The Masters Trap

[sanantone]

Well...this is way beyond off-topic at this point. Besides, I just did a double-take after watching someone who seemingly implied that another person was making illogical arguments due to brain damage claim that the person with brain damage was attacking them when they pretty clearly didn't do anything of the sort. Short of directly addressing this absurdity, I'm going to not-so-smoothly segue back to the original topic after this not-so-subtle statement.

What? Where? No one said anything of the sort.

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I have no sympathy. Just knowing the demographics of these types of schools, most of these students are not from vulnerable populations. They're applying to PhD programs at Ivy Plus schools; these schools didn't go out and find them. I'm sure they are aware of funded PhD programs, and they probably applied to a funded program at University of Chicago.

It might be different in the internet age, but I went to a prestigious undergrad school and had no idea that you could get a full ride on a Masters or PhD. I thought you had to pay tuition just like an undergrad. Which is why, even though my advisor strongly encouraged me to go to grad school, I didn't even apply. I knew I couldn't afford to pay two to six more years of tuition and I had nobody who would pay for it other than me. Looking back, I realize all these advisors assumed that I knew that the kinds of programs they were recommending me to look into would have been paid. But I didn't come from a family where people got Masters and PhDs, so I had no idea. In my case, going to a hoity-toity school could have afforded me a lot of opportunities. The problem was that the faculty there assumed that I knew what all those opportunities were, and therefore I missed out on a lot of them.

So I can see why some undergrads would pay for masters, because they just don't know. Although now with information being so much more accessible, I would hope it's less of a problem than it was 30 years ago.

I'm about 10 to 15 years older than those students, and I had access to the Internet in the 2000s. No one in my family had a degree at that time, and I grew up dirt poor. I had no mentors for guidance, so I started doing my own research after being falling for a for-profit school as a teenager. By the time I finished a bachelor's degree, I knew better, so it's hard to have sympathy for college-educated, middle class and upper-middle class students who can't google in the 2010s and 2020s. When you attend Ivy Plus schools and other traditional universities on campus, you are privy to be in an environment where you learn about there being graduate assistants and doctoral teaching and research assistants.

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When ShotoJuku steps in   you know for sure that things have gone too far 

I'm sure he responded to the use of the report button.

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towers.

Sigh. This is not your average master's student at University of Chicago. This is a commonly seen student at non-traditional schools, though. 

This explains the Appeal to Emotion and Ad Hominem fallacies and personal attacks. These are tactics people use when they can't make a logical, factual argument. 

https://web.archive.org/web/201410180148...otion.html

Sigh all you want. I said nothing about any particular school. I did provide a factual argument. You just don't like the argument because it doesn't fit into your narrative. Like i said you better hope you're never hit with a curveball.

I've been hit by curveballs.  You know what would NOT have helped at that point in time - going deeply into debt.  That would have made things WORSE for me, not better.  If my kid is hit by a curveball, you know what I'm NOT going to tell them to do? To go deeply into debt hoping that it will someday pan out.  You know what advice I do NOT give to anyone struggling? To go deeply into debt.

There's a reason for that.  Going into debt NOW in the HOPES that it will pan out someday is not a good plan.  What if it doesn't pan out? If you have to quit school before you finish and can't get a job in your field?  If the job prospects don't improve after you get a degree (or another degree, or a higher degree)?

What if it does pan out? You're still left with a huge debt that will influence your life for many years to come.  You're stuck with jobs that you HAVE to take, because they're the only ones that allow you to pay off your debt - even if you hate your job, or your boss, or whatever.

I just don't see how any of that debt helps. And you're not going to convince me otherwise by telling me sob stories of people who had something happen and they just HAD to go deeply into debt because of it.  The country is FILLED with people who are deeply in student loan debt, and the vast majority are NOT people who had something terrible happen to them, they just chose things without counting the true cost and without understanding what a crushing amount of debt they're getting into.  For every one person who is in the situation you describe, there are probably 100 who just made a bad choice.

I have some sympathy for some individuals, but really, at what point are people to be held accountable for their lives and choices?

I agree as a formerly economically disadvantaged student who borrowed additional student loan money in my late teens and early 20s to help with emergency expenses. So, I have to laugh when someone hopes that I get hit with curveballs because I've been hit with plenty of curveballs, which is how I know what to avoid. When my younger sister went to college, I told her to limit debt as much as possible because it will only prolong financial hardships. However, we're not talking about economically disadvantaged students and single mothers. We're talking about the demographic who attends schools like University of Chicago because they want to get into a prestigious PhD program.

[Alpha]

What makes a graduate program predatory?
The Master's Trap - by Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study (substack.com)

The simple answer to the question "What makes a graduate program predatory?" is one who charges more than the student can expect to recoup as a result of finishing the program.  Most of the regulars on this board know more about college admissions, college costs, delivery methods, transfer credits than most university professors.  Most of us are working professionals.  What we know is not generally known by anyone. What we don't know we know how to find out.  We have heard all the stories, all the scams and scandals, degree mills, splitting hairs on transfer credits and accreditation issues.  We have heard all the warnings and in some cases we've been burned ourselves.  Learned the hard way.  I don't like to blame the victim.  Maybe they should have known better but we say this from a position of knowing better ourselves.  It's easy to say that they should know what we know but they don't.  And their ignorance is not justification for the predatory practices of these universities.  They are, in fact, predatory practices there is no question about it.  The article focused on Columbia but we know there are far more egregious examples.  I do not believe that the sheep exist to be sheared.  Or that they should be able to outrun the wolf.  They should have done their homework but their mistake comes from trusting an institution that is supposed to be trustworthy.  There is no good data that can be found on real post-grad earnings so how are people supposed to know?  We know because we've heard all the stories.  It's good to know these things and we can help others to know them too.  I'm not sure what we might do to eliminate predatory practices.  Maybe discourage people from enrolling and hope the programs wither on the vine.  Maybe write a letter to an accreditor?  Or an article in an online journal?  Or maybe participate in an online discussion board.

[sanantone]

What makes a graduate program predatory?
The Master's Trap - by Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study (substack.com)

The simple answer to the question "What makes a graduate program predatory?" is one who charges more than the student can expect to recoup as a result of finishing the program.  Most of the regulars on this board know more about college admissions, college costs, delivery methods, transfer credits than most university professors.  Most of us are working professionals.  What we know is not generally known by anyone. What we don't know we know how to find out.  We have heard all the stories, all the scams and scandals, degree mills, splitting hairs on transfer credits and accreditation issues.  We have heard all the warnings and in some cases we've been burned ourselves.  Learned the hard way.  I don't like to blame the victim.  Maybe they should have known better but we say this from a position of knowing better ourselves.  It's easy to say that they should know what we know but they don't.  And their ignorance is not justification for the predatory practices of these universities.  They are, in fact, predatory practices there is no question about it.  The article focused on Columbia but we know there are far more egregious examples.  I do not believe that the sheep exist to be sheared.  Or that they should be able to outrun the wolf.  They should have done their homework but their mistake comes from trusting an institution that is supposed to be trustworthy.  There is no good data that can be found on real post-grad earnings so how are people supposed to know?  We know because we've heard all the stories.  It's good to know these things and we can help others to know them too.  I'm not sure what we might do to eliminate predatory practices.  Maybe discourage people from enrolling and hope the programs wither on the vine.  Maybe write a letter to an accreditor?  Or an article in an online journal?  Or maybe participate in an online discussion board.

That's an interesting point you made. A lot of people on these forums know more than college professors when it comes to the job market. At many traditional schools, these programs are being created by current and former college professors. They, too, should do their research before telling students that earning a certain degree is a good idea. I've had to educate professors on the utility of a criminal justice degree either because they haven't worked in the field in decades, or they've never worked in the field. They weren't intentionally giving students misinformation; they genuinely did not know. That doesn't make them predatory since predation is intentional, but it does make them irresponsible.

[Stanislav]

What makes a graduate program predatory?
The Master's Trap - by Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study (substack.com)

The simple answer to the question "What makes a graduate program predatory?" is one who charges more than the student can expect to recoup as a result of finishing the program.  

The central example in the article we are discussing, MAPH at Chicago, recruits students with implicit and explicit promise of access to elite funded PhD programs. It recruits a class that seems larger than the total number of spots at such programs, and, oh yeah, charges $65K for the privilege (tuition plus a "Hogwarts scarf"). Verdict: predatory.

One can be of a privileged background and still fall for an affinity con game. This is what Chicago, NYU, and Columbia are running here.

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I'm about 10 to 15 years older than those students, and I had access to the Internet in the 2000s. No one in my family had a degree at that time, and I grew up dirt poor. I had no mentors for guidance, so I started doing my own research after being falling for a for-profit school as a teenager. By the time I finished a bachelor's degree, I knew better, so it's hard to have sympathy for college-educated, middle class and upper-middle class students who can't google in the 2010s and 2020s. When you attend Ivy Plus schools and other traditional universities on campus, you are privy to be in an environment where you learn about there being graduate assistants and doctoral teaching and research assistants.

These students are surrounded by authority figures who successfully got good tenure-track jobs 30+ years ago. Who are used to be above-average, and yes, do not understand statistics. They are falling for programs designed specifically to ensnare this exact population. If they thought in terms of ROI they'd all be majoring in Finance and work at hedge funds (running different kind of predatory scams, perhaps?).

I was not born in this country and got into a fully-funded PhD program. Also have a sister who, as an international student, got a full-ride NCAA Div. I athletic scholarship before turning 16; our parents at the time made under $300 a month in salary at crumbling post-Communist public institution. None of this makes me think playing disadvantage Olympics is any kind of argument.

[sanantone]

What makes a graduate program predatory?
The Master's Trap - by Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study (substack.com)

The simple answer to the question "What makes a graduate program predatory?" is one who charges more than the student can expect to recoup as a result of finishing the program.  

The central example in the article we are discussing, MAPH at Chicago, recruits students with implicit and explicit promise of access to elite funded PhD programs. It recruits a class that seems larger than the total number of spots at such programs, and, oh yeah, charges $65K for the privilege (tuition plus a "Hogwarts scarf"). Verdict: predatory.

One can be of a privileged background and still fall for an affinity con game. This is what Chicago, NYU, and Columbia are running here.

---

I'm about 10 to 15 years older than those students, and I had access to the Internet in the 2000s. No one in my family had a degree at that time, and I grew up dirt poor. I had no mentors for guidance, so I started doing my own research after being falling for a for-profit school as a teenager. By the time I finished a bachelor's degree, I knew better, so it's hard to have sympathy for college-educated, middle class and upper-middle class students who can't google in the 2010s and 2020s. When you attend Ivy Plus schools and other traditional universities on campus, you are privy to be in an environment where you learn about there being graduate assistants and doctoral teaching and research assistants.

These students are surrounded by authority figures who successfully got good tenure-track jobs 30+ years ago. Who are used to be above-average, and yes, do not understand statistics. They are falling for programs designed specifically to ensnare this exact population. If they thought in terms of ROI they'd all be majoring in Finance and work at hedge funds (running different kind of predatory scams, perhaps?).

I was not born in this country and got into a fully-funded PhD program. Also have a sister who, as an international student, got a full-ride NCAA Div. I athletic scholarship before turning 16; our parents at the time made under $300 a month in salary at crumbling post-Communist public institution. None of this makes me think playing disadvantage Olympics is any kind of argument.

Yet, this is exactly what the other side tried to do. They brought up irrelevant examples of people struggling with domestic violence and unexpected medical problems to drum up sympathy for students who, for the most part, do not have these issues. Then, they tried to paint those who disagreed with them as people living in Ivy towers when those people come from much less privileged backgrounds than the average Ivy Plus student. The ONLY reason I brought up my background is because someone assumed that I was privileged. I was definitely not as privileged as these students, so it was a preposterous argument to make. 

Social scientists, specifically, should be good at statistics, and undergraduate social science programs usually require a stats course plus research methods courses. You can make that argument for humanities maybe, but it doesn't really work for social science. If you have a social science background and can't do basic research, you definitely do not need to be in a PhD program. 

Since we're on the subject of statistics and social science, we do know that economically disadvantaged students are at a much higher risk of being taken advantage of by predatory marketing and predatory programs, they take on more debt to cover living expenses, they generally have worse employment outcomes, they are often in need of remediation before attempting college-level courses, they are more likely to drop out of college, and they are much more likely to default on student loan debt. I don't know how you can argue that these well-documented disparities are not a real argument. Those are facts based on statistics, not anecdotes. In general, those with master's degrees have a lower risk of defaulting on their loans.

Whether or not one should have sympathy for these students is subjective. If you want to have sympathy for people who had all the tools and didn't use them, then that is your choice. There are others with a different perspective. There is no right or wrong when it comes to having sympathy for these adults who chose to take on debt to satisfy their elitism. Why don't we talk about how these students think they're too good to get a master's degree for less than $20k at a state university?

[dfrecore]

SANANTONE: Why don't we talk about how these students think they're too good to get a master's degree for less than $20k at a state university?

EXACTLY!! Why are we giving loans for people to go an expensive private school in an expensive city? This just seems insane to me. There are FAR cheaper options, and yet we're supposed to feel sorry for these people?

[AirborneRanger]

What makes a graduate program predatory?
The Master's Trap - by Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study (substack.com)

Kudos for finding this

[ss20ts]

SANANTONE: Why don't we talk about how these students think they're too good to get a master's degree for less than $20k at a state university?

EXACTLY!! Why are we giving loans for people to go an expensive private school in an expensive city? This just seems insane to me.  There are FAR cheaper options, and yet we're supposed to feel sorry for these people?

Many people don't live anywhere near a state university. All state university systems don't have a huge variety of degrees available online either. The closest state school that offers grad degrees to me is an hour and a half away in good weather. Tuition/fees/books for fall and spring taking 6 credits is over $12K. It's a 2 year program for their MBA. It's over $24K. Plus the time and expenses of traveling that far. Additionally, we have real winter here with blizzards and road closures quite frequently in the winter. It could easily take over 3 hours to get there and back home in just a few inches of snow. Most people who have jobs don't have the time available to commute an hour plus each way multiple times a week. 

There's a certain prestige that comes from graduating from a school such as NYU. Now if you're a social worker, that prestige is probably useless. However if you want to become a playwright or screenwriter, this school does open a lot of doors for you. The typical local state school will not open the same doors as NYU which is in the middle of a huge filming district in NYC. 

The number of people who graduate from these expensive programs is minuscule compared to the total number of graduate school graduates. This article is about a few people. Many people who attend schools such as NYU don't come out with a heavy debt load because they came from families who could financially help out. Everyone doesn't have that luxury in life.

[Alpha]

SANANTONE: Why don't we talk about how these students think they're too good to get a master's degree for less than $20k at a state university?

EXACTLY!! Why are we giving loans for people to go an expensive private school in an expensive city? This just seems insane to me.  There are FAR cheaper options, and yet we're supposed to feel sorry for these people?

There's a certain prestige that comes from graduating from a school such as NYU. Now if you're a social worker, that prestige is probably useless. However if you want to become a playwright or screenwriter, this school does open a lot of doors for you. The typical local state school will not open the same doors as NYU which is in the middle of a huge filming district in NYC. 

It's an interesting thing but in the world of New York City Social Work education, the most prestigious program actually is the one at NYU.  More prestigious even than the one at Columbia.  So in this case, NYU beats out the Ivy League.  In case anyone is interested, #3 is generally awarded to Fordham.

[LevelUP]

Here are some of the top reasons why I think most people pursue a master's degree.

1. For a personal trophy
   A sense of accomplishment comes with earning a master's degree that can increase confidence and put you ahead in social status. 
   
   
2. Make it easier to get a job.
   Having a master's could help get an interview.  It's hard to quantify the significance of this but let's say you get a $60,000 job 2 months quicker than you would have with just a bachelor's degree.  That would be $10,000 more in your pocket.  If you are the type that likes switching jobs often, a master's degree would help.
   
   
3. To leverage companies for higher pay.
   According to 2020 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, master's degree-holders earn a median pay of $12,000 each year more than that of bachelor's degree-holders.
   
   
4. Fulfill necessary requirements
   A master’s degree could be required for entry or to move to upper-level management or other upper-level positions.
   
   
5. For a learning challenge
   Some people are looking for a rigorous program to challenge them and teach them some new things. 
   
   
6. For a career switch
   These people get a master's when they want to move into a different career field. 
   

The average earnings for a Harvard grad are only $82,000.  Even the top 13% of Harvard men and the top 4% of Harvard grad women only make $120,000 on average.

I wouldn't say that a master's degree + undergrad from a non-ivy league school is going to put you in a better position than a Harvard grad in most situations. However, people should have realistic expectations and a career plan in which a master's degree will add value. 

Looking at things from a math point of view, I would rather take $120,000 and stick in the stock market and watch it likely grow to $1 million in 15 years, then put that into a 2-3yr master's degree program, which has a high drop rate.

Now, if you look at WGU's program of $5000 in 6 months, that seems like a win-win situation for most people.

So I'm in the camp of Git-R-Done and move on versus gambling with large a large sum of money and a big time commitment.

---

Here are some of the top reasons why I think most people pursue a master's degree.

1. For a personal trophy
   A sense of accomplishment comes with earning a master's degree that can increase confidence and put you ahead in social status. 
   
   
2. Make it easier to get a job.
   Having a master's could help get an interview.  It's hard to quantify the significance of this but let's say you get a $60,000 job 2 months quicker than you would have with just a bachelor's degree.  That would be $10,000 more in your pocket.  If you are the type that likes switching jobs often, a master's degree would help.
   
   
3. To leverage companies for higher pay.
   According to 2020 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, master's degree-holders earn a median pay of $12,000 each year more than that of bachelor's degree-holders.
   
   
4. Fulfill necessary requirements
   A master’s degree could be required for entry or to move to upper-level management or other upper-level positions.
   
   
5. For a learning challenge
   Some people are looking for a rigorous program to challenge them and teach them some new things. 
   
   
6. For a career switch
   These people get a master's when they want to move into a different career field. 
   

The average earnings for a Harvard grad are only $82,000.  Even the top 13% of Harvard men and the top 4% of Harvard grad women only make $120,000 on average.

I wouldn't say that a master's degree + undergrad from a non-ivy league school is going to put you in a better position than a Harvard grad in most situations. However, people should have realistic expectations and a career plan in which a master's degree will add value. 

Looking at things from a math point of view, I would rather take $120,000 and stick in the stock market and watch it likely grow to $1 million in 15 years, then put that into a 2-3yr master's degree program, which has a high drop rate.

Now, if you look at WGU's program of $5000 in 6 months, that seems like a win-win situation for most people.

So I'm in the camp of Git-R-Done and move on versus gambling with large a large sum of money and a big time commitment.