Many graduate programs are “scams,” according to higher education policy analyst | Hacker News Reader

Many graduate programs are “scams,” according to higher education policy analyst

cbsnews.com

48 pointslxm30 comments

Many graduate programs are a sort of qualification for visa status.

When I was in school, all of my classmates who went on to graduate school did so to improve their visa situation. Not sure if that’s true today.

Otherwise, I’d agree the value is questionable. My brother got an MA in English Literature, which has no monetary value. Most critically he didn’t go into debt to get it, so he got to explore something he loved and lost nothing.

> shows that 40% of masters programs in the U.S. have no positive return.

> "If you take in the cost of attending and the time spent not working, what you get out of that master's degree doesn't even pay for itself,"

Calling that a "scam" runs contrary to that other claim I hear, that universities aren't supposed to be vocational education but more about research and personal enrichment.

Spending upwards of $100k or more on personal enrichment seems a bit extravagant. Unfortunately, the majority of people are coerced to go into debt when the return on the "investment" is very limited.

In a lot of fields (not all) it is highly unusual to pay for your masters/phd

You're thinking of STEM fields. No one pays for a PhD in STEM. But not all masters programs have guaranteed funding. This is going to vary dramatically across schools and very much so across programs. That said, the only person I know in CS that paid for a masters at my uni chose to (and only did so for one term). Outside of that, people I know in the English department, Philosophy, and others, they are paying.

What fields? Honest question, not trying to flame you.

I've known people who got scholarships but can't say I'm aware of any field in which paying for your own graduate degree is rare.

I’ve never heard of a student paying for their engineering, math or science degree.

If you do get an offer to study, but without sponsorship, it’s a signal they don’t really want you.

I know that's the case for doctoral degrees, but are terminal masters degrees usually fully funded in those fields?

I'm not sure now but something like all top 30 CS programs (for students on the PhD track who are US citizens)

Econ PhDs are funded

In the humanities (at least ~10 years ago), it was unheard of both to pay for your own PhD and for a terminal masters to be funded. MA students paid full tuition, which provided a lot of the funding for PhD students.

After the 2008 economic crash, a lot of US colleges and universities experienced a drastic realignment of their entire core mission and method to focus on career outcomes and ROI. Even without this, graduate programs are one of the biggest money makers in an institution's budget.

If I have it right, undergraduate tuitions generally cover operational costs, while graduate programs and donations are where institutions makes their non-profitty millions.

Both can be true. I've mostly encountered employers using formal education as a filter on applicants. But plenty of research is done on campus as well.

>that universities aren't supposed to be vocational education but more about research and personal enrichment.

Where do you hear that?

Not the commenter. I don’t hear people saying that (as a matter of fact I think it’s a problem that it’s not being said enough) but I think so too, solely from deduction. If universities were supposed to perform the same function as trade schools, then why do universities offer experiences and facilities way beyond what trade schools offer? One has to ask oneself at some point what is supposed to be the differentiation.

It’s a carry-over from the era when a college education was a Veblen good for the wealthy and connected who would have gotten a job without it anyway. Not a serious policy prescription.

> In some cases, they even have a negative return on investment — meaning degree holders spend more on graduate school than they can reasonably expect to earn later on.

this is easiest to see in things like public education where a Master's degree will net you an additional $1200 stipend [1] though it costs ~20k to earn that Masters[2].

[1] https://4.files.edl.io/bb1d/06/30/21/132300-7b7e7b32-778b-4c...

[2] https://onestop.utexas.edu/managing-costs/cost-tuition-rates...

Many school systems allow for a masters degree to increase your actual pay scale as well, which not only impacts salary but increases pension payout as well. Teachers should get a masters asap to maximize the benefit over their career.

I was under the impression that you needed to get a Master's in order to get your permanent teaching certificate.

Is that not correct?

That is not correct.

Eg, here's an example for Maine: https://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/attach.php?id=794564&an... (Requirements for the English 7-12 certificate). It requires a Bachelor’s degree, not Master's,

Here's California: https://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/leaflets/Single-Multiple-... ("Complete a baccalaureate or higher degree, except in professional education, from a regionally accredited college or university")

Hawaii: https://hawaiiteacherstandardsboard.org/content/wp-content/u... "Possess a bachelor’s degree".

In the case of education, doesn't it unlock career pathways like being a principal?

tooo many ads on this website

yaaawwnn "40 percent of programs do not pay"

The same could be said for many things. Does not mean it's a scam . Typical clickbait hype. The grad program in women's studies at a bottom 100 university probably will not pay as well as electrical engineering at a top 20. But, in the aggregate, the data consistently shows grads make more, and this holds after factoring in student loan debt and it holds across a wide range of schools and majors, but top schools and STEM will pay more, but this has been known forever...

> "On the other hand, if you can point to specific data about the program you're interested in, and the marketable skills or credentials it develops that can lead to a higher-paying job, it might be worth the investment. For instance, at many public schools, teachers with master's degrees in education earn more than those without them."

The author is downplaying the fact that many people get a graduate degree not because they want to make more money but because they're genuinely interested in the subject matter and want to learn in that environment.

The criticism of people taking out sizeable loans for something like that is reasonable, but for the people paying significantly reduced tuition or going to public universities it's a harder argument. Some people genuinely want to learn through the structure provided by universities

It's implied, I think, that the set of folks doing academia for pleasure are excluded from the analysis. In America, at least, the prevailing cultural attitude is "you do something to get ahead or you are falling behind". It's deeply solipsistic and bad, but it's safe to say that's the default reading for media here.

the state bar organizations colluded with the law schools in order to hide the poor success rates of law school grads...the bar organizations and the law school deans should all be arrested for fraud

Good luck winning the case.

I haven’t met a lawyer that wanted their kids to become a lawyer or recommend it to anyone.

> For instance, at many public schools, teachers with master's degrees in education earn more than those without them.

Funny that the author should use an education degree as an example of a non-scam. Yes, it might have a positive return on income because of competition by credential-ism, but almost any teacher will privately confide that the majority of what they study for their degree is worthless drivel. A teacher could be trained much cheaper with a short course and then as an apprentice to an experienced teacher for a half a year.

[*] I'm not questioning the need for domain knowledge; a high school science teacher should have taken science courses. Irrationally, a high school science teacher typically has massively more "education" coursework than science.

> Irrationally, a high school science teacher typically has massively more "education" coursework than science.

This is not true. A high school science teacher usually has more science coursework than education coursework. Usually, they have a bachelor's degree in a science field, and then complete a teacher preparation program, which is much shorter than the bachelor's degree.

> Irrationally, a high school science teacher typically has massively more "education" coursework than science.

Source? All the science teachers I had from middle school onward had genuine qualifications. One of them left the country to work at CERN. Wasn't a super rich district either

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