Comment by 33W | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 33W | Hacker News Reader

So I'll admit my biases up front: I got a BS,CS degree at an in-state school, and used the GI Bill to pay for all of my tuition, and took loans for study abroad.

But taking a look at the slideshow, I'm seeing a trend in degrees/schools/debt.

BA, advertising & PR, Loyola, $75K

BA, lit & writing, UC San Diego, $44K

BA, economics, Loyola, $90K

BA, film studies, Full Sail, $80K

BA, psychology UCF, MS, counseling, Nova Southeastern, $40K

BA, biology, Northwestern, $50K

BA, economics, Hunter, $12K

BA, asian humanities, UCLA, $10K

BA, art history, Sonoma State, $27K

BA, history & religion, Midland, $11K

BA, comparitive literature, Hamilton, $20K

BFA, painting, Rhode Island School of Design, $25K

BFA, graphic design, School of Visual Arts, $130K

BA, communications, Calf. St. Fullerton, $22K

How do any of these student think that they'll do anything with these degrees to overcome the debt? The only two that make some sense to me are the $40K to get psychology/counseling, and $12K for economics.

Because having a bachelors degree from a good (not necessarily elite) university should equip you to handle any number of jobs in general management or government.

If that's not happening, there could be a few different reasons:

1. Getting a BA isn't as rigorous as it used to be, and no longer means "This is an educated person. Besides their specialty, they should be smart and adaptable enough for most administrative-level purposes." Pseudo-professionalism has also closed the doors to some of these jobs, maybe as a way to get around civil service tests as a way for the educated to get government jobs without specific training.

2. The white collar, middle class job pool has been decimated, and not enough places need generally well-educated people.

This is still more or less the case in northern Europe. If you have a degree (in anything), the most likely outcome by far is that you lead a normal middle-class life. There is no big pool of unemployed Swedish BA/MA holders; rather, the unemployment problems are among people with no university degree.

I think most potential students are encouraged and told that it will work out - we see all our peers doing it and only hear the success stories. It seems more common these days for the people to at least have heard of not going to college; but when you're in high school and trying to figure everything out you have a ton of people you probably respect explaining how college is what ALL successful people do. They make it seem so possible that if you pursue your dreams you'll be successful. No one who's guiding these students wants to be the person to say "maybe you should pursue welding". They often don't even know that trade-schools do offer a higher probability for a good ROI.

The $50K biology degree from Northwestern is arguably worth it. Northwestern is the best school on that list, and an undergraduate degree in biology is often a stepping stone to an MD, MHA, MPH, or PhD.

That's what I was thinking, it's one of the nation's top schools, and you get paid for at least a PhD education. Still a tough job market.

I also wonder about the Rhode Island School of Design degree, I really don't know much of anything about that whole area of design and fine arts, but I been told they're one of the top schools in their areas of specialization, and a moment with Wikipedia indicates they're #1. Plus it sounds like they're intertwined with Brown.

So if you're going to get such a major, it sounds like the place to do so. And 25K in debt isn't completely insane.

Honestly, $10K for Asian Humanities at UCLA doesn't sound so bad, either. Maybe that major isn't a natural moneymaker, but UCLA is another very good school, and I bet plenty of companies wanting to do business in Asia would be happy to hire a bright student with that background.

I think it would depend on the quality of the studies. If focused on the gender, class and race food group of a large subset of the humanities, I can see corporate employers avoiding such potential trouble makers like the plague, but there are always non-profits and NGOs, even Foreign Service, although per Wikipedia the odds for the generalist path are very low.

If it actually made them useful, e.g. included some time "in country", and ideally minimal language and cultural fluency in at least one country of note, sure thing. Especially at such a price.

I have a friend who did both physics and Japanese and for a long time did well using both.

Perhaps, but unless the slideshow had a typo, it was a BA in Biology...

What do you mean?

Edit: If you're disdainful of the "BA", you should be aware that there isn't any formal distinction between a "BA" and "BS", and every school decides for itself what type of degree to award.

Northwestern University happens to award BA degrees for biology: http://www.biosci.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/

> The undergraduate life sciences major offered in Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences is the Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences with concentration in one of five areas: biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, neurobiology, physiology, and plant biology.

The slideshow that these are from says (on 6 of 14): "Degree: B.A., biology, Northwestern College. Career goal: Social worker."

Is says a bachelor of arts, but looking into Northwestern's programs more, I think it is a type. I agree that $50K of debt for a BS in Bio would be reasonable.

Now I see your edit. I was disdainful of the BA... I can't think of the specifics, but I thought I had seen programs with both BA and BS options in the past. I didn't know about the lack of distinction between the BA and BS. TIL!

IF a school grantsboth BA and BS STEM degrees, then the former are perhaps worth of disdain, at the very least they wouldn't be designed to get you into a PhD program.

In another direction, I don't believe MIT has any BA degrees, and a quick check showed that if you major in music, you get a Bachelor of Science degree (abbreviated S.B. at least in the '80s). Of course, you don't graduate from MIT in any field without doing a lot of physics and the calculus, plus some other science requirements....

It's pretty arbitrary and dependent on the school. MIT thinks of itself primarily as a science school, so they only award BSes. In contrast, Oxford gives out BAs in everything, even math/physics/computer science.

And keep in mind, those salaries don't take into account the unemployed who have those degrees from those institutions.

Sorry if it was ambiguous, the listed dollar amount is student debt from the slideshow.

Like some sort of evil plot of misadvertising hobbies as jobs to young people.

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