The Masters Trap

[Thorne]

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.

I think there is some room for sympathy, but not a ton. If you went to a top-20 school and haven't done the research to figure out, "Hey, maybe a graduate degree in humanities won't pay off the way I'd like," which is something even a cursory post on Reddit would explain very clearly, I don't think they deserve much sympathy other than that which we would extend to someone who was lied to by admissions. I dealt with something like that with my community college outright misrepresenting the job placement rates for their IT programs (they claimed over 70% placement, but they neglected that 70% of students were already employed and the rest of us never really got offers from anything or anyone, no matter our abilities or skills in the field). I did finish my Bachelor's in IT because it was convenient, but if that hadn't helped me land a job, I certainly wasn't going to go chasing a Master's in IT or Cybersecurity on the off chance that it might give me some ROI, I'd have jumped into another field altogether and cut my losses.

If you grew up affluent and went to a top-notch school, your education should have included some basic economics which would hammer these issues out early. If you didn't pay attention during your $80k degree or are frankly too lazy to care about doing the work because you think your elitism will translate into a good job, you can take a long walk off a short pier. For many other people, especially those who went to middling schools, I have no antipathy to those who spent another $30k+ to get a grad degree after your first degree failed to produce any ROI, but I certainly have no sympathy either. Do some basic research. God only knows you should be able to if you were in a grad program.