let's be conservative and say the living expenses are paid with $50K over 4 years (by sharing an off-campus room with someone and subsisting on ramen).
Now, the fun part, tuition. Out-of-state tuition can be anywhere from $15K to $40K; it's about $38K in Texas A&M, for example, which is not what people would think is a prestigious school. $27K/year is just about average[2]
So out-of-state school puts us over the $100K for a 4-year degree right away. Tough luck if your state doesn't have great schools for your major!
Fine, let's settle for in-state tuition. Nationwide it's $10K/year on the average, but say, you were unfortunate enough to grow up in Pennsylvania or Illinois, where it's $15K/year[2][3].
Then again, having spent $60K on tuition and $50K on life over 4 years, we are $110K in the red. Bummer.
On the average, living expenses + tuition for a 4 year degree (in-state) is $80K; throw in books, supplies, transportation, and it's $100K[4].
That's average, meaning quite a few people attending public schools in-state end up paying more.
Any private college? Any college out of state? Any of the more expensive states?
Or simply not getting into one of the cheaper public schools in your state?
Or actually choosing a good program?
That's $200K over 4 years very easily.
> I have no sympathy for someone who with a college education decides it would be a good idea to take out another $200,000 in loans in order to get into a low paying field.
Yeah, it's totally reasonable to expect 17-year-olds to estimate correctly how well paid they will be in 4 years in the field of their choice.
We don't trust them with making any adult choices, except this one.
>If you forgive the student loans, the counter argument becomes get rid of the student loans and then people who are responsible with them
That's quite a leap of logic you have there, friend.
The first thing is to make student loans dismissible in bankruptcy. That makes the student loan just like any other loan. Bankruptcy exists for a reason.
Then, canceling the student debt just resets the game that was rigged in 1976 by making student loans different from the others. Education loans are lucrative, especially when given to responsible people like you. The banks won't pass on this opportunity (why would they?).
Finally, see my other comment[5] about how the most likely outcome is that the tuition costs will go drastically down. Availability of these loans is the reason the education is not affordable! You wouldn't need the loans if we didn't allow them.
Before the 1976 legislation, you could pay off your tuition working a part-time job on the weekends.
In 1975, six weeks of work at minimum wage paid your tuition at a public school.
Today, it's 33 weeks. Five times as much. If you're lucky.
We can and must go back to where we were 50 years ago. And the banks have to pay for milking us for those 50 years.
People like us won't be hurt when the banks pay up.
[1]https://www.collegecovered.com/paying-for-college/real-colle...
[2]https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college
[3]https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-col...
[4]https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...
For 3rd year and above >$12,500-No more than $5,500 of this amount may be in subsidized loans
For sake of this example, let's say they let you take out this much for all 4 years. That leaves you at 50k. This assumes your parents can't take out a Plus loan.
Your very unlikely to be able to get 200k in undergrad loans without a co-signer. If you don't have a co signer your effectively capped at 50k.
This is a story about grad student debt. This is a story about, at a minimum 22 year olds ( normally a bit older) deciding to make a choice. You can make a ton of life altering choices at 22.
If we just got rid of loans for grad school, we're taking away an entire life path. For many taking grad school loans leads to a much higher paying career. You don't hear stories about someone who takes out 100k in grad school loans, but then lands a job paying 145k.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/payin...
>The median earnings for full-time, year-round workers holding bachelor's degrees was $66,536 in 2019, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. With a master's degree, median earnings for full-time employees jumped to $81,636. With a doctoral degree, median earnings were $113,578, and the amount for individuals holding a professional degree was $127,487.
None of these people in this article were forced into blowing $200,000 on a degree which isn't going to help them make much more money. The best thing about America is people generally do have a lot of leeway in how they live their lives. And the dark side of the European system is many people just can't get into any type of college, I've met these kids attending community college in America since the European schools wouldn't take them.
By far my biggest disappointment with the current administration is not pushing more for free community college, that would nudge people in the right direction. I went to community college and I worked and that's how I paid my living expenses.
I was working full time, already making 100k a year ,when I finished my BA at a CSU.
Let me ride this tangent for a bit, in California you have two state school systems. You have the UC system, which treats college like a vacation with a hint of learning. These schools are actively hostile to anyone with a job.
Then you have my alma mata, the CSU system. There you'll actually have flexible schedules where you can work a full-time job and still attend school. Of course UCs are viewed as more prestigious. Adults have a right to make choices. Everyone who attended this USC program wanted to plaster USC on their resume. They all had the option of attending cheaper schools.
It's not nearly as simple as looking at a few extreme cases and deciding to forgive a trillion dollars in student loan debt. I'd agree more regulation is needed here, but in general people need to take more personal responsibility.
Sure, but plenty of parents do take out PLUS loans - which are capped at whatever the tuition is. Aside from that, many lenders are handing out loans without cosigners[1]. And as the 2008 crisis has shown us, that's not an error: they are gambling.
>This is a story about grad student debt
OK, but the discussion is about student debt, not grad student debt. I think it's reasonable to assume that most people would be talking about undergraduate debt cancelation.
As for those absurdly expensive Masters degrees - the one in the article is borderline a scam.
>If we just got rid of loans for grad school, we're taking away an entire life path.
Again, it's quite a leap from debt cancelation to loans not being available to anyone ever, particularly for grad school. As you said, graduate school students are older, and graduate degrees often do pay off. Why would the banks pass on a money-making opportunity?
The degrees that are a solid investment would not disappear (and neither would loans for them), but the scammy ones (like in the article) would.
>By far my biggest disappointment with the current administration is not pushing more for free community college
Amen to that.
>Then you have my alma mater, the CSU system
OK, off-topic, but I'm going to live right next to CSU East Bay campus, and would appreciate any info about that system. One of my 2022 goals is getting involved in community outreach (math education / talks / etc); trying to remedy the damage done by our education systems when it comes to mathematics, particularly hoping to reach working adults.
Would love to hear your thoughts about that.
[1] https://loans.usnews.com/student-loans-without-co-signer
This pays directly for what the gov't wants (increase in the student's productive utility in the economy), it correlates increasing expenditures with increasing long term tax income, and I think in the long term it would create structural incentives guiding students towards more practical degrees.
We should make students sign a single page summary (or warning in many cases) just like when getting a mortgage.
Our company makes __ profit, future graduate income average/mean, % of graduates who get a coding job within 1, 5 years. Etc
And I think restrictions on marketing bs for-profit 'trade schools' and 'coding bootcamps' to ensure a minimum curriculum and education. Make bait and switching more difficult.
Especially with for profit schools. Plus it seems many Universities will contract out a 'bootcamp' using the schools built up brand and it's not even connected to he actual school.
I think you have a valid point, which probably got missed in the rest of your comment.
Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? I cannot get a $100K loan for a Corolla nor can I get $5 million loan for a $500K home. So, why are students provided loans that are not tied to the income potential of their choice of program?
I believe once we do that, education cost will undergo a rebalancing.
They used to be because they could be discharged through bankruptcy.
Once you prevent people from being able to discharge the loan through bankruptcy, this is what you get.
How can a school charge the same amount of tuition, per unit, for different fields that pay substantially, sometimes orders of magnitude, different over the lifetime.
For example: MBAs, JDs, Medical fields' tuition is much higher. Why is that not the case across the board?
Note, many/most people in software engineering have other interests. But they have not made a career out if it. So, if humanities interests someone, it can be a perfectly good hobby for many, till demand and supply evens up that leads to rise in salaries.
If student preferences were different we could easily be bemoaning low value engineering majors, doctors or lawyers.
If student preferences are disconnected from long term utility then it's unlikely for University costs to normalize on utility. Increasing the costs for high utility majors would result in yet higher prices for those with the majors skills - decreasing prices for low utility majors will simply lower income potential in those majors.
With an online degree? Why would anyone brag about that?
Snobbery is fractal. People who went to elite schools look down on places that are very good, like USC.
It's bragging to have graduated from what looks like an obvious cash cow program that I'm skeptical of. All online, no cap on enrollment and full price. Should raise red flags.
Thus you'll likely create a two tier system of colleges. One will be low cost enough that declaring bankruptcy after college is not worth it. These will likely be crappy because they cannot afford good facilities or the best professors. Then you will have the super expensive ones with nice facilities and the best professors that only kids with rich parents who can pay for it can go.
That's very true. People often don't realize that blanket loan forgiveness is a very regressive policy. The higher you go up in the income bracket, the higher share of the student loan debt. Some kind of income-based or extreme situational (life-changing events, health, etc) forgiveness would be much better.
>Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
True especially for a masters program you should be well into early adulthood and it's even more difficult to argue that you were too young to understand the consequences. Schools publish their students past and expected incomes. Unless you have a good reason to believe you are exceptional, those numbers should definitely be used for planning your academic path.
E.g. On LinkedIn I frequently see Harvard listed on profiles, but upon digging in, it is Harvard Extension School which mostly seems to offer certificates. The recipients win (they get to put Harvard on their resume, albeit paying high fees for online only, ignoring costs/default rates) and the college wins (they get paid, the marginal cost per student is probably favorable, degree vs certificates probably doesn't matter if the same content and tests apply). The only people potentially negatively impacted will be the students of the traditional organization in that they paid full tuition for a college brand that is actively diluting itself by selling certificates that may have lower standards that traditionally associated with the organization.
Full disclosure: I work at Coursera.
The total cost of the programme for 2021/22 is between £11,229 - £16,790 *, depending upon geographic location.
They also offer an accelerated course if you already have an undergrad degree (e.g. for those looking for a career change). [1]
[1] https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate... [0] https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate...
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 outstanding school, so this looks good for places that care.
If you want an MS in CS and want to do it from home, this is the one you want.
[1] Anecdotal, but I know five colleagues that have taken it and have nothing but praise for the program. The two I am closest to used for the following cases:
1. A CS grad working in the field used it to explore machine learning a decade after college. They had no previous experience with the field and then shifted into a deep learning role shortly before graduation.
2. Another close friend was a graduate working in radio research and wanted to learn CS fundamentals (OS, distributed, etc.). They're still doing radio work, but they used it to get an expanded role and a pretty substantial raise.
Both were very happy with the program. Both completed the program while working full time, though they admitted it was a ton of work.
Some of the classes have a metric ton of homework and projects, and the deadlines can be pretty rough. I know my coworker was sweating after work a few times (this was pre-pandemic) and told me they'd be spending a few evenings implementing project work.
I can't say enough good things about OMSCS. I'm finishing my 7th class and got an SWE role during my 5th. It's the real deal.
[disclaimer: from ATL, dad went to Tech, &c.]
I've learned an incredible amount of incredible things. While it's difficult to manage both the program and other life obligations, I'll be a bit sad once it's over.
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.
The Open University (UK) has offered decently-regarded remote degree programs since 1969.
In the 1970s they used to show lectures on national broadcast TV in the otherwise-unused hours of the day. Was cool.
I'm not sure in the long run the institution wins. As you do more and more of these courses your marketing gets more and more obvious. Social media feeds, that sort of thing. You don't want to be that school that sells diplomas.
Thesis masters are increasingly rare these days as American schools allow you to jump straight to a PhD program (Europe is a bit more rigid here). The other kind of Masters degree that is increasingly popular is the 5th year undergrad extension, which makes a lot of a sense (MIT started the trend here, other schools have followed).
My master in a no-name French tech school was mostly a software development curriculum, with some DL and scikit-learn courses tacked on. That was for the paper, the actual skills came on the job and online.
Anyone with a French engineering diploma I would consider for a data science position.
In my own personal experience, I was already done with the graduate class requirement after my 4th year, so I only had to concentrate on doing the thesis during the 5th year (though I also enrolled in a couple electives of my own choosing). For me, that year was relatively more chill than my previous years.
[1] https://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/me...
To me it adds negative value. And I'm not the only one [0]. Especially when the undergrad was from a weak school or something unrelated to CS.
[0] https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu...
I retook Calc I through the extension school six or seven years ago out of curiosity when I was considering doing an online Master's. Rigor was on par with my undergrad Calc I or perhaps a little higher and the quality of instruction was definitely higher. The lecturer (Eric Towne!) had a command of the people and history surrounding the concepts he was teaching and shared lots of fascinating context.
While the Extension School does offer certificate programs, it's the Harvard Business School that has really benefited IMHO. They are really pushing hard to grow them (https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/hbs-online-certificate-of-s...).
You are correct about the growth of online degrees. HES degree programs received a massive boost when online classes were offered and "professional" concentrations (business, technology) were made available at the graduate level starting about 15 years ago. The number of new degrees awarded every year has tripled as a result.
Note that the University does not allow the Extension School to award MS or MBA degrees, and there is a lot of controversy over the convoluted and demeaning designation that's used on our degrees (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/3/9/extension-school...).
The other area in which the Harvard Extension School is well-known is its post-bacc. It's highly regarded, and people who complete the program have been admitted to top-tier medical schools across the U.S. (https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/premedical-...).
I completed a history degree. For my thesis I carried out a computer content analysis of Xinhua (新華社), China’s official news agency, to gauge Beijing’s foreign policy priorities in Southeast Asia during the Deng Xiaoping era. My faculty advisor said that I could get a job as an analyst if I were willing to move to Washington (I was not interested in doing this).
I graduated with a Psychology degree. I worked at a lot of BS jobs after college from recruiting and customer service which lead me to pursue sales for more money. Did sales for about seven years for various industries, left sales about two years ago, and now I work in totally different field that funny enough isn't customer facing. Being under 40, I'm proud to say that I am very close to what I feel is financial freedom.
Anecdotally, one of my friend circles consists of some engineers, doctors, lawyers, CEOs - you get it, the book smart people. Very well educated, went to prestigious universities, earned their highly respected degrees, etc. Most of them today are solidly traffic jammed in the rat race like the majority of society.
I have another friend circle, not nearly as educated as the friends highlighted above, who some are sitting on multi-million stock portfolios/assets/whatever. One of them who really stands out paid one of our other friend to write all his papers in college. Think he barely squeezed out a C average.
It really depends on the person. I work for an Elon Musk company if anyone cares.
Harvard Extension started in the 1830s and became a formal division of the university over 100 years ago. They offer real degrees to "non-traditional" students. People that get admitted get the same student ID card that everyone else gets, has the same facility access, etc.
The biggest transgression is that Harvard gives those graduates a liberal arts degree in "extension studies" without naming the concentration.
People also seem to have issues with the fact that anyone that applies and meets the requirements is admitted as a student. But if you count the number of people that start with one of the "courses for entry" and compare to the number of people who actually get admitted, their admission rate would be even lower than, say, the Harvard Kennedy School (which by the way is willing to grant a master's degree to someone that doesn't even have an undergraduate degree).
Why it gets such flack for being "Harvard, but not really" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Harvard College - the undergraduate school - is the super exclusive part. Harvard University - the collection of graduate schools plus the college - is huge with a wide variety of exclusivity and completely uncorrelated ability.
This becomes awkward when interviewing if there's a real Harvard grad in the room. Invariably the first question they'll ask is which house the candidate was in.
Are people actually asking this at the beginning of interviews? I'm a Harvard College grad, and that's a question I sometimes ask or am asked in social settings, but not in interview settings. When I've worked with interns or recent grads from the college it usually comes up eventually, but usually only after the internship/job has started and folks are starting to get each other.
A much better solution is to revoke the ability of students at specific schools/programs to qualify for federal student loans if the outcomes of the program are poor. Turn off the spigot of money, and they will cleanup their act really quickly.
The Department of Education should have a vested interest specifically in the way that you mention, and they did set up a site that communicates historical outcomes of majors at a per school level at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/, but it gets little visibility in the college marketing funnel that is filled with for profit enterprises like US News and Niche-- plus the marketing (admissions and/or athletics) departments of colleges themselves.
It might still be favorable for the US Tax Payer even if these loans end up un-paid.
Perhaps we shouldn't seize the assets of random voters who enacted these programs
I should note that a lot of the work for open cases goes to (lower paid) case-aids, and certain things can be delegated to volunteers (e.g. I've provided transportation to school for kids who were placed in a foster house outside their school district).
Funny you should mention librarians. It is not uncommon for any role which is titled "librarian" to require a masters of library science / information science. Example job ad: https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/... *
Other roles are commonly called "Information Specialist" or assorted similar titles (example: https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/...).
* Picked this library at random. I'd imagine smaller cities are a bit more flexible here, but I'd still take an even money bet that anyone who is under 45 at any library at random with the formal title of "librarian" has a masters degree.
I would also add that if you follow the news in the us, it certainly seems like cops need far more training for dealing with these issues.
My mom ran a daycare that partnered with a women’s shelter. Some of the cases were just a person who need a few months to sort out their life and rebuild.
Other’s had deep emotional trauma, little means of supporting themselves independently (e.g. lacking a high school education) and needed help with navigating the criminal justice system (either as a victim or a defendant). These folks clearly need a social worker with deep expertise in multiple areas.
This isn't "social worker" in the loose sense of someone in the community. These are health professionals who receive extensive training in mental and emotional conditions.
Source: My wife is currently in school to be an LCSW, and her focus is treating adults with severe mental health issues.
My local ferrari dealership basically implies my life will be perfect (all the pretty women will fawn over me!!) if I just buy one of their cars. America made these institutions into for profit companies. We have to stop giving them the goodwill we'd afford to altruistic/idealistic academic institutions.
Yes USC has a "not for profit" label, but just because the label says "water" doesn't mean there isn't gasoline in that bottle -- use some common sense and call a bird a duck by it's quack.
In addition to requiring a masters degree, my friends admin department is way over staffed, having come from private industry my friend is shocked at how little people do. My friend has a boss whose screen they can see, and estimates that the boss puts in roughly 15mins of work per day and spends the rest of the time on Twitter & Facebook. My friend estimates that the headcount is roughly 3 times more than it would be in private industry
If you can say yes to all of the above, then you shouldn't be able to discharge it in bankruptcy, either.
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 curriculum not extension school shenanigans
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 in 2 days. The major benefit though is that you pay a flat price for a semester and then you can do as many credits as you want in that semester for a flat fee, so if you want you can get 24 credits done in one semester.
Additionally this isn't an ITT Tech or DeVrye type scam where they just push you through, a lot of the classes are based around industry certs as the final test for the class, and they give a through grounding in a lot of areas.
The flip side is they are very focused on practical job skills and not so much theory, I personally think it results in a more well rounded engineering student who is able to work in Networking, Software Development or Systems Admin reasonably competently.
Again I am a fun I recommend it, I wish everyone would start doing it because I think it is a game changer. Feel free to AMA if you have more questions about it.
I am about 75% through the program and for someone who has been in the field for a while, it is really good. A lot of classes have just been taking a quick test to prove competency, but the discrete math and computer architecture classes were really interesting and useful.
That said, I'd be slightly hesitant to fully recommend it to someone who had zero prior programming experience. The fact that there are no assignments and only a handful of courses that require projects means you can graduate without having written a ton of code, and the code you do write is somewhat disjointed - a few Python courses, 2 Java courses (with a heavy emphasis on JavaFX), and a random C++ course that seemed pretty out of place. I don't that is the worst thing in the world, but if someone comes in cold and just checks all the boxes to get through the program as quickly as possible, they may find themselves ill-prepared for interviews and their first job.
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?
The way you pass a course is through an assessment at the end - either a proctored multiple-choice test or some sort of project you complete and have graded. A few courses have both. For the ones that have a test, there is a pre-test you can take at any time to see how ready you are for the test - for the most part they've been relatively close to the actual tests.
I haven't needed help from instructors very much, but when I have had questions they've been pretty responsive. They are also fairly responsive on the "chatter", which is a terrible, limited chat/forum-like thing for each course.
Its more geared like a trade school, online, at a fraction of the cost. Get people into teaching, nursing, business and IT, as fast as possible and cheap as possible.
Many of these workers are less impacted with a 30k loan (same as a car) than a 100-150k school loan.
I know a few people who worked at minimum pay jobs and WGU was an option to get a degree and not go into debt for life.
Thats how I heard of it, and looked into it, and was rather impressed with the courses, cost and speed.
I was even tempted to sign up and pass the basic courses quickly, as I've been in IT for 30 years, and get a degree cheaply. Plus learn some new skills.
Thats probably true to a degree, however I think the system will breakdown this decade. Given current inflation rates, anyone with an IQ >120 will soon see that the debt/benefit ratio is becoming unworkable.
The last 2 employees my company hired actually game via github - we were using an open-source repo that someone had made and eventually reached out and asked him if he wanted to consult for us and add some features to his code...that lead to an ongoing basic permanent consulting gig.
> A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths (4/5) (or eighty percent) of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact
https://www.uniformguidelines.com/uniformguidelines.html#18
It means that for tests with disparage impact you need good evidence that it is actually relevant, good luck proving that for IQ tests. So either you need to design an IQ test which doesn't favor any race, or you need to design an IQ test which looks like work so you can convince a court that it is relevant for the job. College can be seen as an example of the later.
The article mentions that the old contract stated that about 60% of revenue gets shared with 2U but then there was a revision to the contract so it's not clear what the current figure is but even if they lowered it to 40-55%, that's still a huge chunk of change for basically running ads to target students into the funnel. It's actually sickening that the contract extends to 2030.
So USC is only getting $115,000 * .4 = $46,000 which while still high is substantially lower and sounds like a reasonable amount to offer the degree at. I'm not sure why they haven't built out an internal function since and tried to get out of the contract.
For the peak year of graduation mentioned (2017, 1500 students), 2U's take at the 60% figure is ginormous. $115k * 1500 students * 0.6. = $103.5 million.
Anyway there's so much wrong with what's happening here.
EDIT: I just re-read the article, it seems like the 1500 figure is a combination of in-person and online graduates for the year 2017. Still the premise holds true: a 60% take rate is excessive.
a) They are unwilling to spend lots of money on upfront content development costs without knowing future revenue.
b) They are unwilling to hire a bunch of temporary workers to help spin up new content and then re-allocate them.
c) They are unwilling to adopt (aggressive) modern marketing techniques.
d) They are unwilling to cold call.
e) They are unwilling to maintain call centers.
f) They are unwilling to spend millions on FB and Goog ads even if it has positive ROI.
Non-profits in general are using more and more professional calling services. Maybe they keep the easy (warm) calls in-house and then outsource all the more difficult calls to an outside service.
Yes, regrettably some programs would go the way of the dodo, but we shouldn't be saddling our kids with crippling debt so that they can do four years of college and end up in the same place they were before they went to college from a career prospective. If people want to spend their own money to study underwater basketweaving, then so be it.
Also, federal loans should be extended to vocational training programs under the same stipulations.
Edit: the DOE should also have the ability to give programs/schools the death penalty (no loans) if they are found to be manipulating data used for these calculations.
The reason college is so expensive is because that is what people are willing to take loans to cover.
For the same 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.
The contractors I talk to are booked out for weeks, and I need their expertise much more than they need my business. I'm not convinced that lacking a degree shuts people out of good jobs. My cynical take is that there's a mismatch between what people are willing and able to do, and what activities are valuable.
Most people aren't willing to work inside peoples' mouths all day. Dentists make bank. The HN crowd notwithstanding, most people would hate carefully crafting digital products all day. Software devs make bank. Most people aren't willing to crawl underneath houses to hook up potentially-dangerous electric/gas lines. etc.
In a past life, I tried the general laborer gamit and it's impossible to get a job there too. Simply cause nobody hires you unless it's by word of mouth. So it's even worse than being shut out for not having a degree. So overall, it's no so much that people don't believe that they need a degree, it's the path of least resistance since you can at least get your foot in the door through a company once you pass the minimum qualifications. General labor stuff, good luck getting a job in a specialized field. I tried breaking into HVAC and I couldn't even get an unpaid apprenticeship cause people just won't do it.
The thing is, most kids go to school not knowing what they want to do. If that is the case, going to college is the absolute worst possible decision you could ever make. On top of that, you might even be going into a field you despise but can't back out now.
They wont, new kids grow up every year and they hear mixed messages, some says college is a scam while others says it is the golden ticket. They have to make a decision, so lots trusts (or just hopes for) the golden ticket.
This will continue as long as colleges are allowed to market themselves as golden tickets.
How is a program like the Penn MCIT Online degree[0] viewed by engineering and product hiring teams in industry? I am looking at transitioning from venture capital investing to SWE (and potentially product, given my business background) and this seems like a good option to facilitate that change - education in CS fundamentals (vs. a bootcamp) but still a reasonably short/practical program (10 courses).
Curious if there are engineers/PMs here that have gone through MCIT or similar to pivot into software from another field? Or, if any hiring managers here have hired graduates from these online degree programs and have insight/advice?
However, I dont know how all of this online stuff is going to effect things. I would just show up to wharton classes and wait for them to not kick me out, but online ... no chance. You also miss out on all the great conversations and doing study groups at the library, etc.
The program is strong, and it will help you get lots of interviews, but I'd do what ever possible to do the in person degree. I c an recommend good DS classes at the school if you are interested in that topic
I looked in to MCIT online but the outcomes appeared to be very mediocre. One of the testimonials was a student who got a job in sales at a tech company.
A big tell is if you go to their outcomes page it is a bit embarrassing in the lack of anything to boast about. https://online.seas.upenn.edu/degrees/mcit-online/outcomes/
First testimonial: "Halfway through her first year in MCIT Online, Xunjing Wu is considering applying for a product management role."
Pay $26,000 to consider applying for a role.
Anecdotally, I got my master's degree in CS at USC and had a good experience overall. I definitely learned a lot and was able to fill in some gaps in my knowledge of CS theory and machine learning. I was also able to get offers from Google and Facebook from their on-campus recruiting programs, and I know several other people in my cohort that did the same.
I had a friend who paid his way through college with summer construction jobs and graduated with about $10k in debt.
People who were willing to work part-time during the school year could graduate debt free. Tuition at an exclusive liberal arts school was 5-10x the cost of tuition at a state school in-state and almost double the cost of a state school out-of-state.
Purdue froze the in-state tuition at $10k some years ago, but did so by reducing the number of in-state students that were admitted; they need far more out-of-state (and out-of-country) students to subsidize that each year.
What we need to do is ensure that lenders bare the full cost of lending to people who likely will not be able to pay them back.
It’s time for us to publish expected income based on major and university.
“God forbid someone study something for the love of it”. No, god doesn’t forbid shit. But the realities of the fact that you gotta put food in your mouth constrain you.
If money isn’t such a big deal, why not just share the data. I’m sure people will say “Oh yeah, I think it’s worth it for me to live my life in undischargeable debt so I can ‘study’ this major at this place and work for minimum wage”.
You realize we're talking about social work here, right? God forbid someone help people with their work rather than find ways to lubricate an advertising delivery system at a FAANG.
We’re socialized not to talk about it. But it seems like half the people in my law school said they were there because their undergrad degree was worthless. But they keep feeding the beast by suckering the next cohort.