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Comment by DanielHB | Hacker News Reader

You are discarding opportunity cost in your assessment.

Maybe, but if you compare paying 30-50k per year plus living expenses for an average masters program for 2-3 years and then paying student loans for a really long time because you couldn't afford it in the first place vs paying no tuition and getting a $30k-40k stipend for 4-5 years. The advantage of a year or two of additional work isn't as great as you think, when you subtract out tuition and the stipend they give you during the PhD and compare the pay differential and job prospects when you finish.

It depends on your career prospects. If you can expect to make $200k out of grad school then it’s definitely not better to spend your time in school, financially. But yeah it’s a math question at that point.

I don't think even smart folks here realize how much of a boost is some good income cash when you are starting your life from poor background. But one has to save it and not burn on 'better' lifestyle with trying to match peers or impress women (clue - if they don't like who you really are, no shiny expensive thing will ever make it work long term and you will just attract very wrong crowd).

I can attest it allowed me to do literal jumps way above what my peers and rest could do setting up much better life path. Pure numbers don't do this justice, not sure how to explain it properly.

Now it may not be your goal in life and thats fine, this comes from a guy who spent 6 months on unpaid backpacking all over India and Nepal well into his career work days, but be sure you are really fine with these decisions long, I mean LONG term. And we don't know who we will be in 2 decades.

Also a good quick start could easily mean retiring much earlier if one has a bit of luck and can control expenses growth (and they will grow regardless of your life path). One can focus on academia then.

You could always do what I did, get your employer to pay for the Masters, still work full time.

No debt, no opportunity cost.

Wish one would let me do the same with a PhD.

Some do.

Lots of masters students are also research / teaching assistants and end up finishing with little debt.

You can also just not get a masters.

It depends on what you want to do. I think 90% of the people here are computer science / programmers / IT people. There are people who don't even have a college degree and are self taught.

I'm in integrated circuit / semiconductor design. I only have a bachelors degree but that was 30 years ago. These days the vast majority of new graduates that we hire have a masters degree. IT's really hard to stand out with only a bachelors in my industry.

I suppose it depends on the field but there are plenty of Master’s programs that have no tuition plus stipend.

The counter party to your opportunity costs doesn't send collection agencies, though.

$250k in savings in six years is doable with a salary of $125k after undergrad.

But can you still get $125k directly after undergrad? How many employers are willing to pay 2x the median wage to someone with no experience and no demonstrated skills, simply because they went to a school? To someone who is likely to make a net negative contribution until they learn how things work and require less guidance? To someone who is at a high risk of taking another job after a couple of years?

It's more common that entry-level jobs in highly paid fields start at close to the median wage. Salaries can rise rapidly once you have demonstrated your worth. But unless there is a talent shortage in your field, it doesn't make sense to pay much for an unknown quantity.

FAANG or some company in a high-rent area where you could most definitely not save that kind of money, as far as I know.

And, I love how making $125K is some sort of great salary. I live in MN and while it’s above the median HHI for the state, it’s by no means a comfortable enough wage to save that kind of money unless your housing is covered by family or something.

Here in the MSP metro, you’re looking at $2500/mo for rent + utils or $3500/mo for mortgage + utils for what’s a pretty average living arrangement. Unless you’re making $200K+ you’re definitely not saving shit.

Using paycheckcity.com, I see that a $125K gross salary is $7360 a month in MN. If you max out your 401K, that’s still $5988 a month.

The median household income in Minneapolis is around $77K and they are somehow surviving.

It's amazing how out of touch people are. It's one thing to say your lifestyle choices make it hard to save money at that income level, but it's certainly also true that many folks are perfectly able to save a lot at that income level. Out of college, rent in my area was $1500 for a one bedroom, but I was able to rent a house with a few friends for $800/month per person. Even with frequent eating out and outings I saved up over half my income per year, making under 100k the entire time. If you want a really nice car, travel a bunch, or similar, or live alone, I'm sure it gets much harder to save much, but those are lifestyle choices.

Yes? That seems to be the standard entry level salary in the Bay Area.

If you’re doing a PhD in anything other than the highly paid field of “computer stuff”, the opportunity costs look much, much different.

When I did my PhD, I was making roughly the same money as all of my friends (none of whom were in tech) except I had waaay more freedom and job satisfaction.

If your other opportunities are things like a school teacher or generic “office job”, a PhD program doesn’t really have an opportunity cost penalty

Unrealistic unless you’re talking about eating beans and rice, and sharing an apartment with a few other people for all six years. Remember taxes, etc.

Their assessment seems to be talking about the debt load, in which case, the opportunity cost isnt especially relevant.

If you consider opportunity cost is above fulfilment don't do PhD.

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