OP: Will the total cost of your program be in the range of $140,000 to $150,000 for the 3 semesters ? (According to Duke’s website, the next academic year will cost you bout $93,000 plus at least one additional semester which is expected to cost about 4% more than the current tuition rate,)
Do you plan to fund this degree from your savings or from student loans or both ?
If you plan to borrow a significant amount, then you really need to have a post degree plan for employment that will justify such a large investment of time money and lost income.
Your total costs of attendance are will be about $150,000 plus loss of income for 3 semesters. I will estimate your current income at a conservative amount of $78,000 per year. If you forego a year and a half of income, that will add almost $120,000 to your investment for cost-of-attendance. Based on these figures, your total investment in the Duke ME masters degree program will be about $270,000.
OP: You should evaluate whether the likely return to you will justify such an investment of time & money–especially if you will be taking out any student loans to fund this educational experience.
Most of the other programs do state first year earnings of about $85,000. My best guess is that if you remain at your current position, that you will see no (zero) increase in your earnings assuming that you are currently earning about $78,000 per year–which may be a low estimate–and receive modest salary raises.
P.S. The yield rate over the past four admissions cycles is low which suggests that most admitted to the ME masters degree program at Duke decided that it was not a wise investment of time and money. Last admissions cycle only 7 of 85 admitted students elected to attend. That is a very low yield rate of just 8.24%. The prior years yield rates were 15.46%, 5.26%, and 11.18%.
Ask why so few elected to matriculate in this Duke ME masters degree program after going through the application process ?
In short, you need to discuss likely and past actual job placement and starting salaries in order to determine whether or not this would be a reasonable investment of your time & money.