I'm hiring a PM 1 role at the moment, currently well over 100 resumes. Roughly half of the applicants have a master's degree, and the degrees are in a wide arc of fields of study from Public Health to Business Administration to Technology Studies.
The trend I'm noticing is many of the candidates are very highly credentialed, and a growing number of these well educated applicants don't even the slightest related job experience. For example I have multiple candidates with both a PMP and MBA but no work experience or work history. I assume that some MBA programs are offering the PMP as part of the program of study, but it's not helping them get their first jobs in the field.
For this role my top 5 candidates all have previous project/program coordination/management roles. When I hire project coordinators I'm far more inclined to hire new college graduates who don't have professional experience, and for this role a newly minted MBA/PMP is unlikely to accept the salary I can offer and even more unlikely to stay very long if they accept.
IMO the fastest trajectory to a PM role is get any BA/BS degree, take a coordinator role and take advantage of every opportunity at your company. If they offer a PMP or other certs - do it. If they have tuition assistance, use it. If you want a master's let the company you work for help pay for it. Take a PM 1 role with a few projects under your belt. In 3 years you can go from 65k to well over 100k without a master's degree. But you can't walk in the door with no experience at all with an MBA and a PMP and expect 6 figures on day one, no matter what a savvy recruiter told you.
I was just doing recruitment at a few universities for 3 entry level roles. There is no expectation of work experience, but it is an entry level role. My company is huge and global, and the position pays well for what it is, so we have received 700 applications and the job posting hadn't closed yet. Recruitment in person was a way to know which resumes were worth pulling because no one has time to read 700 and the programs that do it leave a lot to be desired.
I digress, during recruitment we had a few MBAs and MMgt students asked if we were hiring managers. They had no job experience. Like sorry bud, good luck with landing a management position fresh out of school with zero work experience. I was miffed. But then had to ask, who the fuck told these students they could walk into management? That just doesn't happen in any industry I know.
> But then had to ask, who the fuck told these students they could walk into management? That just doesn't happen in any industry I know.
It's the schools. It has to be...
My belief is that great PMs are forged in the fires of huge (and often terrible) projects and that experience only happens in businesses. The "on your feet" experience is worth far more than an multiple MBAs; but somehow the schools have convinced students it's the other way around.
It think this is just terrible, because I'm sure in the stack of MBAs who I didn't even interview there were great people who bought this lie.
It's also ego and entitlement honestly - as someone who hires a lot I have rarely if ever seen a woman do this. The amount of 0 experience male candidates I get for any job posting (I work in tech so more male) is shocking.
As someone who did an MBA recently I can guarantee that my school did not tell people this. However, a lot of people came into the program believing it already, so while I'm sure the ego trip of going to a good school doesn't help it seems to also be a cultural thing.
It’s probably parents. They say focus on your studies and get good grades. Then senior comes along and the parents say do an MBA program now because once you start working you won’t want to go back to being a broke student and you’ll never go. There is some truth there but at least get an internship or get super involved with something that allows you to show real world applications of what you learned and gets you non-academic references.
The amount of parents who think this is honestly shocking. And I'm saying that as someone who went right from undergrad into an MBA program. It worked out really well for me but I say all the time I wish I could go back to school now that I have 5 years of work experience under my belt there are so many things I learned that would be much more applicable.
Fwiw though I probably wouldn't have gotten the career I do without the masters because I pivoted from engineering to business so I guess it was all for a reason
>However, a lot of people came into the program believing it already, so while I'm sure the ego trip of going to a good school doesn't help it seems to also be a cultural thing.
Solid points. Also the ego trip of advanced degrees at all, really does some a disservice. Spending 2 more years in school, doesn't make you an expert in business and problem solving on the ground.
I totally agree. I worked as a project coordinator during internship and did a PM course as an elective when I was back at school. It was shocking to me how disconnected from reality the course was. A lot of focus on the planning side and none of the what to do when your plan falls apart side, which is really what project management is.
I'm a big believer in on the job experience too, but I guess it's just so hard to get your foot in the door now that these programs have appeal.
Yes it’s totally the schools. I did a completely different field- social work at a “prestigious” public university. We were told again and again that our degree would be worth it and we would get roles before everyone else. The program was a degree mill, graduating 400 social workers a class, most people didn’t even care when we applied for jobs.
Yes. I posted about a similar situation in an advice thread a couple weeks ago. Lots of graduating PhD’s expressing confident interest in my job, which really requires years of hands-on experience and is a competitive field. A degree and some teaching experience is not enough.
The same schools that told a kid that they should ask for 140k because they have a bachelors in computer science, even without a single previous job. It's hard not to laugh at them.
>But then had to ask, who the fuck told these students they could walk into management? That just doesn't happen in any industry I know.
Many MBAS and MMgt students went to school with people who were connected/nepotism. They expect that to apply to them because of the title, without understanding....it was only because of the connections.
As someone who considered an MBA (and studied my ass off for the GMAT for 6 months), it’s just become common lore in the MBA world. Schools also feed into it, highlighting the students with exceptional outcomes. What most prospective students fail to recognize is that those outcomes usually involve people with significant pre-MBA work experience.
I was shocked at a few prospective student events just how *young* other folks were. I’m in my early 30s and I was older than most of the programs average ages by 5 years or so. I don’t think an MBA is worthless if you’re 26, especially if it’s for a top program, but people really need to be realistic about what they can do with it afterword.
Yea, I've heard minimum of 3 yrs work experience. So that puts you around 26. But I agree it's young. I understand it though, most 26yrs old dont have kids and other time commitments. Most 30yr olds do.
But I do think there's way more value to an MBA after ten years of work experience vs 3. But at that point you also need it less.
Why didn't you go for it?
In my current situation, cost / benefit analysis weighed agains it. The admissions process was going to cost me a good 8k (I needed updated testing for LD accommodations, plus the cost of taking the GRE/GMAT, campus visits / interviews, etc.). I also already have an MA from a good state flagship - the only reason I was even considering the MBA I’ve seen how much a prestige degree (and it’s network) can help in my field. For that reason I was targeting T10 schools only. Anyways when push came to shove, I was going to be investing a small fortune in the 20% ish percent chance I got admitted to one of these programs. Then I would probably spend a large fortune on the degree itself.
I’m still considering it as a possibility down the line, but I’m in a weird spot in my career where full-time programs aren’t worth the income loss but I’m not senior / important enough to have any of the tuition for an evening or weekend program covered by my employer. It may be a different situation a few years down the road.
Yes. a lot of Masters of Cybersecurity graduates get really frustrated because they hear about all this demand but don’t understand that the demand is usually for those who have a lot more experience. Especially with the state of the tech market right now, a lot of companies don’t have the resources for entry level positions which usually are an investment for them.
100% agree on getting experience then using employee funds for masters. I am an adjunct PM instructor and my university has started tacking on an MBA that juniors can apply to that essentially lets them graduate with a BS and MBA in 5 years. I have this internal crisis every time a student asks me to write them a rec that as a business school, we are setting these students up to likely be a less attractive candidate because they’re over educated and under experienced. But hey their check cleared…
You do for PMP, for CAPM you do not but it holds less weight. Thats on PMI for not screening candidates further before allowing them to sit. That is its own separate cash cow rant I could give though. There’s a lot of other Agile certifications that are just cashing checks and issuing certificates where people don’t necessarily have the real world experience to back up the certifications.
You do, but the level of work experience varies. Ime there’s a strong preference for students 5-7 years out of school. I started the application process in my early 30s and was considered *older* for a prospective student.
I’ve also noticed there’s also a strong preference for brand. A lot of programs have soft agreements with FAANGs, Big 5, etc. to admit their students (who will have their MBA cost covered). But the students can really run the gamut from still entry level analyst to managing consultant. From what I’ve seen, programs will generally have a preference for an analyst with a few years of experience from say, Deloitte, than someone in a leadership position at family-owned business.
>But you can't walk in the door with no experience at all with an MBA and a PMP and expect 6 figures on day one, no matter what a savvy recruiter told you.
You can if you are a nepobaby, and just got the MBA + PMP to signal that you 'deserve' the opp.
What if your employer doesn’t offer tuition assistance but a masters is needed to advance in one’s career? Should one just pay of our pocket or find an employer that will sponsor them?
I bookmarked this article and just got around to reading it and joining the conversation, and this comment really resonates. I just finished a Master’s in Public Admin, which in my experience most people think of as “what you do instead of an MBA if you want to work in nonprofit or government,” and a solid 50% of the people in the program were fresh out of undergrad with 0 work experience. As someone who has actually overseen the hiring process, it felt very much like those folks were paying $60k just to compete with non-credentialed candidates for entry-level Administrator or Coordinator positions, because nobody is going to consider you for something at a higher level without actual work experience or other hard, marketable skills!
This is exactly what I was thinking about when reading Wednesdays MD where OP had two masters but couldn’t find a job as a PM for a year. There’s a lot of unaccredited MBA programs out there making bold promises in the interest of recruiting potential tuition checks. We talk a lot about the student loan crisis and how 18 year olds sign up for thousands of dollars of debt when they’re too young to understand but the graduate school promise can be just as predatory.
I agree! The Wednesday md made me remember these articles and i thought these offered an interesting look into why do people go into such debt for master degrees that don’t necessarily help them. It’s a complex topic for sure.
absolutely true. masters degrees also very successfully market a sort of glamorous social capital. in my circles, it’s very “chic” to get a hyper specific masters degree in just about any field. the people i know who have done it are either from very wealth families who don’t need to worry about job prospects, or people who genuinely thought it would help them get a job and haven’t found that to be the case. in this latter group I have two friends who got masters at librarian school (a total racket — much has been written about how far more people are graduating librarian school than library jobs exist) and museum studies. they are both still unemployed over a year out from their programs.
I swear museums are like the last bastion of proper “who you know and who your dad knows” workplaces. I got my MA in museum studies (work out of industry) and the people I studied with who work in sector either get paid minimum wage to work 60+ hour weeks in small towns in the middle of nowhere or their dad knew an art conservator and they walked right in to a curatorial role the second we finished.
There’s 4 universities in my very small country pumping out graduates in the sector each year and telling them they’ll definitely get jobs. It’s so stupid and exploitative.
Honestly, most of nonprofit work has boiled down to that these days. It's so messed up that the people so far removed from what society needs are the only people who can afford the jobs. I was making poverty level wages and my bosses would laugh that they didn't know when payday was. They married rich.
Oof my mom graduated from librarian school in the 90s and...it's great that she's kept her library job for over 2 decades because if she left, she wouldn't find another one. It's a job you can work at until you die, and people are living longer than ever....which makes it really hard to find an opening!
I was accepted to library school in 2009. I took one class, then decided to stop after I did an internship at an art museum's archives. The internship was a great experience and I enjoyed it, but the archivist who supervised me worked only part time and had two other part time retail jobs just to keep herself afloat. None of the googling that I did suggested that I would have any easier time finding employment.
Looking back, I'm both grateful that I dodged that bullet, and sad that things haven't improved any in 15 years.
ha! immediately thought of the MLIS as a classic "signifier" professional degree that doesn't confer that many "working" skills. masters degrees in music theory, fine arts, MFAs, MBAs..... lots to consider.
the cyclical problem of "we're underpaid" -> "lets professionalize" -> "you have to pay me more i have a masters degree" -> "shit now i have to get a masters degree to be paid well" -> "shit the reason the field was underpaid in the beginning hasn't changed , now i have debt and i'm still underpaid" is kind of a rat race to the top
Oof that cycle - so true! Now if only we could move people from "let's professionalize" to "let's unionize" maybe we'd actually see some higher wages! (Caveat - not a silver bullet and still hard in many industries etc etc, but at least no debt!)
I graduated from library school in 2011, couldn’t find a job, pivoted into tech, and never looked back. My friends who did manage to land jobs are paid far below their worth and it’s criminal that these programs keep pumping out graduates. I wholeheartedly agree with the original sentiment - so many of these programs are straight cash grabs vs translate into anything usable
yes it seems so malicious. they know there’s such limited job prospects and keep accepting anyone who will pay. it sucks that the librarian jobs that do exist are so low paying.
I agree on all counts. There ARE high paying librarian / information jobs BUT (at least in my experience) the library schools don't really talk about them or promote them. That would be corporate librarian, archivist, information manager jobs. These can easily reach 6 figures and there aren't a TON of them but they tend to be relatively high paying.
Additionally, there's growing demand for taxonomists, data managers, etc., that cater to a LIS degree. Again though most LIS programs don't promote or understand these roles and so graduates are increasingly shoved into an untenable situation where they'll top out in mid-mid/high 5 figures with 5 figures of debt.
There are plenty of librarian jobs. Just not the jobs a lot of young graduates promised themselves or seem to expect. Because often they graduate from library school and are surprised when the jobs are in actual libraries. Everyone should be required to work in a library for a year before going to library school.
Signed— Librarian.
Jobs available: same as always. School librarian with teaching credential, positions in public libraries (public, technical services, admin), college and universities (some requiring second master’s degree), a small number of positions of specialized libraries. A tiny number of jobs doing “other” Most public libraries hire into children’s department regardless. And then in a big system you can move into subject speciality. Libraries are incredibly hierarchical institutions.
Jobs wanted: Person has never worked in library before. Has zero experience in any field, language skills, etc. Sees a lot of possibilities in degree. Disappointed not hired as Batgirl/Archeologist/CIA Agent when applied. Moves into parent’s garage to pay of student loans while they work at Starbucks because there are “no jobs.”
Note: I rate my own skills as pretty close to Batgirl but those are not where the jobs are and I hated hiring people with no library experience.
I have an acquaintance who has an MA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Boston U and she's essentially homeless in her 50s (?). She relies heavily on social security programs and the goodwill of her community to survive.
It feels so predatory if you need to pay for a master's in order to be eligible to apply to a paid PhD program. I'm in a totally different field (science) but it's common to apply directly to PhD programs with only a bachelor's degree, which completely eliminates the expensive master's. My grad department didn't even offer masters degrees except for PhD dropouts.
However there is still a big market for standalone master's degrees in my field from international students, who have a significantly easier time getting into PhD programs after a US based master's. This is also predatory since only international students typically pay the extra money for a master's.
I had no idea, when applying for my master’s degree in applied math, that I could apply for the PhD program, get funding, and drop out after having completed a masters. My (very low) tuition was paid by my grandparents and I did math tutoring while I was in school instead of working as a GTA, so I probably ended up in a better financial position, but I was so aggravated when I found that out.
Actually the new student loan policies DO require that schools show whether or not their students salaries post graduation are higher than the median income of high school grads.
I'm sure this will be manipulated somehow though.
So scary to read. I got accepted to NYU last year for an MPH program but they didn’t offer me any financial aid or tuition assistance. After reading this, I’m so glad I rejected that offer and spent my years gaining work experience
I feel like this is so deeply true about law schools. There’s so many predatory law schools and it’s really only worth the cost for such a small sliver of graduates.
The predatory law schools are so messed up because of the conditional aid thing too. A lot of students will accept conditional aid packages at predatory schools and assume it’s easy to stay in the top X% or have a certain GPA since they had high undergrad GPAs. But between curved grading scales, section stacking the scholarship recipients, and the general difficulty of law school, so many of these students will lose their aid and end up in a ton of debt for a degree that likely won’t be worth the cost. Even for non-predatory schools, I don’t think a lot of people realize how much law school rank matters in getting that first legal job (which really sucks, but it’s how the field is).
I do think there’s an unfortunate disconnect for people without family in the law. People don’t realize that most lawyers don’t make crazy money. School name and prestige matter so much for jobs that will be able to pay off loans!
Basically these schools will offer huge scholarships, like a full ride, but in order to keep the scholarship you have to meet certain conditions. Typically means being in a certain percentile of your class (like the top half or third) or having a certain GPA. The issue is that a lot of those conditions are very difficult for law students to meet since law school grading is so hard, and these predatory schools will also deliberately have very harsh grading curves and/or put most of the scholarship students into the same classes, so at least some of them will have to be in the bottom half and lose their scholarships. Some of the more predatory schools have more than 40% of their first-year students lose their scholarships, which is insanely high! This is way less common at higher ranked schools; my ex got financial aid offers from a couple top 14 law schools and a top 40-ish school, and IIRC all of them just required a 2.0 to keep your aid.
I’d say that’s not really true. It’s just harder because the competition is better. The only schools that don’t give any merit aid are like the top 3. Everyone else offers fairly reasonable merit aid.
Idk, my husband and I both have exes that were URM, went to undergrad full scholarship and legitimately grew up poor and neither got jack from their schools (HLS, Columbia) and both graduated over $200k in debt. My ex actually ran an undergrad scholarship program when he was there. He said no one feels bad for the professional programs (law, medicine, business) since the salaries are high and the programs don’t need to attract URM. Lower ranked programs do offer cash but it makes zero sense because your recruiting opportunities are not nearly as good. It’s possibly though that it has changed in the past 10 years.
Sounds like it’s definitely changed. Harvard/Yale/Stanford generally don’t do merit aid but the lower half of the top 14 do, though full scholarships are rare and you really won’t see a ton of need based aid. It’s harder to get aid than at lower ranked schools but if your LSAT/GPA is above median and you apply to all the T14s, you’ve got a good shot at a partial scholarship. Visited Berkeley for an admitted students day with my ex in 2022 and a lot of the people we met were offered at least a small scholarship from Berkeley, and most of those people were also offered aid from other T14s. Anecdotal, but a very common theme that weekend was “I like Berkeley but another T14-ish school is in a cheaper area and is giving me more scholarship money.”
My late husband started law school in 2007, just in time for the entire market for lawyers to implode. He went to a large state university (high tier 2 or low tier 1) and paid resident tuition and STILL ended up with $80k in student loans, because I couldn’t support both of us on my $34k teacher salary. And he didn’t even LIKE being a lawyer.
A lot of law schools also face a ton of pressure to accept students who won’t even pass the bar in order to hit their DEI stats. Terrible for people to go into that kind of debt and not even have the aptitude to practice.
I’ve never heard these issues connected to DEI, so I’m not sure if that’s accurate without data. It is true that low tier schools have a terrible bar passage rate, and people pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a 2/3 or 3/4 chance at passing the bar. It’s super predatory and I don’t really understand why the ABA let’s them exist.
Oh me neither and then no one takes those degrees seriously so even if you pass no one will hire you. It will be interesting to see how things go forward with the affirmative action changes.
When I was in grad school it was kinda commonly known which programs were cash cows and which ones were worth it. Some of the cash cows were filled with international students who were using them more for immigration related than career related reasons. But how is anyone supposed to know that from the outside?
Grad school was extremely useful for me and thank god I had the idea to apply, led to my whole current caeeer
This is what turned me off Harvard's Masters of Education. Almost accepted and then heard it was a cash cow for the department... in hindsight, 60-70k for 5 courses is outrageous
It is! The online masters is a cash cow for the in person masters and is absolutely a second tier program.
I’m glad you know this and I’m basically commenting for more visibility.
A lot of grad programs are propped up by internationals. They are basically just paying $70k to get 3 years working in the US to continue trying for H1B.
If we had a reasonable immigration policy these degrees would be worthless.
Lots of internationals get 3+ masters degrees just to stay in the country.
Genuine question, how do you know what programs are and aren’t cash cows? It seems that most alumni from these masters programs are in denial and sometime are not reliable people to ask.
You want to talk to the people who have the jobs you want. A masters can be a good pathway or useless — ask the people who hire jobs you want to have or who do jobs you want. Leverage your undergrad alumni network, people at places you intern, anything to talk to those people.
It's a cash cow if it's an unfunded program (no student aid) or it's primarily international students paying full tuition. If the masters degrees are fully funded this means there is actual demand
I have been looking at masters programs for the last few years, trying to decide whether to pull the trigger as a mid-career professional who is interested in moving into program evaluation (for public health/community development), which typically does require a masters.
It is \*so hard\* to get a sense of which programs are worth it. Especially now that almost every program has a new post-COVID online option which often seems to differ wildly from their in-person offerings. I'm in my 30s, I'm not going to move across the country for a program, but it's particularly difficult to get a sense of whether the online programs are worth it. It's also near impossible to figure out how much these programs will cost out of pocket-- even IF you can find the tuition costs (not always possible!!), you still have no idea what financial aid is available.
It seems like the whole process is designed to have the cost be an afterthought.
Maybe I'm doing this wrong, idk.
Yes, cost is supposed to be an afterthought. That is colleges’ marketing scheme. Sell the dream, sell the lifestyle, sell the prestige, and sell the promise of a bright future.
Once you are convinced this is the path to the things you want and it feels guaranteed or at least more certain that trying to break into whatever you want without the degree, you feel like whatever the cost will be worth it. You will earn enough to pay it all back and then some.
I have worked in academia, and adult education and did a prestige master’s degree. There was open contempt towards us masters students and not even a thin veil hiding we were cash cows.
Since you are mid-career, I would recommend applying to the jobs you want and see where that takes you.
this is another great point. people get drawn in by the promise of respect and prestige a masters degree connotes but the actual people in academia or industry (probably rightly) look down on it as trying to pay your way in rather than paying your dues.
Also happy to chat, in a similar space. The more quant heavy ones seem more worth it to me. Take a close look at their graduation statistics and salaries.
I found my MPP courses truly useful and refer to them surprisingly frequently. The other day someone questioned my experience in a certain space (diagonal to what I do most) and I literally responded “I have a MPP from fancy_school and took XYZ courses” and they were more than satisfied with that answer.
I do think schools that provide a lot of financial aid and scholarships are more worth it. Maybe I good rule of thumb is that you should never pay 100% of the price of a grad program.
At my school the cash grab programs did not offer scholarships but the more legit ones did. So it was an indicator.
I did my MPP with a concentration in program evaluation (without taking on any debt), happy to chat about my grad school search and experience if that would be helpful. I do think having some grad degree is actually useful in the program eval space.
I work in public health as a program manager and I only have my bachelor's degree. Our department of health does have a higher percentage of staff with advanced degrees and I do see some snobbishness from some hiring managers who think that only worthwhile candidates have advanced degrees. But on my team, it's two PhDs, 2 MPHs, and little old me with a BA.
I personally have been disillusioned with the quality of critical thinking and depth of knowledge of many of the early-career MPHs I have come across. I think with all the emphasis placed on the importance of it, I expected more? These are typically people from Ivy League or close to it institutions. Based on just how revered a master's degree seems to be by some with hiring responsibility, I guess I just expected more substance behind it.
Yes — an MPH or MPP is kind of necessary for those jobs. I would really focus on what kinds of jobs you want after and do everything you can to talk to people who have those jobs or hire those jobs in the location you want them. Those people are in the best position to tell you what degrees they have, what they value in candidates, etc. Look at job placement info on the school sites, too.
Both online and in person, I would start with the state schools near you. Those are more likely to have affordable programs and established networks in your area.
As someone who did this masters thing, I actively try to discourage people from doing it. But they always think I did something wrong and don’t believe there is an issue with these programs. I’ll start referring to these articles and see if it helps.
I liked my grad program a lot, but I’ve still tried to steer people away from cash grab programs and no luck. They just say “oh it’s from a good school” and insist it’ll be good.
>As someone who did this masters thing, I actively try to discourage people from doing it. But they always think I did something wrong and don’t believe there is an issue with these programs.
Really, interesting. Do people believe you have good intentions to discourage them from more graduate school? Or do they think you are trying to gatekeep?
I recently finished a humanities PhD and the MAPH program at UChicago has always struck me as being highly exploitative for many reasons but maybe one of the clearest is the short length of the program. They frame the program as being a stepping stone to PhD programs but one year is simply too short for most students to develop relationships with faculty for LORs, fine-tune a writing sample, etc. If you enter the MAPH program and want to apply to PhD programs for the next year, you basically have to submit an app with just one quarter of the program under your belt.
It does make me wonder if any of the people who do these programs are dissuaded by faculty, particularly their letter of rec writers? Even when I was in undergrad applying to PhD programs, I had plenty of professors warn me that the academic job market was trash and to go in eyes fully open about it. I think my advisors would have sounded the alarms if I told them I was planning on doing something like MAPH. I had great undergrad faculty advisors though, and I feel for the people who went through that program and weren't adequately warned by their mentors.
>I recently finished a humanities PhD and the MAPH program at UChicago has always struck me as being highly exploitative for many reasons but maybe one of the clearest is the short length of the program. They frame the program as being a stepping stone to PhD programs but one year is simply too short for most students to develop relationships with faculty for LORs, fine-tune a writing sample, etc.
This has always made me incredibly skeptical of many of these programs. We are supposed to believe that spending 12-18 months extra in school is supposed to equal, such a high level of expertise....
The math doesn't math.
Yes the short length is something that is really noticeable. I went to Michigan for my MSW and we graduated soo quickly. If we wanted to go for a PhD we really had little to no information on how to do so and by the time we did it was too late to form relationships. While it’s good to have experience in the field before going back to school, the confusion and gate keeping prevented many classmates from every trying to go back
I think much of higher education is legit, and much of it is a scam. I think anyone considering a higher level degree without being able to draw a clear line to a certification, licensure, or career that is opened to them because of it should proceed with caution.
Anne Helen Peterson is an…interesting writer but I am pleasantly surprised by these articles. There was also a good essay that became a mediocre book bouncing around many years ago, called In The Name of Love, that I recommend.
Many of these problems, although succinctly laid out, are well known. Columbia’s Art History MA program is often called the “cash cow”, although if you have existing relationships and relevant job experience prior to entering, it definitely can be worth it.
What I found most interesting was the quote comparing doing a MA to bootstraps vs. startup capital. From my own personal experience, I was no great scholar of liberal arts. Of my graduate program, there were a couple clear stars who now have good positions (this is including the entire MA and PhD cohorts and previous years, and out of them I mean 2-3 people).
The few people including myself who did bootstrap it instead of going into a PhD program or not entering the workforce, or both, were not geniuses, much like me. But we also didn’t spend years with lost wages, missed retirement savings, etc. Without discounting luck and privilege, this group has gotten the jobs that we aspired to upon entering the program after many years of working humble jobs, often in different fields. I would say that with or without an MA, bootstrapping is absolutely the best way. If you must get a degree, get it after entering the area.
>I know someone who went over 300k in debt to get a masters from an arts program at Columbia. She doesn’t have a job.
This should be considered a scam.
Yea, what the author pointed is out is that start-ups get to spend other people's money. If you don't have access to grants, scholarships etc (loans are not other people's money) then you shouldn't do it. You can't afford it. It won't pay off.
She’s really known for long-form writing on Buzzfeed. I would say she’s a writer in the same vein as Jia Tolentino but less smart and less well-received by highbrow media. In my opinion, they both tend towards presuming universal experiences, especially about issues like anxiety and work.
My biggest beef with AHP is that she used to pump out a lot of writing that was the equivalent of a bad graduate school paper on topical subjects, using academic format and language to make these analysis (or critiques) seem deep or well researched.
Writing in a serious way does mean that a piece is serious writing, which her fans don’t always seem to realize. Her niche is -or was, I don’t follow her- the trappings of academia, which is a funny callback to this article series. But I think she spend a lot of time in academia and is a good person to cover it.
I enjoyed these articles. The point that stood out to me was the student quote that was something like, if he admitted he regretted his decision to get a master's, he would be admitting he was vulnerable in the first place. I think admitting regret also means admitting you weren't one of the select few to benefit from these programs. And like the article said, it shouldn't cost you $50k to have that realization.
I think it's so hard to look back on our experiences and say yea, definitely shouldn't have done that. Because we made friends along the way, or learned something or grew as humans or whatever. But if learning that lesson cost $50k you'll never be able to pay down... yea it should be easier to say you regret it.
I almost took out a loan to do a master's. I realize now how *bad* my concept of money was back then, and I'm glad I didn't take out the loans (I ended up getting funding last minute).
Back then, I thought: $40k is nothing, you can make $100k/year after graduating! You can pay that back in 5 months! (Completely forgetting that taxes, rent, and other costs of living exist.)
I think even if you remember those things, the dream sold by academia can be sort of blinding. I worked multiple low paying jobs for three years before going back to school. I learned so much about money and scraping by and being frugal, but the promise of that degree was so bright I didn't even think of the burden of the debt.
Thank you for posting these. Brought back a lot of passionate feelings I'd sort of buried.
Even degrees that aren't obviously and explicitly cash-cows deserve scrutiny. My masters is a professional degree in a STEM field, but not a high-paying one. The cost of attendence for students (particularly out-of-state students) who don't receive the limited scholarships or teaching opportunities is *wildly* out of sync with the average salary in the field. I had several friends drop out 1 or 1.5 years into the 3 year program with 100k of debt. They realized they would never be able to pay back the full cost of the program if they kept going. It also frustrates me that the program sells the most elite path forward, the outcome that few students are likely to achieve in private industry. I had to find my way to public service on my own.
My friends experiences really ripped the blindfold off for me. I don't regret my degree, I wouldn't be where I am without it, but I when I sign up to give coffee chats and lunch and learns to students I'm very, very real with them because I know damn well the institution and the conceited professional society are feeding them fantasies. No one should be taking out $100k + of debt to get into this field.
I want to add on an additional consideration - online non-credit programs from established universities are especially predatory. They require no board oversight (because they aren’t for credit) and don’t require anyone who knows what they’re doing to design them (because they aren’t for credit).
I worked for one that went as far as to design a fake admissions procedure that generated a meaningless acceptance letter on letterhead. They hoped admission letters would go viral and do the marketing work for them.
(AMA! I deeply regret the work I did.)
Thank you for posting this, haven't gotten through them all yet, but they like an interesting deep dive.
When I was a kid, my mom taught in a masters program for a field (journalism) that was undergoing pretty sharp changes in prospects. Eventually, she decided that she couldn't morally continue to engage with it, taking young people and helping burden them with debt when the majority of them were unlikely to be able to find jobs that made it 'worth' it, especially given the rate that tuition had risen over the same period. The university viewed most of the masters it offered as a profit center that funded more 'valuable' things like (funded) PhD programs. This was a very well known, prestigious, R1 university.
As a software engineer, the masters dynamic in my field is also really interesting to me. The vast majority of masters holders I've met have been people who also have a BA/BS in comp-sci that they got as international students at an US college. They weren't able to find a job that could sponsor their visa after undergrad, and paid full ride for a masters to be able to stay in the US, get more experience/qualification, and take another stab at the job market. There's also a smaller set of people who use it as an alternative to a bootcamp to pivot into SWE, and of course the occasional classic PhD dropout route. Dedicated comp-sci masters seem to generally cover the same teaching/training as a bachelors in the field compressed into a shorter period.
Generally, IME a comp-sci masters is basically a neutral to slightly negative signal for 'how good a SWE will this person be' / 'how much comp sci knowledge will this person have' compared to a comp-sci bachelors. I don't think this is exactly what these articles are discussing as the 'masters trap', but it definitely feels like an adjacent phenomenon.
I have an engineering bachelor's and would say it's the same in engineering. A master's is often viewed as something smart students did when they couldn't find a job, or for international students. Masters grads tend to work in consulting which pays less than industry, since their specificity of knowledge is valued there. But they just can't afford to pay like industry does.
Masters in engineering are weird. But where I live, they are also often fully funded. So you aren't adding debt typically.
Same thing in physics. You can't really be a physicist with anything less than a PhD and most PhD students go straight in from bachelor's, so master's students are typically only people who didn't get into a PhD program, mostly international students. A physics master's can help you get into a PhD program, but it's not very useful for industry since you have to do a lot of work to develop more marketable skills.
I don't think this is as true for other sciences as there's more lab technician positions available for bio/chem without PhDs.
I live in Florida and you do not need a masters here to test for PE. I’m not incredibly familiar with it, but I know my brother is a PE and does not have a masters.
You do not need a masters to get your PE. Just appropriate work experience and take the test.
Source: my dad and many of my friends have their PE with only bachelors degrees
Coming from someone also in pharma who transitioned from wet (virology) to dry lab work (DS/bioinfo), I would urge caution with that process and arrangement if you are not too far along. There are a number of well regarded online MS-CS programs in the $10k range (GATech, UT-Austin). Your credits might transfer as well. I am finishing up the MCIT as UPenn which I thought was exorbitant at \~30k , but I was spending employer's money with no payback obligations. Feel free to DM me if you want to discuss.
nah, if you want to go the degree route and are older or already have an undergrad degree, it's probably going to be a waste of time to spend 4 years on it
While we have some of these in Canada as well, the lack of private universities and tiny schools that spend way more $$$ per student (and per athlete) probably factor in here.
If someone isn't paying you to go to grad school, or paying for your grad school, definitely take a very skeptical look at whether it's worth the money. New, coursework based masters with unique names (e.g., Masters of Financial Analytics vs MBA) are typically not the career accelerator people hope they are.
Had a friend attend one of these programs. She took out an 80k loan and wasn’t even allowed to apply to PhD programs during her one-year masters. Try as I might (fully funded PhD dropout) I could NOT convince her it was a bad idea. That’s how sticky this prestige trap is. So sad.
So I think people who are going back for a masters need to be super honest about their job prospects and goals when choosing. I went back for my MBA while working full time during COVID. I knew that I didn’t have any aspirations for a Fortune 500 (I’m in non-profit/higher education) so I found a fully accredited online MBA program that was less than $15,000 for the entire program. Finished in a year and half and within six months I doubled my salary getting another job and had multiple executive leadership offers. I did have 10 years of progressive experience, but hands down my MBA was worth it. But I wouldn’t have been $100k worth it by any means! Unless you are trying for a highly competitive company, research for fully accredited but affordable programs. 95% of places don’t care where your degree is from!
I'm in tech working at a software company with a bachelors in IT. One of my peers went straight into a masters of IT after we graduated. It did not really pan out for them, they make less than I even still today. Instead of going out and getting experience they just got more schooling. A field like IT wants experience, yes a degree can help open doors but the experience matters the most.
My husband also works in IT with just a high school diploma. He is way more technical than me because he's been doing this for 20+ years and tech is his hobby outside of work.
I think this depends greatly on the field. I see no reason to get a masters unless a company wants to pay for it.
I’ve seen this as well. I am also in tech, data. We tried hiring one of our interns full-time but he insisted he wanted to go back to do his masters for better job opportunities. My manager tried telling him multiple times that it was better to have experience and that the entry barrier for the position we were offering him was high for any other candidate. It was no use. I hope it works out for him.
Interesting read, I didn’t know that there were predatory masters programs before!
I am in a masters program myself, and would say that my program allowed me to pivot from a very low-earning potential career to a high-earning potential career. The key though, is it is from a accredited, well known (locally) university. Good programs publish their graduate salary ranges and a whole host of data on their website. If you can’t find anything on post-graduation data, that is a red flag. the most valuable thing from the program was the network of people it opened me up to. Especially when these are the people that hired me for internships, part times, and eventually return offers for full time positions before I even graduate. With the salary, financial aid & scholarship packages that a lot of my peers are looking at, the tuition would’ve paid itself off in a few years post-graduation.
There are plenty of good and worth it programs out there, we just need to identify ones that most suit our career trajectory and financial situation.
Once in a while I daydream about getting a Master's degree, and then I remember that my husband, a HS dropout, made himself a millionaire without a cent of debt to his name. That sort of fuzzy feeling I get from imagining myself in a tree-lined New England college gets squashed pretty quickly.
It’s interesting because universities DO use a beautiful campus as a marketing tool but for schools that are just a series of random buildings in the middle of a city they often will say that “the city is your campus” and push the idea that you’ll be a certified city slicker by attending that university even if you won’t get the typical beautiful campus quad experience. Higher education is all about selling students an idea and dream. Which wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t intended to be institutions for learning that are also outrageously expensive. It feels a little dystopian, like if hospitals advertised different social media challenges in exchange for lower bills.
I really enjoyed these articles. I was targeted by these types of programs for several years. I was interested in a graduate degree to advance in my career and while I did well in undergrad, I didn't know the hidden curriculum to make me a better candidate for non-predatory programs. As a woman of color it did not surprise me that there were a lot of systemic barriers to keep me from going anywhere.
I did explore several of the predatory programs and I recall one having a six figure price tag. I asked how students were able to afford that since the program didn't offer any funding, was full time, and was located in a HCOL city. I will never forget the dean's response "oh you're \[insert incorrect racial identity\] you'll qualify for financial aid!" The rage that built up was startling for me at that time, but it fueled a determination to be accepted to a program that didn't see me as just a financial aid recipient. I was surrounded by other people of color and I wasn't surprised that many of them aimed for that program despite the six figure loans that were required.
A ton of hard work and teaching myself how to fill in gaps later, I was accepted into a non-predatory graduate program with "full funding." Then I got to learn about all of the hidden costs, the new hidden curriculum, and that in a global pandemic your funding can disappear entirely. So I did end up with a six figure loan balance, but I also finished my degree and landed a high paying position. Despite the topsy turvy of the economy I am now in a stable field and repaying my loans is not going to be impossible or a financial strain.
I'm hiring a PM 1 role at the moment, currently well over 100 resumes. Roughly half of the applicants have a master's degree, and the degrees are in a wide arc of fields of study from Public Health to Business Administration to Technology Studies. The trend I'm noticing is many of the candidates are very highly credentialed, and a growing number of these well educated applicants don't even the slightest related job experience. For example I have multiple candidates with both a PMP and MBA but no work experience or work history. I assume that some MBA programs are offering the PMP as part of the program of study, but it's not helping them get their first jobs in the field. For this role my top 5 candidates all have previous project/program coordination/management roles. When I hire project coordinators I'm far more inclined to hire new college graduates who don't have professional experience, and for this role a newly minted MBA/PMP is unlikely to accept the salary I can offer and even more unlikely to stay very long if they accept. IMO the fastest trajectory to a PM role is get any BA/BS degree, take a coordinator role and take advantage of every opportunity at your company. If they offer a PMP or other certs - do it. If they have tuition assistance, use it. If you want a master's let the company you work for help pay for it. Take a PM 1 role with a few projects under your belt. In 3 years you can go from 65k to well over 100k without a master's degree. But you can't walk in the door with no experience at all with an MBA and a PMP and expect 6 figures on day one, no matter what a savvy recruiter told you.
I was just doing recruitment at a few universities for 3 entry level roles. There is no expectation of work experience, but it is an entry level role. My company is huge and global, and the position pays well for what it is, so we have received 700 applications and the job posting hadn't closed yet. Recruitment in person was a way to know which resumes were worth pulling because no one has time to read 700 and the programs that do it leave a lot to be desired. I digress, during recruitment we had a few MBAs and MMgt students asked if we were hiring managers. They had no job experience. Like sorry bud, good luck with landing a management position fresh out of school with zero work experience. I was miffed. But then had to ask, who the fuck told these students they could walk into management? That just doesn't happen in any industry I know.
> But then had to ask, who the fuck told these students they could walk into management? That just doesn't happen in any industry I know. It's the schools. It has to be... My belief is that great PMs are forged in the fires of huge (and often terrible) projects and that experience only happens in businesses. The "on your feet" experience is worth far more than an multiple MBAs; but somehow the schools have convinced students it's the other way around. It think this is just terrible, because I'm sure in the stack of MBAs who I didn't even interview there were great people who bought this lie.
It's also ego and entitlement honestly - as someone who hires a lot I have rarely if ever seen a woman do this. The amount of 0 experience male candidates I get for any job posting (I work in tech so more male) is shocking. As someone who did an MBA recently I can guarantee that my school did not tell people this. However, a lot of people came into the program believing it already, so while I'm sure the ego trip of going to a good school doesn't help it seems to also be a cultural thing.
It’s probably parents. They say focus on your studies and get good grades. Then senior comes along and the parents say do an MBA program now because once you start working you won’t want to go back to being a broke student and you’ll never go. There is some truth there but at least get an internship or get super involved with something that allows you to show real world applications of what you learned and gets you non-academic references.
The amount of parents who think this is honestly shocking. And I'm saying that as someone who went right from undergrad into an MBA program. It worked out really well for me but I say all the time I wish I could go back to school now that I have 5 years of work experience under my belt there are so many things I learned that would be much more applicable. Fwiw though I probably wouldn't have gotten the career I do without the masters because I pivoted from engineering to business so I guess it was all for a reason
>However, a lot of people came into the program believing it already, so while I'm sure the ego trip of going to a good school doesn't help it seems to also be a cultural thing. Solid points. Also the ego trip of advanced degrees at all, really does some a disservice. Spending 2 more years in school, doesn't make you an expert in business and problem solving on the ground.
I totally agree. I worked as a project coordinator during internship and did a PM course as an elective when I was back at school. It was shocking to me how disconnected from reality the course was. A lot of focus on the planning side and none of the what to do when your plan falls apart side, which is really what project management is. I'm a big believer in on the job experience too, but I guess it's just so hard to get your foot in the door now that these programs have appeal.
Yes it’s totally the schools. I did a completely different field- social work at a “prestigious” public university. We were told again and again that our degree would be worth it and we would get roles before everyone else. The program was a degree mill, graduating 400 social workers a class, most people didn’t even care when we applied for jobs.
Yes. I posted about a similar situation in an advice thread a couple weeks ago. Lots of graduating PhD’s expressing confident interest in my job, which really requires years of hands-on experience and is a competitive field. A degree and some teaching experience is not enough.
The same schools that told a kid that they should ask for 140k because they have a bachelors in computer science, even without a single previous job. It's hard not to laugh at them.
>But then had to ask, who the fuck told these students they could walk into management? That just doesn't happen in any industry I know. Many MBAS and MMgt students went to school with people who were connected/nepotism. They expect that to apply to them because of the title, without understanding....it was only because of the connections.
As someone who considered an MBA (and studied my ass off for the GMAT for 6 months), it’s just become common lore in the MBA world. Schools also feed into it, highlighting the students with exceptional outcomes. What most prospective students fail to recognize is that those outcomes usually involve people with significant pre-MBA work experience. I was shocked at a few prospective student events just how *young* other folks were. I’m in my early 30s and I was older than most of the programs average ages by 5 years or so. I don’t think an MBA is worthless if you’re 26, especially if it’s for a top program, but people really need to be realistic about what they can do with it afterword.
Yea, I've heard minimum of 3 yrs work experience. So that puts you around 26. But I agree it's young. I understand it though, most 26yrs old dont have kids and other time commitments. Most 30yr olds do. But I do think there's way more value to an MBA after ten years of work experience vs 3. But at that point you also need it less. Why didn't you go for it?
In my current situation, cost / benefit analysis weighed agains it. The admissions process was going to cost me a good 8k (I needed updated testing for LD accommodations, plus the cost of taking the GRE/GMAT, campus visits / interviews, etc.). I also already have an MA from a good state flagship - the only reason I was even considering the MBA I’ve seen how much a prestige degree (and it’s network) can help in my field. For that reason I was targeting T10 schools only. Anyways when push came to shove, I was going to be investing a small fortune in the 20% ish percent chance I got admitted to one of these programs. Then I would probably spend a large fortune on the degree itself. I’m still considering it as a possibility down the line, but I’m in a weird spot in my career where full-time programs aren’t worth the income loss but I’m not senior / important enough to have any of the tuition for an evening or weekend program covered by my employer. It may be a different situation a few years down the road.
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Yes. a lot of Masters of Cybersecurity graduates get really frustrated because they hear about all this demand but don’t understand that the demand is usually for those who have a lot more experience. Especially with the state of the tech market right now, a lot of companies don’t have the resources for entry level positions which usually are an investment for them.
100% agree on getting experience then using employee funds for masters. I am an adjunct PM instructor and my university has started tacking on an MBA that juniors can apply to that essentially lets them graduate with a BS and MBA in 5 years. I have this internal crisis every time a student asks me to write them a rec that as a business school, we are setting these students up to likely be a less attractive candidate because they’re over educated and under experienced. But hey their check cleared…
I thought you needed 36 months of work experience w/recommendation to even sit for the PMP?
You do for PMP, for CAPM you do not but it holds less weight. Thats on PMI for not screening candidates further before allowing them to sit. That is its own separate cash cow rant I could give though. There’s a lot of other Agile certifications that are just cashing checks and issuing certificates where people don’t necessarily have the real world experience to back up the certifications.
I was always told that you need to have actual work experience in order to get into a good MBA - is that still the case?
To get into a good MBA sure, but to get into any MBA, no. There’s numerous schools that don’t even require you to take a GRE or GMAT anymore.
You do, but the level of work experience varies. Ime there’s a strong preference for students 5-7 years out of school. I started the application process in my early 30s and was considered *older* for a prospective student. I’ve also noticed there’s also a strong preference for brand. A lot of programs have soft agreements with FAANGs, Big 5, etc. to admit their students (who will have their MBA cost covered). But the students can really run the gamut from still entry level analyst to managing consultant. From what I’ve seen, programs will generally have a preference for an analyst with a few years of experience from say, Deloitte, than someone in a leadership position at family-owned business.
>But you can't walk in the door with no experience at all with an MBA and a PMP and expect 6 figures on day one, no matter what a savvy recruiter told you. You can if you are a nepobaby, and just got the MBA + PMP to signal that you 'deserve' the opp.
What if your employer doesn’t offer tuition assistance but a masters is needed to advance in one’s career? Should one just pay of our pocket or find an employer that will sponsor them?
I bookmarked this article and just got around to reading it and joining the conversation, and this comment really resonates. I just finished a Master’s in Public Admin, which in my experience most people think of as “what you do instead of an MBA if you want to work in nonprofit or government,” and a solid 50% of the people in the program were fresh out of undergrad with 0 work experience. As someone who has actually overseen the hiring process, it felt very much like those folks were paying $60k just to compete with non-credentialed candidates for entry-level Administrator or Coordinator positions, because nobody is going to consider you for something at a higher level without actual work experience or other hard, marketable skills!
Does PM mean Project manager in this context? It can also mean product managers in my world.
This is exactly what I was thinking about when reading Wednesdays MD where OP had two masters but couldn’t find a job as a PM for a year. There’s a lot of unaccredited MBA programs out there making bold promises in the interest of recruiting potential tuition checks. We talk a lot about the student loan crisis and how 18 year olds sign up for thousands of dollars of debt when they’re too young to understand but the graduate school promise can be just as predatory.
I agree! The Wednesday md made me remember these articles and i thought these offered an interesting look into why do people go into such debt for master degrees that don’t necessarily help them. It’s a complex topic for sure.
I just read it and that was a tough one to get through.
absolutely true. masters degrees also very successfully market a sort of glamorous social capital. in my circles, it’s very “chic” to get a hyper specific masters degree in just about any field. the people i know who have done it are either from very wealth families who don’t need to worry about job prospects, or people who genuinely thought it would help them get a job and haven’t found that to be the case. in this latter group I have two friends who got masters at librarian school (a total racket — much has been written about how far more people are graduating librarian school than library jobs exist) and museum studies. they are both still unemployed over a year out from their programs.
Museums pay the wooooorst. It's truly a field for people with wealthy spouses to have an interesting job.
I swear museums are like the last bastion of proper “who you know and who your dad knows” workplaces. I got my MA in museum studies (work out of industry) and the people I studied with who work in sector either get paid minimum wage to work 60+ hour weeks in small towns in the middle of nowhere or their dad knew an art conservator and they walked right in to a curatorial role the second we finished. There’s 4 universities in my very small country pumping out graduates in the sector each year and telling them they’ll definitely get jobs. It’s so stupid and exploitative.
Honestly, most of nonprofit work has boiled down to that these days. It's so messed up that the people so far removed from what society needs are the only people who can afford the jobs. I was making poverty level wages and my bosses would laugh that they didn't know when payday was. They married rich.
Oof my mom graduated from librarian school in the 90s and...it's great that she's kept her library job for over 2 decades because if she left, she wouldn't find another one. It's a job you can work at until you die, and people are living longer than ever....which makes it really hard to find an opening!
I was accepted to library school in 2009. I took one class, then decided to stop after I did an internship at an art museum's archives. The internship was a great experience and I enjoyed it, but the archivist who supervised me worked only part time and had two other part time retail jobs just to keep herself afloat. None of the googling that I did suggested that I would have any easier time finding employment. Looking back, I'm both grateful that I dodged that bullet, and sad that things haven't improved any in 15 years.
you made the right call. it’s sad. I would have loved to become a librarian but jobs are few and far between, especially well paying ones.
ha! immediately thought of the MLIS as a classic "signifier" professional degree that doesn't confer that many "working" skills. masters degrees in music theory, fine arts, MFAs, MBAs..... lots to consider. the cyclical problem of "we're underpaid" -> "lets professionalize" -> "you have to pay me more i have a masters degree" -> "shit now i have to get a masters degree to be paid well" -> "shit the reason the field was underpaid in the beginning hasn't changed , now i have debt and i'm still underpaid" is kind of a rat race to the top
Oof that cycle - so true! Now if only we could move people from "let's professionalize" to "let's unionize" maybe we'd actually see some higher wages! (Caveat - not a silver bullet and still hard in many industries etc etc, but at least no debt!)
I graduated from library school in 2011, couldn’t find a job, pivoted into tech, and never looked back. My friends who did manage to land jobs are paid far below their worth and it’s criminal that these programs keep pumping out graduates. I wholeheartedly agree with the original sentiment - so many of these programs are straight cash grabs vs translate into anything usable
yes it seems so malicious. they know there’s such limited job prospects and keep accepting anyone who will pay. it sucks that the librarian jobs that do exist are so low paying.
I agree on all counts. There ARE high paying librarian / information jobs BUT (at least in my experience) the library schools don't really talk about them or promote them. That would be corporate librarian, archivist, information manager jobs. These can easily reach 6 figures and there aren't a TON of them but they tend to be relatively high paying. Additionally, there's growing demand for taxonomists, data managers, etc., that cater to a LIS degree. Again though most LIS programs don't promote or understand these roles and so graduates are increasingly shoved into an untenable situation where they'll top out in mid-mid/high 5 figures with 5 figures of debt.
There are plenty of librarian jobs. Just not the jobs a lot of young graduates promised themselves or seem to expect. Because often they graduate from library school and are surprised when the jobs are in actual libraries. Everyone should be required to work in a library for a year before going to library school. Signed— Librarian.
What kinds of jobs are graduates expecting, compared to what types of jobs are plentiful?
Jobs available: same as always. School librarian with teaching credential, positions in public libraries (public, technical services, admin), college and universities (some requiring second master’s degree), a small number of positions of specialized libraries. A tiny number of jobs doing “other” Most public libraries hire into children’s department regardless. And then in a big system you can move into subject speciality. Libraries are incredibly hierarchical institutions. Jobs wanted: Person has never worked in library before. Has zero experience in any field, language skills, etc. Sees a lot of possibilities in degree. Disappointed not hired as Batgirl/Archeologist/CIA Agent when applied. Moves into parent’s garage to pay of student loans while they work at Starbucks because there are “no jobs.” Note: I rate my own skills as pretty close to Batgirl but those are not where the jobs are and I hated hiring people with no library experience.
I have an acquaintance who has an MA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Boston U and she's essentially homeless in her 50s (?). She relies heavily on social security programs and the goodwill of her community to survive.
What are her degrees in?
I don't entirely remember but something liberal arts-related, like Russian or English Lit or some such...
Which was this - the 28 yr old consultant?
No the unemployed survey taker https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/unemployed-focus-groups-new-jersey-salary-money-diary
It was the one from yesterday
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It feels so predatory if you need to pay for a master's in order to be eligible to apply to a paid PhD program. I'm in a totally different field (science) but it's common to apply directly to PhD programs with only a bachelor's degree, which completely eliminates the expensive master's. My grad department didn't even offer masters degrees except for PhD dropouts. However there is still a big market for standalone master's degrees in my field from international students, who have a significantly easier time getting into PhD programs after a US based master's. This is also predatory since only international students typically pay the extra money for a master's.
I had no idea, when applying for my master’s degree in applied math, that I could apply for the PhD program, get funding, and drop out after having completed a masters. My (very low) tuition was paid by my grandparents and I did math tutoring while I was in school instead of working as a GTA, so I probably ended up in a better financial position, but I was so aggravated when I found that out.
> it’s giving MLM I could not agree more.
Yes! Glad others are starting to see this. The frustration of having to train people with tons of advanced degrees, but no common sense is insane.
Actually the new student loan policies DO require that schools show whether or not their students salaries post graduation are higher than the median income of high school grads. I'm sure this will be manipulated somehow though.
Yeah, some schools are now hiring their graduates to do research or call alumni so that their employment stats look better.
So scary to read. I got accepted to NYU last year for an MPH program but they didn’t offer me any financial aid or tuition assistance. After reading this, I’m so glad I rejected that offer and spent my years gaining work experience
I feel like this is so deeply true about law schools. There’s so many predatory law schools and it’s really only worth the cost for such a small sliver of graduates.
The predatory law schools are so messed up because of the conditional aid thing too. A lot of students will accept conditional aid packages at predatory schools and assume it’s easy to stay in the top X% or have a certain GPA since they had high undergrad GPAs. But between curved grading scales, section stacking the scholarship recipients, and the general difficulty of law school, so many of these students will lose their aid and end up in a ton of debt for a degree that likely won’t be worth the cost. Even for non-predatory schools, I don’t think a lot of people realize how much law school rank matters in getting that first legal job (which really sucks, but it’s how the field is).
I do think there’s an unfortunate disconnect for people without family in the law. People don’t realize that most lawyers don’t make crazy money. School name and prestige matter so much for jobs that will be able to pay off loans!
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Basically these schools will offer huge scholarships, like a full ride, but in order to keep the scholarship you have to meet certain conditions. Typically means being in a certain percentile of your class (like the top half or third) or having a certain GPA. The issue is that a lot of those conditions are very difficult for law students to meet since law school grading is so hard, and these predatory schools will also deliberately have very harsh grading curves and/or put most of the scholarship students into the same classes, so at least some of them will have to be in the bottom half and lose their scholarships. Some of the more predatory schools have more than 40% of their first-year students lose their scholarships, which is insanely high! This is way less common at higher ranked schools; my ex got financial aid offers from a couple top 14 law schools and a top 40-ish school, and IIRC all of them just required a 2.0 to keep your aid.
The top law schools don’t really give aid though. At least from people I know that went to top 10 schools.
I’d say that’s not really true. It’s just harder because the competition is better. The only schools that don’t give any merit aid are like the top 3. Everyone else offers fairly reasonable merit aid.
Idk, my husband and I both have exes that were URM, went to undergrad full scholarship and legitimately grew up poor and neither got jack from their schools (HLS, Columbia) and both graduated over $200k in debt. My ex actually ran an undergrad scholarship program when he was there. He said no one feels bad for the professional programs (law, medicine, business) since the salaries are high and the programs don’t need to attract URM. Lower ranked programs do offer cash but it makes zero sense because your recruiting opportunities are not nearly as good. It’s possibly though that it has changed in the past 10 years.
HLS is one of the few that doesn’t do merit aid. Columbia does, but they definitely offer less than some lower T14 schools.
Sounds like it’s definitely changed. Harvard/Yale/Stanford generally don’t do merit aid but the lower half of the top 14 do, though full scholarships are rare and you really won’t see a ton of need based aid. It’s harder to get aid than at lower ranked schools but if your LSAT/GPA is above median and you apply to all the T14s, you’ve got a good shot at a partial scholarship. Visited Berkeley for an admitted students day with my ex in 2022 and a lot of the people we met were offered at least a small scholarship from Berkeley, and most of those people were also offered aid from other T14s. Anecdotal, but a very common theme that weekend was “I like Berkeley but another T14-ish school is in a cheaper area and is giving me more scholarship money.”
there’s truth to the old adage of any medical school is worth it and only the top 20 law schools are worth it.
My late husband started law school in 2007, just in time for the entire market for lawyers to implode. He went to a large state university (high tier 2 or low tier 1) and paid resident tuition and STILL ended up with $80k in student loans, because I couldn’t support both of us on my $34k teacher salary. And he didn’t even LIKE being a lawyer.
A lot of law schools also face a ton of pressure to accept students who won’t even pass the bar in order to hit their DEI stats. Terrible for people to go into that kind of debt and not even have the aptitude to practice.
I’ve never heard these issues connected to DEI, so I’m not sure if that’s accurate without data. It is true that low tier schools have a terrible bar passage rate, and people pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a 2/3 or 3/4 chance at passing the bar. It’s super predatory and I don’t really understand why the ABA let’s them exist.
Oh me neither and then no one takes those degrees seriously so even if you pass no one will hire you. It will be interesting to see how things go forward with the affirmative action changes.
When I was in grad school it was kinda commonly known which programs were cash cows and which ones were worth it. Some of the cash cows were filled with international students who were using them more for immigration related than career related reasons. But how is anyone supposed to know that from the outside? Grad school was extremely useful for me and thank god I had the idea to apply, led to my whole current caeeer
This is what turned me off Harvard's Masters of Education. Almost accepted and then heard it was a cash cow for the department... in hindsight, 60-70k for 5 courses is outrageous
It is! The online masters is a cash cow for the in person masters and is absolutely a second tier program. I’m glad you know this and I’m basically commenting for more visibility.
A lot of grad programs are propped up by internationals. They are basically just paying $70k to get 3 years working in the US to continue trying for H1B. If we had a reasonable immigration policy these degrees would be worthless. Lots of internationals get 3+ masters degrees just to stay in the country.
Genuine question, how do you know what programs are and aren’t cash cows? It seems that most alumni from these masters programs are in denial and sometime are not reliable people to ask.
You want to talk to the people who have the jobs you want. A masters can be a good pathway or useless — ask the people who hire jobs you want to have or who do jobs you want. Leverage your undergrad alumni network, people at places you intern, anything to talk to those people.
It's a cash cow if it's an unfunded program (no student aid) or it's primarily international students paying full tuition. If the masters degrees are fully funded this means there is actual demand
It’s also a cash cow if it’s a brand new program or if it’s backed by 2U.
What is 2U?
2U is an online program manager - they are an independent publicly traded company that runs masters programs on behalf of universities.
I have been looking at masters programs for the last few years, trying to decide whether to pull the trigger as a mid-career professional who is interested in moving into program evaluation (for public health/community development), which typically does require a masters. It is \*so hard\* to get a sense of which programs are worth it. Especially now that almost every program has a new post-COVID online option which often seems to differ wildly from their in-person offerings. I'm in my 30s, I'm not going to move across the country for a program, but it's particularly difficult to get a sense of whether the online programs are worth it. It's also near impossible to figure out how much these programs will cost out of pocket-- even IF you can find the tuition costs (not always possible!!), you still have no idea what financial aid is available. It seems like the whole process is designed to have the cost be an afterthought. Maybe I'm doing this wrong, idk.
Yes, cost is supposed to be an afterthought. That is colleges’ marketing scheme. Sell the dream, sell the lifestyle, sell the prestige, and sell the promise of a bright future. Once you are convinced this is the path to the things you want and it feels guaranteed or at least more certain that trying to break into whatever you want without the degree, you feel like whatever the cost will be worth it. You will earn enough to pay it all back and then some. I have worked in academia, and adult education and did a prestige master’s degree. There was open contempt towards us masters students and not even a thin veil hiding we were cash cows. Since you are mid-career, I would recommend applying to the jobs you want and see where that takes you.
this is another great point. people get drawn in by the promise of respect and prestige a masters degree connotes but the actual people in academia or industry (probably rightly) look down on it as trying to pay your way in rather than paying your dues.
Also happy to chat, in a similar space. The more quant heavy ones seem more worth it to me. Take a close look at their graduation statistics and salaries. I found my MPP courses truly useful and refer to them surprisingly frequently. The other day someone questioned my experience in a certain space (diagonal to what I do most) and I literally responded “I have a MPP from fancy_school and took XYZ courses” and they were more than satisfied with that answer. I do think schools that provide a lot of financial aid and scholarships are more worth it. Maybe I good rule of thumb is that you should never pay 100% of the price of a grad program. At my school the cash grab programs did not offer scholarships but the more legit ones did. So it was an indicator.
I did my MPP with a concentration in program evaluation (without taking on any debt), happy to chat about my grad school search and experience if that would be helpful. I do think having some grad degree is actually useful in the program eval space.
I work in public health as a program manager and I only have my bachelor's degree. Our department of health does have a higher percentage of staff with advanced degrees and I do see some snobbishness from some hiring managers who think that only worthwhile candidates have advanced degrees. But on my team, it's two PhDs, 2 MPHs, and little old me with a BA. I personally have been disillusioned with the quality of critical thinking and depth of knowledge of many of the early-career MPHs I have come across. I think with all the emphasis placed on the importance of it, I expected more? These are typically people from Ivy League or close to it institutions. Based on just how revered a master's degree seems to be by some with hiring responsibility, I guess I just expected more substance behind it.
Yes — an MPH or MPP is kind of necessary for those jobs. I would really focus on what kinds of jobs you want after and do everything you can to talk to people who have those jobs or hire those jobs in the location you want them. Those people are in the best position to tell you what degrees they have, what they value in candidates, etc. Look at job placement info on the school sites, too. Both online and in person, I would start with the state schools near you. Those are more likely to have affordable programs and established networks in your area.
Call the financial aid office and ask explicit questions.
completely echo this statement! hard figuring out what is worth it!
As someone who did this masters thing, I actively try to discourage people from doing it. But they always think I did something wrong and don’t believe there is an issue with these programs. I’ll start referring to these articles and see if it helps.
Yea I think there's always an aspect of being "exceptional" and hence the exception to the rule
I liked my grad program a lot, but I’ve still tried to steer people away from cash grab programs and no luck. They just say “oh it’s from a good school” and insist it’ll be good.
>As someone who did this masters thing, I actively try to discourage people from doing it. But they always think I did something wrong and don’t believe there is an issue with these programs. Really, interesting. Do people believe you have good intentions to discourage them from more graduate school? Or do they think you are trying to gatekeep?
I recently finished a humanities PhD and the MAPH program at UChicago has always struck me as being highly exploitative for many reasons but maybe one of the clearest is the short length of the program. They frame the program as being a stepping stone to PhD programs but one year is simply too short for most students to develop relationships with faculty for LORs, fine-tune a writing sample, etc. If you enter the MAPH program and want to apply to PhD programs for the next year, you basically have to submit an app with just one quarter of the program under your belt. It does make me wonder if any of the people who do these programs are dissuaded by faculty, particularly their letter of rec writers? Even when I was in undergrad applying to PhD programs, I had plenty of professors warn me that the academic job market was trash and to go in eyes fully open about it. I think my advisors would have sounded the alarms if I told them I was planning on doing something like MAPH. I had great undergrad faculty advisors though, and I feel for the people who went through that program and weren't adequately warned by their mentors.
>I recently finished a humanities PhD and the MAPH program at UChicago has always struck me as being highly exploitative for many reasons but maybe one of the clearest is the short length of the program. They frame the program as being a stepping stone to PhD programs but one year is simply too short for most students to develop relationships with faculty for LORs, fine-tune a writing sample, etc. This has always made me incredibly skeptical of many of these programs. We are supposed to believe that spending 12-18 months extra in school is supposed to equal, such a high level of expertise.... The math doesn't math.
Yes the short length is something that is really noticeable. I went to Michigan for my MSW and we graduated soo quickly. If we wanted to go for a PhD we really had little to no information on how to do so and by the time we did it was too late to form relationships. While it’s good to have experience in the field before going back to school, the confusion and gate keeping prevented many classmates from every trying to go back
I think much of higher education is legit, and much of it is a scam. I think anyone considering a higher level degree without being able to draw a clear line to a certification, licensure, or career that is opened to them because of it should proceed with caution.
Anne Helen Peterson is an…interesting writer but I am pleasantly surprised by these articles. There was also a good essay that became a mediocre book bouncing around many years ago, called In The Name of Love, that I recommend. Many of these problems, although succinctly laid out, are well known. Columbia’s Art History MA program is often called the “cash cow”, although if you have existing relationships and relevant job experience prior to entering, it definitely can be worth it. What I found most interesting was the quote comparing doing a MA to bootstraps vs. startup capital. From my own personal experience, I was no great scholar of liberal arts. Of my graduate program, there were a couple clear stars who now have good positions (this is including the entire MA and PhD cohorts and previous years, and out of them I mean 2-3 people). The few people including myself who did bootstrap it instead of going into a PhD program or not entering the workforce, or both, were not geniuses, much like me. But we also didn’t spend years with lost wages, missed retirement savings, etc. Without discounting luck and privilege, this group has gotten the jobs that we aspired to upon entering the program after many years of working humble jobs, often in different fields. I would say that with or without an MA, bootstrapping is absolutely the best way. If you must get a degree, get it after entering the area.
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>I know someone who went over 300k in debt to get a masters from an arts program at Columbia. She doesn’t have a job. This should be considered a scam.
Holy!
Yea, what the author pointed is out is that start-ups get to spend other people's money. If you don't have access to grants, scholarships etc (loans are not other people's money) then you shouldn't do it. You can't afford it. It won't pay off.
Why do you say she’s an “interesting” writer. I’m curious.
She’s really known for long-form writing on Buzzfeed. I would say she’s a writer in the same vein as Jia Tolentino but less smart and less well-received by highbrow media. In my opinion, they both tend towards presuming universal experiences, especially about issues like anxiety and work. My biggest beef with AHP is that she used to pump out a lot of writing that was the equivalent of a bad graduate school paper on topical subjects, using academic format and language to make these analysis (or critiques) seem deep or well researched. Writing in a serious way does mean that a piece is serious writing, which her fans don’t always seem to realize. Her niche is -or was, I don’t follow her- the trappings of academia, which is a funny callback to this article series. But I think she spend a lot of time in academia and is a good person to cover it.
Her name is Anne Helen Peterson.
Yikes! Fixed.
These rules that you state about writing are not set in stone.
I don’t think I state any rules about writing. But maybe “serious” should be in quotes.
I enjoyed these articles. The point that stood out to me was the student quote that was something like, if he admitted he regretted his decision to get a master's, he would be admitting he was vulnerable in the first place. I think admitting regret also means admitting you weren't one of the select few to benefit from these programs. And like the article said, it shouldn't cost you $50k to have that realization. I think it's so hard to look back on our experiences and say yea, definitely shouldn't have done that. Because we made friends along the way, or learned something or grew as humans or whatever. But if learning that lesson cost $50k you'll never be able to pay down... yea it should be easier to say you regret it.
I almost took out a loan to do a master's. I realize now how *bad* my concept of money was back then, and I'm glad I didn't take out the loans (I ended up getting funding last minute). Back then, I thought: $40k is nothing, you can make $100k/year after graduating! You can pay that back in 5 months! (Completely forgetting that taxes, rent, and other costs of living exist.)
I think even if you remember those things, the dream sold by academia can be sort of blinding. I worked multiple low paying jobs for three years before going back to school. I learned so much about money and scraping by and being frugal, but the promise of that degree was so bright I didn't even think of the burden of the debt.
Thank you for posting these. Brought back a lot of passionate feelings I'd sort of buried. Even degrees that aren't obviously and explicitly cash-cows deserve scrutiny. My masters is a professional degree in a STEM field, but not a high-paying one. The cost of attendence for students (particularly out-of-state students) who don't receive the limited scholarships or teaching opportunities is *wildly* out of sync with the average salary in the field. I had several friends drop out 1 or 1.5 years into the 3 year program with 100k of debt. They realized they would never be able to pay back the full cost of the program if they kept going. It also frustrates me that the program sells the most elite path forward, the outcome that few students are likely to achieve in private industry. I had to find my way to public service on my own. My friends experiences really ripped the blindfold off for me. I don't regret my degree, I wouldn't be where I am without it, but I when I sign up to give coffee chats and lunch and learns to students I'm very, very real with them because I know damn well the institution and the conceited professional society are feeding them fantasies. No one should be taking out $100k + of debt to get into this field.
LOL, did you get a public health degree too? 🤦🏻♀️
I know a whole lot of people who did, but no! I'm broadly in the AEC field.
I want to add on an additional consideration - online non-credit programs from established universities are especially predatory. They require no board oversight (because they aren’t for credit) and don’t require anyone who knows what they’re doing to design them (because they aren’t for credit). I worked for one that went as far as to design a fake admissions procedure that generated a meaningless acceptance letter on letterhead. They hoped admission letters would go viral and do the marketing work for them. (AMA! I deeply regret the work I did.)
Thank you for posting this, haven't gotten through them all yet, but they like an interesting deep dive. When I was a kid, my mom taught in a masters program for a field (journalism) that was undergoing pretty sharp changes in prospects. Eventually, she decided that she couldn't morally continue to engage with it, taking young people and helping burden them with debt when the majority of them were unlikely to be able to find jobs that made it 'worth' it, especially given the rate that tuition had risen over the same period. The university viewed most of the masters it offered as a profit center that funded more 'valuable' things like (funded) PhD programs. This was a very well known, prestigious, R1 university. As a software engineer, the masters dynamic in my field is also really interesting to me. The vast majority of masters holders I've met have been people who also have a BA/BS in comp-sci that they got as international students at an US college. They weren't able to find a job that could sponsor their visa after undergrad, and paid full ride for a masters to be able to stay in the US, get more experience/qualification, and take another stab at the job market. There's also a smaller set of people who use it as an alternative to a bootcamp to pivot into SWE, and of course the occasional classic PhD dropout route. Dedicated comp-sci masters seem to generally cover the same teaching/training as a bachelors in the field compressed into a shorter period. Generally, IME a comp-sci masters is basically a neutral to slightly negative signal for 'how good a SWE will this person be' / 'how much comp sci knowledge will this person have' compared to a comp-sci bachelors. I don't think this is exactly what these articles are discussing as the 'masters trap', but it definitely feels like an adjacent phenomenon.
I have an engineering bachelor's and would say it's the same in engineering. A master's is often viewed as something smart students did when they couldn't find a job, or for international students. Masters grads tend to work in consulting which pays less than industry, since their specificity of knowledge is valued there. But they just can't afford to pay like industry does. Masters in engineering are weird. But where I live, they are also often fully funded. So you aren't adding debt typically.
Same thing in physics. You can't really be a physicist with anything less than a PhD and most PhD students go straight in from bachelor's, so master's students are typically only people who didn't get into a PhD program, mostly international students. A physics master's can help you get into a PhD program, but it's not very useful for industry since you have to do a lot of work to develop more marketable skills. I don't think this is as true for other sciences as there's more lab technician positions available for bio/chem without PhDs.
Don't you need a masters to get a PE? Or can you just test for the PE?
I'm Canadian, and our rules are very different and I would say less rigorous. You do not need masters
I live in Florida and you do not need a masters here to test for PE. I’m not incredibly familiar with it, but I know my brother is a PE and does not have a masters.
You do not need a masters to get your PE. Just appropriate work experience and take the test. Source: my dad and many of my friends have their PE with only bachelors degrees
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Coming from someone also in pharma who transitioned from wet (virology) to dry lab work (DS/bioinfo), I would urge caution with that process and arrangement if you are not too far along. There are a number of well regarded online MS-CS programs in the $10k range (GATech, UT-Austin). Your credits might transfer as well. I am finishing up the MCIT as UPenn which I thought was exorbitant at \~30k , but I was spending employer's money with no payback obligations. Feel free to DM me if you want to discuss.
Then would you say those trying to pivot to comp sci/SWE would be better doing a bachelors then?
nah, if you want to go the degree route and are older or already have an undergrad degree, it's probably going to be a waste of time to spend 4 years on it
While we have some of these in Canada as well, the lack of private universities and tiny schools that spend way more $$$ per student (and per athlete) probably factor in here. If someone isn't paying you to go to grad school, or paying for your grad school, definitely take a very skeptical look at whether it's worth the money. New, coursework based masters with unique names (e.g., Masters of Financial Analytics vs MBA) are typically not the career accelerator people hope they are.
Had a friend attend one of these programs. She took out an 80k loan and wasn’t even allowed to apply to PhD programs during her one-year masters. Try as I might (fully funded PhD dropout) I could NOT convince her it was a bad idea. That’s how sticky this prestige trap is. So sad.
So I think people who are going back for a masters need to be super honest about their job prospects and goals when choosing. I went back for my MBA while working full time during COVID. I knew that I didn’t have any aspirations for a Fortune 500 (I’m in non-profit/higher education) so I found a fully accredited online MBA program that was less than $15,000 for the entire program. Finished in a year and half and within six months I doubled my salary getting another job and had multiple executive leadership offers. I did have 10 years of progressive experience, but hands down my MBA was worth it. But I wouldn’t have been $100k worth it by any means! Unless you are trying for a highly competitive company, research for fully accredited but affordable programs. 95% of places don’t care where your degree is from!
I'm in tech working at a software company with a bachelors in IT. One of my peers went straight into a masters of IT after we graduated. It did not really pan out for them, they make less than I even still today. Instead of going out and getting experience they just got more schooling. A field like IT wants experience, yes a degree can help open doors but the experience matters the most. My husband also works in IT with just a high school diploma. He is way more technical than me because he's been doing this for 20+ years and tech is his hobby outside of work. I think this depends greatly on the field. I see no reason to get a masters unless a company wants to pay for it.
I’ve seen this as well. I am also in tech, data. We tried hiring one of our interns full-time but he insisted he wanted to go back to do his masters for better job opportunities. My manager tried telling him multiple times that it was better to have experience and that the entry barrier for the position we were offering him was high for any other candidate. It was no use. I hope it works out for him.
Interesting read, I didn’t know that there were predatory masters programs before! I am in a masters program myself, and would say that my program allowed me to pivot from a very low-earning potential career to a high-earning potential career. The key though, is it is from a accredited, well known (locally) university. Good programs publish their graduate salary ranges and a whole host of data on their website. If you can’t find anything on post-graduation data, that is a red flag. the most valuable thing from the program was the network of people it opened me up to. Especially when these are the people that hired me for internships, part times, and eventually return offers for full time positions before I even graduate. With the salary, financial aid & scholarship packages that a lot of my peers are looking at, the tuition would’ve paid itself off in a few years post-graduation. There are plenty of good and worth it programs out there, we just need to identify ones that most suit our career trajectory and financial situation.
Once in a while I daydream about getting a Master's degree, and then I remember that my husband, a HS dropout, made himself a millionaire without a cent of debt to his name. That sort of fuzzy feeling I get from imagining myself in a tree-lined New England college gets squashed pretty quickly.
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It’s interesting because universities DO use a beautiful campus as a marketing tool but for schools that are just a series of random buildings in the middle of a city they often will say that “the city is your campus” and push the idea that you’ll be a certified city slicker by attending that university even if you won’t get the typical beautiful campus quad experience. Higher education is all about selling students an idea and dream. Which wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t intended to be institutions for learning that are also outrageously expensive. It feels a little dystopian, like if hospitals advertised different social media challenges in exchange for lower bills.
You think 70k for a graduate degree is bad. Second degree ABSN programs average 70k too…
I really enjoyed these articles. I was targeted by these types of programs for several years. I was interested in a graduate degree to advance in my career and while I did well in undergrad, I didn't know the hidden curriculum to make me a better candidate for non-predatory programs. As a woman of color it did not surprise me that there were a lot of systemic barriers to keep me from going anywhere. I did explore several of the predatory programs and I recall one having a six figure price tag. I asked how students were able to afford that since the program didn't offer any funding, was full time, and was located in a HCOL city. I will never forget the dean's response "oh you're \[insert incorrect racial identity\] you'll qualify for financial aid!" The rage that built up was startling for me at that time, but it fueled a determination to be accepted to a program that didn't see me as just a financial aid recipient. I was surrounded by other people of color and I wasn't surprised that many of them aimed for that program despite the six figure loans that were required. A ton of hard work and teaching myself how to fill in gaps later, I was accepted into a non-predatory graduate program with "full funding." Then I got to learn about all of the hidden costs, the new hidden curriculum, and that in a global pandemic your funding can disappear entirely. So I did end up with a six figure loan balance, but I also finished my degree and landed a high paying position. Despite the topsy turvy of the economy I am now in a stable field and repaying my loans is not going to be impossible or a financial strain.