I went to a CSU for like 6k a year.
If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it.
> Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
This translates into paying 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad.
Adults have a right to make poor choices.
That said, having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea.
The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money.
Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
I see the same problem with boot camps, instead of accepting that building a six-figure career just takes a while, people want a shortcut. I got to six-figure figures without even having a BA, but it took a long time in a lot of very hard work.
Actually it only took me about 3 years from dropping out of college to my first six-figure job, but I was programming at least 40 hours a week back then. This was after work of course. Even now I'm off and happiest when I'm building my side projects.
Said choices should be constrained though. She wouldn't be allowed to buy a 300k car with no possibility of bankruptcy.
The lender is made of adults as well. They also made poor choices. Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?
Because rich people lending money to poor people needs to be a risk-free endeavor backed up by the state. This way, it's easier for the banks to make money.
And at the same time, it's easy to spin predatory lending as "helping out" when it shouldn't exist to begin with, and victim-blame people who are taken advantage of (which, in the case of student loans, is children: college applications are sent out well before a typical freshman turns 18).
The reason she isn't able to get a crazy car loan is because there's no government program giving anyone unlimited loans, no questions asked. Private lenders understand not all degrees are made equal, so if you go to LendingClub or similar and ask for a student loan for a top tier law school, they'll gladly give you a loan and charge you less than the government. Bonus is that you can dismiss the debt in bankruptcy.
The simplest answer would just be to severely restrict or eliminate federal loans for school and let private lenders fill in the gaps.
The piece of paper is the law, which does not allow for defaults on these loans. These laws were created to allow students to take massive loans, and transfer their future earnings to a school. I would agree that something should change, but the schools will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
Either allow the government to turn down most of these loans and charge higher interest rates based on credit-worthiness or make bankruptcy very difficult. What you want is the bankrupcty rights of a non-government guaranteed loan in which credit worthiness is taken into account, but interest rates and credit availability of a loan in which the bankruptcy rights are substantially reduced.
That's not possible. I agree we should abolish these lending guarantees entirely and let the private sector provide loans and charge whatever interest rate they want if people can just walk away from the loan. But that's not the interest rate people are paying now, so that's not an option for existing borrowers.
There are two ways to interpret what you said:
1. Allowing bankruptcy would basically eliminate student loans as a thing, for the typical "moral hazard" reasons. So it's not a realistic proposition.
2. Limiting the amount to something more reasonable, that's something I would actually support. Say, 15-20K/yr, inflation adjusted? Education cost for those financing themselves would also drop considerably.
I took on $65k of loans for my BS but make six figures myself, so it was worth it for me. I can't image 5x the cost for 1/3rd the reward. That's just stupid.
I admit that the person who took this path is to blame for some of it, but a college tying $300,000 to a degree that earns $5/hr more than a fry cook is also at some level to blame along with the path society took to enable this scenario to exist in the first place.
But, student loans dont behave like standard loans, the payoff of expected utility is a long way down the track, and Universities cultivate/market these intangibles like prestige and networking as a justification for the higher prices.
This is a predatory scam that targets low-income individuals who want an education and a career and pretty much guarantees an outcome of long-term financial instability.
Of course the victims have some of the responsibility, but
>Adults have a right to make poor choices.
Puts these supposedly prestigious schools at about the same ethical level as a casino, a tobacco company or a pay day loan operation. What USC is doing is arguably worse than a casino because it's using the reputation of a prestigious university to take advantage of people who want an education, while simultaneously siphoning money from taxpayers.
agree however the vast majority of high school kids are marketed to and forced to make decisions about college, while having little to no comprehension of the magnitude and permanence of their decision, when they are 17 years old (minors).
graduate school of course being a different story.
We should make students sign a single page summary (or warning in many cases) just like when getting a mortgage.
Our company makes __ profit, future graduate income average/mean, % of graduates who get a coding job within 1, 5 years. Etc
And I think restrictions on marketing bs for-profit 'trade schools' and 'coding bootcamps' to ensure a minimum curriculum and education. Make bait and switching more difficult.
Especially with for profit schools. Plus it seems many Universities will contract out a 'bootcamp' using the schools built up brand and it's not even connected to he actual school.
This pays directly for what the gov't wants (increase in the student's productive utility in the economy), it correlates increasing expenditures with increasing long term tax income, and I think in the long term it would create structural incentives guiding students towards more practical degrees.
I think you have a valid point, which probably got missed in the rest of your comment.
Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? I cannot get a $100K loan for a Corolla nor can I get $5 million loan for a $500K home. So, why are students provided loans that are not tied to the income potential of their choice of program?
I believe once we do that, education cost will undergo a rebalancing.
They used to be because they could be discharged through bankruptcy.
Once you prevent people from being able to discharge the loan through bankruptcy, this is what you get.
Eh, I feel like this isn't true. Most of top schools in the US offer full, need-blind financial aid. This means no scholarship that can be taken away nor student loans. Many fellow classmates were there completely free of charge. The best schools have money, and they're interested in making sure their talent attends.
The full rides you're referring to are often reserved to students from very low income backgrounds. Let's say your mom and your dad make 150 combined, that doesn't mean they have a spare $60,000 for you to go to school. Meaning you might have to take out some student loans.
I still think student loans are an amazing program, and no they don't need to be forgiven. As long as you take out loans the right way, for example in my case I went to the cheapest possible School, and I finished college at my own pace. It worked out very well for me. With student loans I was able to get away from my horrible family. When I see these stories of insanely irresponsible people who take out a quarter million in loans I the good student loans do is lost.
Regardless in this case the students only took on so much debt because they wanted that sweet sweet USC degree.
When you're 25 you can do a bunch of stupid things. That doesn't mean we need to pass a law to stop everyone from doing anything silly.
That's very true. People often don't realize that blanket loan forgiveness is a very regressive policy. The higher you go up in the income bracket, the higher share of the student loan debt. Some kind of income-based or extreme situational (life-changing events, health, etc) forgiveness would be much better.
>Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
True especially for a masters program you should be well into early adulthood and it's even more difficult to argue that you were too young to understand the consequences. Schools publish their students past and expected incomes. Unless you have a good reason to believe you are exceptional, those numbers should definitely be used for planning your academic path.
Why would that be a problem?
First, your "typically" needs a citation. The average student loan is about $40K.
Second, it's not a problem to help struggling people if a percentage of people who are not struggling benefits too. Nothing is 100% efficient, and the inefficiency of not checking tax forms at a soup kitchen to make sure only the Actually Poor™ get the soup is made up tenfold by the outcome of nobody needing to be hungry.
>Adults have a right to make poor choices.
Yeah, unless it's buying alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana.
Somehow that doesn't apply to enlisting in armed forces or taking on a lifetime debt that, unlike anything else, won't be erased in a bankruptcy, and thus is nearly risk-free for the lender.
Those with college degrees make more. So if you forgive student loan debt, you're giving a ton of money to people who are largely doing very well.
One can make a large variety of very stupid life-altering choices at 25, these people should have known better. I would say, again unless you're trying to be a doctor or a lawyer your student loans should be capped at 100k. That would eliminate most of the most outrageous behavior. I know for myself I took a modest 20,000 or so in loans and that changed my life forever. That allowed me to go to college, and escape my horrible family who like not paying bills and getting evicted.
If you forgive the student loans, the counter argument becomes get rid of the student loans and then people who are responsible with them. Like myself, no longer have a ladder out of poverty. Honest to God, I have no sympathy for someone who with a college education decides it would be a good idea to take out another $200,000 in loans in order to get into a low paying field. Likewise if someone went and took their inheritance and bet it all on bitcoin, I wouldn't want a law passed reimbursing them.
i personally think we should make federal loans highly progressive, both in amount and interest rate, and make them dischargeable via ordinary bankruptcy proceedings (also, revert the bankruptcy-tightening laws that were passed in the mid-oughts). that would be something like loans for 100% of tuition, room & board for those from families under median income (~$68K in recent years) smoothly varying (but not linear) down to 0% for those above 3× median household income (~$200K). same for interest rates: risk-free rate (~2.5%) for under median to market rate for unsecured personal loans (in the 10-20% range) at 3× median income. anyone above 3× median will likely have an established banking relationship somewhere to be able to get private loans.
this would put downward pressure on tuition, while still meeting the objective of providing opportunity for the less privileged majority. same goes for loan forgiveness--make them highly progressive based on recent earnings/wealth (including unrealized gains).
With an online degree? Why would anyone brag about that?
Snobbery is fractal. People who went to elite schools look down on places that are very good, like USC.
>> In increasing enrollment in its social-work program, USC benefited from federal loan dollars: Graduates from 2015 through 2018 collectively borrowed more than half a billion dollars in federal student loans, more than those at any other graduate program in the country, the Journal found. USC had an endowment of $5.9 billion last year, making it one of the 20 wealthiest private schools in the country.
Want to pursue a pre-medical degree at USC? Great! The government will loan you up to some large amount. Want to pursue a humanitarian degree at XYZ tech online? Great! The government will loan you a small amount. Remove the externality on society.
Thus you'll likely create a two tier system of colleges. One will be low cost enough that declaring bankruptcy after college is not worth it. These will likely be crappy because they cannot afford good facilities or the best professors. Then you will have the super expensive ones with nice facilities and the best professors that only kids with rich parents who can pay for it can go.
Perhaps, but I do think we should defend the stupid from predators and predatory behaviors.
> Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?
Takes money to make money. What's the break-even point? That 300k is a one time cost; that 50k is recurring yearly.
E.g. On LinkedIn I frequently see Harvard listed on profiles, but upon digging in, it is Harvard Extension School which mostly seems to offer certificates. The recipients win (they get to put Harvard on their resume, albeit paying high fees for online only, ignoring costs/default rates) and the college wins (they get paid, the marginal cost per student is probably favorable, degree vs certificates probably doesn't matter if the same content and tests apply). The only people potentially negatively impacted will be the students of the traditional organization in that they paid full tuition for a college brand that is actively diluting itself by selling certificates that may have lower standards that traditionally associated with the organization.
Harvard Extension started in the 1830s and became a formal division of the university over 100 years ago. They offer real degrees to "non-traditional" students. People that get admitted get the same student ID card that everyone else gets, has the same facility access, etc.
The biggest transgression is that Harvard gives those graduates a liberal arts degree in "extension studies" without naming the concentration.
People also seem to have issues with the fact that anyone that applies and meets the requirements is admitted as a student. But if you count the number of people that start with one of the "courses for entry" and compare to the number of people who actually get admitted, their admission rate would be even lower than, say, the Harvard Kennedy School (which by the way is willing to grant a master's degree to someone that doesn't even have an undergraduate degree).
Why it gets such flack for being "Harvard, but not really" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Harvard College - the undergraduate school - is the super exclusive part. Harvard University - the collection of graduate schools plus the college - is huge with a wide variety of exclusivity and completely uncorrelated ability.
It's a rigorous degree, they only admit a limited number of students (so your application has to be reasonable), and it's completely affordable. It's also indistinguishable from their on-campus MS in CS. It doesn't say you took it "online" after you graduate. Georgia Tech is a pretty outstanding school, so this looks good for places that care.
If you want an MS in CS and want to do it from home, this is the one you want.
[1] Anecdotal, but I know five colleagues that have taken it and have nothing but praise for the program. The two I am closest to used for the following cases:
1. A CS grad working in the field used it to explore machine learning a decade after college. They had no previous experience with the field and then shifted into a deep learning role shortly before graduation.
2. Another close friend was a graduate working in radio research and wanted to learn CS fundamentals (OS, distributed, etc.). They're still doing radio work, but they used it to get an expanded role and a pretty substantial raise.
Both were very happy with the program. Both completed the program while working full time, though they admitted it was a ton of work.
While the Extension School does offer certificate programs, it's the Harvard Business School that has really benefited IMHO. They are really pushing hard to grow them (https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/hbs-online-certificate-of-s...).
You are correct about the growth of online degrees. HES degree programs received a massive boost when online classes were offered and "professional" concentrations (business, technology) were made available at the graduate level starting about 15 years ago. The number of new degrees awarded every year has tripled as a result.
Note that the University does not allow the Extension School to award MS or MBA degrees, and there is a lot of controversy over the convoluted and demeaning designation that's used on our degrees (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/3/9/extension-school...).
The other area in which the Harvard Extension School is well-known is its post-bacc. It's highly regarded, and people who complete the program have been admitted to top-tier medical schools across the U.S. (https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/premedical-...).
I retook Calc I through the extension school six or seven years ago out of curiosity when I was considering doing an online Master's. Rigor was on par with my undergrad Calc I or perhaps a little higher and the quality of instruction was definitely higher. The lecturer (Eric Towne!) had a command of the people and history surrounding the concepts he was teaching and shared lots of fascinating context.
Thesis masters are increasingly rare these days as American schools allow you to jump straight to a PhD program (Europe is a bit more rigid here). The other kind of Masters degree that is increasingly popular is the 5th year undergrad extension, which makes a lot of a sense (MIT started the trend here, other schools have followed).
To me it adds negative value. And I'm not the only one [0]. Especially when the undergrad was from a weak school or something unrelated to CS.
[0] https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu...
I'm not sure in the long run the institution wins. As you do more and more of these courses your marketing gets more and more obvious. Social media feeds, that sort of thing. You don't want to be that school that sells diplomas.
This becomes awkward when interviewing if there's a real Harvard grad in the room. Invariably the first question they'll ask is which house the candidate was in.
Are people actually asking this at the beginning of interviews? I'm a Harvard College grad, and that's a question I sometimes ask or am asked in social settings, but not in interview settings. When I've worked with interns or recent grads from the college it usually comes up eventually, but usually only after the internship/job has started and folks are starting to get each other.
A much better solution is to revoke the ability of students at specific schools/programs to qualify for federal student loans if the outcomes of the program are poor. Turn off the spigot of money, and they will cleanup their act really quickly.
The Department of Education should have a vested interest specifically in the way that you mention, and they did set up a site that communicates historical outcomes of majors at a per school level at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/, but it gets little visibility in the college marketing funnel that is filled with for profit enterprises like US News and Niche-- plus the marketing (admissions and/or athletics) departments of colleges themselves.
It might still be favorable for the US Tax Payer even if these loans end up un-paid.
Thats probably true to a degree, however I think the system will breakdown this decade. Given current inflation rates, anyone with an IQ >120 will soon see that the debt/benefit ratio is becoming unworkable.
The last 2 employees my company hired actually game via github - we were using an open-source repo that someone had made and eventually reached out and asked him if he wanted to consult for us and add some features to his code...that lead to an ongoing basic permanent consulting gig.
> A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths (4/5) (or eighty percent) of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact
https://www.uniformguidelines.com/uniformguidelines.html#18
It means that for tests with disparage impact you need good evidence that it is actually relevant, good luck proving that for IQ tests. So either you need to design an IQ test which doesn't favor any race, or you need to design an IQ test which looks like work so you can convince a court that it is relevant for the job. College can be seen as an example of the later.
For the same degree?
My local ferrari dealership basically implies my life will be perfect (all the pretty women will fawn over me!!) if I just buy one of their cars. America made these institutions into for profit companies. We have to stop giving them the goodwill we'd afford to altruistic/idealistic academic institutions.
Yes USC has a "not for profit" label, but just because the label says "water" doesn't mean there isn't gasoline in that bottle -- use some common sense and call a bird a duck by it's quack.
Everything else is going to be min $40k bachelor or $20k+ Masters but even Arizona pricey online deg is cheaper than this article or Florida U, both have real curriculum not extension school shenanigans
They work on a competency based model where you either take a test, or do a project/paper (or both) for the class to pass it. If it takes you 3 weeks to study and pass the test it takes 3 weeks, if it takes 2 days you can pass the class in 2 days. The major benefit though is that you pay a flat price for a semester and then you can do as many credits as you want in that semester for a flat fee, so if you want you can get 24 credits done in one semester.
Additionally this isn't an ITT Tech or DeVrye type scam where they just push you through, a lot of the classes are based around industry certs as the final test for the class, and they give a through grounding in a lot of areas.
The flip side is they are very focused on practical job skills and not so much theory, I personally think it results in a more well rounded engineering student who is able to work in Networking, Software Development or Systems Admin reasonably competently.
Again I am a fun I recommend it, I wish everyone would start doing it because I think it is a game changer. Feel free to AMA if you have more questions about it.
I am about 75% through the program and for someone who has been in the field for a while, it is really good. A lot of classes have just been taking a quick test to prove competency, but the discrete math and computer architecture classes were really interesting and useful.
That said, I'd be slightly hesitant to fully recommend it to someone who had zero prior programming experience. The fact that there are no assignments and only a handful of courses that require projects means you can graduate without having written a ton of code, and the code you do write is somewhat disjointed - a few Python courses, 2 Java courses (with a heavy emphasis on JavaFX), and a random C++ course that seemed pretty out of place. I don't that is the worst thing in the world, but if someone comes in cold and just checks all the boxes to get through the program as quickly as possible, they may find themselves ill-prepared for interviews and their first job.
What exactly is the course content like? From previous online courses I've taken from Coursera/Pluralsight/other platforms video lectures seem to be the the norm which I actually really hate, I rarely attended lectures and instead would just read the material, turn the HW in, and come in for quizzes/exams. Watching and listending is just not the way I learn, something about reading it makes it sink it better. And do they still require you to buy additional textbooks or is all the necessary content included in the course modules?
How engaged/competent are the instructors assigned to the courses? If I have questions is it easy to get a hold of them, and do they actually know the material enough to be able to adequately explain things and guide students to better understand the material?
Its more geared like a trade school, online, at a fraction of the cost. Get people into teaching, nursing, business and IT, as fast as possible and cheap as possible.
Many of these workers are less impacted with a 30k loan (same as a car) than a 100-150k school loan.
I know a few people who worked at minimum pay jobs and WGU was an option to get a degree and not go into debt for life.
Thats how I heard of it, and looked into it, and was rather impressed with the courses, cost and speed.
I was even tempted to sign up and pass the basic courses quickly, as I've been in IT for 30 years, and get a degree cheaply. Plus learn some new skills.
Yes, regrettably some programs would go the way of the dodo, but we shouldn't be saddling our kids with crippling debt so that they can do four years of college and end up in the same place they were before they went to college from a career prospective. If people want to spend their own money to study underwater basketweaving, then so be it.
Also, federal loans should be extended to vocational training programs under the same stipulations.
Edit: the DOE should also have the ability to give programs/schools the death penalty (no loans) if they are found to be manipulating data used for these calculations.
The reason college is so expensive is because that is what people are willing to take loans to cover.
They wont, new kids grow up every year and they hear mixed messages, some says college is a scam while others says it is the golden ticket. They have to make a decision, so lots trusts (or just hopes for) the golden ticket.
This will continue as long as colleges are allowed to market themselves as golden tickets.
My previous job I worked at required a Bachelors in business of any kind. I got it because I worked at the company and basically beat out external candidates even though I didn't have a degree. Know what it paid?
$15/hr.
This is why people are duped into college degrees.
The contractors I talk to are booked out for weeks, and I need their expertise much more than they need my business. I'm not convinced that lacking a degree shuts people out of good jobs. My cynical take is that there's a mismatch between what people are willing and able to do, and what activities are valuable.
Most people aren't willing to work inside peoples' mouths all day. Dentists make bank. The HN crowd notwithstanding, most people would hate carefully crafting digital products all day. Software devs make bank. Most people aren't willing to crawl underneath houses to hook up potentially-dangerous electric/gas lines. etc.
Anecdotally, I got my master's degree in CS at USC and had a good experience overall. I definitely learned a lot and was able to fill in some gaps in my knowledge of CS theory and machine learning. I was also able to get offers from Google and Facebook from their on-campus recruiting programs, and I know several other people in my cohort that did the same.
How is a program like the Penn MCIT Online degree[0] viewed by engineering and product hiring teams in industry? I am looking at transitioning from venture capital investing to SWE (and potentially product, given my business background) and this seems like a good option to facilitate that change - education in CS fundamentals (vs. a bootcamp) but still a reasonably short/practical program (10 courses).
Curious if there are engineers/PMs here that have gone through MCIT or similar to pivot into software from another field? Or, if any hiring managers here have hired graduates from these online degree programs and have insight/advice?
However, I dont know how all of this online stuff is going to effect things. I would just show up to wharton classes and wait for them to not kick me out, but online ... no chance. You also miss out on all the great conversations and doing study groups at the library, etc.
The program is strong, and it will help you get lots of interviews, but I'd do what ever possible to do the in person degree. I c an recommend good DS classes at the school if you are interested in that topic
I looked in to MCIT online but the outcomes appeared to be very mediocre. One of the testimonials was a student who got a job in sales at a tech company.
A big tell is if you go to their outcomes page it is a bit embarrassing in the lack of anything to boast about. https://online.seas.upenn.edu/degrees/mcit-online/outcomes/
First testimonial: "Halfway through her first year in MCIT Online, Xunjing Wu is considering applying for a product management role."
Pay $26,000 to consider applying for a role.
The article mentions that the old contract stated that about 60% of revenue gets shared with 2U but then there was a revision to the contract so it's not clear what the current figure is but even if they lowered it to 40-55%, that's still a huge chunk of change for basically running ads to target students into the funnel. It's actually sickening that the contract extends to 2030.
So USC is only getting $115,000 * .4 = $46,000 which while still high is substantially lower and sounds like a reasonable amount to offer the degree at. I'm not sure why they haven't built out an internal function since and tried to get out of the contract.
For the peak year of graduation mentioned (2017, 1500 students), 2U's take at the 60% figure is ginormous. $115k * 1500 students * 0.6. = $103.5 million.
Anyway there's so much wrong with what's happening here.
EDIT: I just re-read the article, it seems like the 1500 figure is a combination of in-person and online graduates for the year 2017. Still the premise holds true: a 60% take rate is excessive.
a) They are unwilling to spend lots of money on upfront content development costs without knowing future revenue.
b) They are unwilling to hire a bunch of temporary workers to help spin up new content and then re-allocate them.
c) They are unwilling to adopt (aggressive) modern marketing techniques.
d) They are unwilling to cold call.
e) They are unwilling to maintain call centers.
f) They are unwilling to spend millions on FB and Goog ads even if it has positive ROI.
I had a friend who paid his way through college with summer construction jobs and graduated with about $10k in debt.
People who were willing to work part-time during the school year could graduate debt free. Tuition at an exclusive liberal arts school was 5-10x the cost of tuition at a state school in-state and almost double the cost of a state school out-of-state.
It’s time for us to publish expected income based on major and university.
“God forbid someone study something for the love of it”. No, god doesn’t forbid shit. But the realities of the fact that you gotta put food in your mouth constrain you.
If money isn’t such a big deal, why not just share the data. I’m sure people will say “Oh yeah, I think it’s worth it for me to live my life in undischargeable debt so I can ‘study’ this major at this place and work for minimum wage”.
You realize we're talking about social work here, right? God forbid someone help people with their work rather than find ways to lubricate an advertising delivery system at a FAANG.
What we need to do is ensure that lenders bare the full cost of lending to people who likely will not be able to pay them back.
We’re socialized not to talk about it. But it seems like half the people in my law school said they were there because their undergrad degree was worthless. But they keep feeding the beast by suckering the next cohort.
