Some Master’s Degrees Are the Second Biggest Scam in Higher Education

[LevelUP]

These scams include Ivey League colleges and other elite universities.

In 2019, Carey took a long, dispiriting look at the rise of so-called online program managers, or OPMs—the private companies like 2U that major universities from Yale to small schools like Oregon’s Concordia University use to build their online offerings. These companies design and operate courses on behalf of schools—sometimes essentially offering a class in a box—that the university can slap its branding on. The OPM then takes as much as 70 percent of tuition revenue. That money is largely being funded with government loans, which may never be paid back.

So to the extent that you’re selling selectivity (bachelor's degree), you actually have to back it up with data, whereas, in the master’s degree market, you can call almost anything a master’s degree.

I think, an enormous temptation for institutions that have very attractive brand names, that are attractive in no insignificant part because their undergraduate programs are very selective, to open up the floodgates on the master’s side and pay no penalty in the market because people don’t know they’re doing it.

Some Master’s Degrees Are the Second Biggest Scam in Higher Education
https://slate.com/business/2021/07/maste...th-it.html

#1 Biggest Scam is certificates
There are certificate programs for various things such as Digital marketing, Data Analytics, and so on. These certificate programs' costs can range from 2k to 25k.
https://www.gradreports.com/trends-insig...-price-tag

Why would someone call these programs scams?
1. The university doesn't disclose who made the program, who runs the program, and who is making money from the program. You think you are paying for a premium education from a top school when in reality, you are purchasing something no more valuable than a Udemy course and being run by people that are no different than the ones being offered by fly-by-night schools.

2. They often let anyone take these programs and are not selective at all.

3. Certificate programs add no value to someone's resume, as employers don't care about these programs. 

Lessons Learned
Be careful chasing status from these elite universities, be aware of what you are buying, and what value you will get from it.

[ThatBankDude]

I am not sure about the certificate programs but as a Masters student at Duke, they do not have an OPM. The entire program was developed by Duke Fuqua and the courses developed by the professors. No partnership with 2U, EdX, Coursera, etc.

My advice? Be careful what you call a scam.

[wildebeest]

I'm currently pursuing a master's in a program where all courses were designed and are led by the professors themselves. That said, I think OPMs are less of an issue than the one revealed by cost-benefit analysis, also alluded to in the link. My degree will cost a little over $13,000. The number one ranked MPA in the nation is Indiana University Bloomington's, which will cost you $31,741 in tuition plus whatever fees and book costs are. Northwestern's will cost you about $50,000, plus fees and books. 

In the world where MPAs matter, the Indiana University MPA is a better investment, in my view, but some people want to pay to have gone to Northwestern. They want that brand on their resume. At $50,000 it's probably worth it, and it would still be worth it if the program were designed by an OPM (that isn't the case here). The average salary for an MPA is about $60,000, according to ZipRecuiter, probably not accurate but close enough, and while that's not great -- the average salary for an MBA is $83,000, according to the same source -- there's a career trajectory there, particularly if you specialize. But Trinity College's $308,000 Master of Public Policy and Law? Sarah Lawrence's $402,000 Master of Arts in History and Law? What even is the point of these degrees? There is no standard career path through which you'll recover those funds, and adding law school debt to that will only exacerbate the issue, not relieve it.

In short, if someone wants to pay extra for a university's brand name, even if their program was designed and implemented by an OPM, I see no issue with that. People willingly pay extra for brand names all the time, and sometimes those brands are manufactured in the same plants as generic products. But there should really be some cost-benefit analysis, and universities that receive federal funds should probably not be able to offer degrees whose expense is so great there is no normal path on which repayment will be possible. (I also think anybody smart enough to get a master's degree should be able to look at a $402,000 M.A. in History and Law and simply balk, but that's another story.)

I think degrees in fields in which there is no standard career path should absolutely exist, arts and culture matter, but their cost should reflect the fact that, chances are, the person doing the degree will end up in a bog-standard job and not sell a screenplay for $5 million or whatever. MFA in Screenwriting? Calculate its cost like the person is gonna be a barista or an adjunct instructor, not James Cameron. That is, calculate off real-world salaries, not crossed-finger dreams.

[LevelUP]

Here's the Fox News link to the story:

Financially hobbled for life’: The elite master’s degrees that don’t pay off
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/fi...nt-pay-off

The Creeping Capitlist Takeover of Higher Education article was also mentioned in the Master Degree Scam article. It's pretty interesting going down the rabbit hole of 2U and other OPMs and seeing how this all got started.

OPMs are transforming both the economics and the practice of higher learning. They help a growing number of America’s most-lauded colleges provide online degrees—including Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, NYU, UC Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, Northwestern, Syracuse, Rice and USC, to name just a few.

The schools often omit any mention of these companies on their course pages, but OPMs typically take a 60 percent cut of tuition, sometimes more.

For-profit colleges that have discovered a way to secure all of the benefits of a nonprofit institution with none of the obligations. One of the most striking cases is a former for-profit college named Grand Canyon University.

In July 2018, the college's parent company (known as LOPE on the Nasdaq), got final approval to create a nonprofit, also named “Grand Canyon University.” LOPE lent the nonprofit $870 million plus interest. The nonprofit promptly paid the $870 million right back to LOPE to purchase Grand Canyon's physical campus in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as the university’s academic operations. (Most of its roughly 90,000 students are online.)

Meanwhile, LOPE signed a 15-year contract with the nonprofit to provide OPM-style services. In exchange, LOPE gets 60 percent of Grand Canyon University’s tuition and fee revenues, in addition to $52 million in annual interest payments on the loan.

It sounds impossibly convoluted, but it’s actually quite simple. Grand Canyon put all of its academic operations into a nonprofit that serves as a conduit for federal financial aid. (Last year, Grand Canyon received over $760 million from federal student loans, the most of any college or university nationwide.) The nonprofit university is also able to avoid local property taxes and for-profit regulations, not to mention the industry’s toxic reputation. But most of the profits eventually end up in the same place—with LOPE, a $5 billion corporation.

[davewill]

2. They often let anyone take these programs and are not selective at all.

I fail to see how this is a problem.

[LevelUP]

2. They often let anyone take these programs and are not selective at all.

I fail to see how this is a problem.

It becomes a problem when colleges mislead students by not disclosing that these programs are not selective and when they submit fraudulent data to college ranking sites, such is the basis for the USC Class Action Lawsuit.

OPM provider 2U was charging students between $60,000 to $128,000 for their USC programs.

[sanantone]

Cornell is Ivy League.

[Alpha]

The original article states that they looked only at MFA programs.  Can anyone think of a reason why this might provide skewed results?  A little critical thinking is in order here.

[ifomonay]

Certificates aren't scams. They never promised that they are actual degrees. It's up to you whether you want to enroll in a certificate program. True that it has no value to employers, but you should do your own research on whether you want to learn the topics the certificate program has to offer. My personal opinion is that certificates are ripoffs. I wouldn't pay to do one.

[Pats20]

I don’t think certificates are scams or rip offs if they are for credit  and can be applied to a masters program. I would consider one this way as a quick way to get some marketable skills along the way to completing a masters. A certificate can be earned in usually 12 credits, then Throw it on your resume and continue working toward the 30 credit masters. I don’t think that is worthless at all and I certainly don’t see why it wouldn’t hold any value with employers.