Sometimes those masters programs can be funded as well through research or teaching assistantships`
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Yes, but relatively rare. RA and TA positions are usually reserved for PhD candidates. Also, any funded masterâs program likely requires a thesis.
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I suggest my strategy of having a company pay for your Masterâs degree, then have the company acquired, your department eliminated, and your commitment nullified just as you graduate 
Reimbursing students for grad school cost is becoming a thing for consulting firms that hire from the top business schools. It also comes with a commitment, but I think ours was only three years, and youâre earning at the higher post-degree salary at that time.
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The companies I am familiar with also have a 3 year commitment. IMO thatâs a reasonable amount of time.
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My middle son got his biomedical engineering degree from a second tier school and was not having much luck with jobs. He decided to go the âprestigeâ route and get additional marketable skills with a one-year Georgia Tech masters degree. He got a great job and his employer actually adds to his 401(k) when he pays down his loan.
My third son, graduated with his materials engineering degree two months before Covid hit and crushed his job search. Rather than just siting around the house playing video games, he enrolled in an on-line masters program from a solid engineering school to distinguish himself from his peers when hiring resumed. He has paid for four classes, but got a great job when hiring resumed. Now his employer will pay for the rest of his degree and his salary will easily cover his loan payments.
So every situation is unique. But the articleâs cautions should be heeded. What will the degree cost, including the opportunity cost of being unemployed for one or two years, and what will the benefits be, including a high enough salary to reasonably recover the associated student loans?
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Itâs not easy to get a funded program in every discipline.
I canât find the grad school debt study I used to reference when I worked in financial aid, but here are a couple interesting ones: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/95626/graduate-and-professional-school-debt.pdf and Average Graduate Student Loan Debt [2023]: for Master's & PhD.
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This is so sad because it doesnât need to happen.
Iâm imagining the lure of an Ivy degree, plus the assumption that they are going to make it âbigâ, throws all caution to the wind.
I know of a HS classmate of my daughterâs. He made a couple of student films and majored in Film at NYU. His parents are upper middle class and there was only one other sibling. They paid for NYU and it was expensive but it was paid.
Weâre in California and two hours away from LALA land. Heâs eeking out an existence in LA. They support his endeavors because he canât pay his bills, on his own, in our expensive California real estate. According to his parents, the competition to get on a production or studio crew is uber competitive and the pay is almost nil.
The people, who aspire to this field appear to start out with these illusions of financial stability and wealth. They get into an âivyâ, and all they see is prestige and wealth if they just attend the school and follow the dream.
My coworker, at a shelter where I volunteered (worked some), attended a âfor-profitâ college. She continued there for her Ph.D. Got her hours in, took her boards and because she had been and had worked at the shelter, she eased into the job.
She came to me asking about the pay. It wasnât what she thought it would be. I informed her that working at a public facility, that required grants and donations to run, wasnât going to make her wealthy. She owes $360K.
She lives in her parents home in her old bedroom with her husband. They are lower-middle class. She doesnât pay rent because she canât afford it. She drives her Dadâs truck. She canât afford the price of homes/condos here. Both she and her husband are trying to pay down her loans because they have poor credit.
She thought that with a âPh.D.â, that she would finally be making some significant money. She asked me about pay scales and I told her that she could look at private facilities, but her scope of study was on the homeless, and she didnât have a lot of experience in private facilities. She asked me about switching to Speech Pathology and I asked her: how would you afford tuition? Her answer: âI would take out another loan.â I told her, ânoâ, you cannot afford another loan." Seriously???
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yikes.
iâm getting worried for my D after reading this. sheâll have a total of $55K in loans from undergrad and grad school. If we can help her pay them back, we will.
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We can see that many social work problems get neglected, probably because no one wants to spend money on social work, and social work is a low paid profession that increasingly prefers more expensive credentials (masterâs degrees). So those neglected social work problems end up by default in the hands of police officers.
People complain about the ever increasing costs of health care, but when there is an increasing preference or requirement for higher degrees (at higher cost to the student, of course) in many health professions, and health care is labor intensive, is it all that surprising that costs are increasing?
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If students change their expectations, they can find fully funded programs. Yes, get the film masters at Manhattan KS (KSU) rather than Manhattan NY (NYU)
After reading on CC for years, I didnât think my daughter could get ANY money for a masters in a non-science field. Undergrad is in history and she looked into a masters. I kept telling her not to do it, not to borrow more money (she has about $20k in undergrad loans), especially since she doesnât know what she wants to do with it.
She talked to a few professors at her undergrad school and they encouraged her to apply. One said they didnât know how much money theyâd have for this coming year but âit would probably work outâ. Right, I said. It will probably work out that they give you loans. I did think there might be some money because U of Wyoming has a lot of it and instate undergrads get quite a bit, but still didnât think sheâd get full funding. She was accepted and it is fully funded (tuition, insurance, stipend). In history. Prestigious? No but they also seem to have a lot of money for summer travel to conferences to present papers, to do research.
Iâm okay with the âlost opportunityâ because she wasnât making that much money anyway. Sheâs not borrowing more. Sheâs receiving health insurance. She found a room in a house for $400/mo., works at Starbucks so her caffeine habit is also funded, and has been poor for a long time so doesnât need much money.
Her other option is to get married. Iâd much rather she get a masterâs degree she may not use in a career then to marry her boyfriend who is in the army.
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Itâs great that things worked out well for your son, but while the figures you listed are possible, I donât think itâs the norm for a Stanford MS in engineering⊠A Stanford MS requires 45 credits. A full-time courseload for is typically ~15 credits per quarter, so under a full-time courseload, a masterâs takes 3 quarters to complete, unless the student needs/wants to take courses that do not count towards degree. Many MS engineering students are co-terms, which can further reduce time to degree. For example, I completed a BS + MS in engineering in slightly under 4 years.
However, some students take longer for various reasons. For example, some students choose to take a lighter part-time course load , so they can dedicate more time to working for the college as a TA or RA. Students who choose the TA/RA route generally have their full tuition covered by the university, as salary for TA/RA. Many students work full/part time at a tech company and have their employer pay for the degree, which also often delays graduation. Every tech company where I have ever worked covers the cost of relevant tech classes/degrees in full, if grade is at least âBâ. There are also often other options for funding. While a student can go in to high debt for a masterâs in engineering at Stanford, there are also often options to pursue one at low/no cost.
Thesis support varies by program at Stanford, but itâs generally optional. Students can generally pursue extensive research + thesis under guidance from a faculty, which counts towards a portion of the required 45 credits for the degree. However, this type of research + thesis is not required, so I expect most students to not choose to pursue one and instead just take regular classes for their 45 credits.
Stanford also offers an âengineerâ degree which requires 90 credits (6 quarters) that does require a thesis I expect the âengineerâ degree is typically done by students who want to remain at the school after completing the requirements for their masterâs.
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Is that true for masters too in engineering? 15 was the course load for undergrad for the history daughter (for the engineer, it was 16 or 17 as she needed 131 to graduate) but for masters in history she will only take 9 per semester. She has to teach the discussion class for one class and have office hours too.
Just wondering if engineering is different.
Itâs 180 credits to graduate or 180/15 = 12 quarters (4 years without summer).
Thatâs what I meant by, âsome students choose to take a lighter part-time course load , so they can dedicate more time to working for the college as a TA or RA.â 9 credits is not unusual for TA/RA, which counts as part-time course load rather than full-time and as such has reduced tuition below the full-time rate. The salary for TA/RA is generally set high enough to cover the reduced tuition for 9 credits. With a 50% TA (typical), it might be tuition + a stipend high enough to cover living expenses. Some students choose to take 9 credits per semester and have tuition covered while gaining experience working as a TA or RA. I was referring to engineering. Iâm not familiar with history, which may have different TA/RA funding rates.
Just looking at the all in cost of an engineering grad year at Stanford and an engineering grad year at CP, the difference is $62,000. Iâd call that the optimized, best case scenario with no loss of income and no thesis for a MS in one year at Stanford.
In order to hit that number at Stanford, a student has to take 15 grad hours per quarter, not an easy task in and of itself, and almost certainly leaving no time to TA or RA to offset expenses. He had RA at CP. That cut his COA substantially. We estimated he contributed $16K that year.
It was an unknown risk. Those things canât be sorted out until after a student is committed to Stanford. The very best case scenario was that Stanford would have cost him $60K, leveraged, after grandparents contributed $20K from a 529. Those are tall assumptions. We all assumed graduate courses at Stanford would be at least on par for difficulty and time commitment as those at Cal Poly. He had been taking grad courses since his third year and didnât feel a single year was realistic at Stanford, especially since heâd heâd be changing institutions. So, $60+K difference and a loss of a year in income was a pretty realistic estimate of the opportunity cost, very best case scenario. Of course taking two years could have resulted in a TA or RA, offsetting the cost some.
In the end walking out debt free, with a thesis, in a leisurely 5 years (not as far as academics goes, but as far as course load is concerned) versus being leveraged significantly for similar earnings potential seemed logical. Couple that with the fact that several CC posters who are CA engineers, and alumni of neither, so no dog in the hunt, said theyâd all worked for companies that had hiring preferences for Stanford engineers, but for an equal number of companies that preferred Poly grads. Switching just didnât make economic sense.
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Although I agree that this article wouldâve been more interesting if they hadnât taken the easy win ("$300K for a film degree, scoff!"), one of the things that makes it interesting is that thereâs slightly less emphasis on blaming students for making stupid financial decisions and a little bit of exploration of the role of the university (and, to a certain extent, the government) in all of this.
Donât get me wrong - I went to Columbia, I knew these kids (or people like them). I was consistently baffled at my friendsâ decisions to borrow six-figure debt for public service and arts degrees AND their seemingly blithe attitude about it. I grew up working-class too, but I also know how to do math!
That saidâŠColumbia charges this amount of money because they can. Graduate PLUS loans, as they note, have no limit, and thereâs no obligation for the school to even try to ensure that their students are able to repay the debt. Columbia can raise tuition for their MFA program tomorrow and know that theyâll still get 300+ applications because the Graduate PLUS loans have no limit! The passion some students have for these fields + the perception that a Columbia (or Yale or Princeton or Northwestern) degree will give them an extra advantage in already cutthroat field + the allure of ivy creeping up the library walls is too much for many 20somethings to resist. And like the last kid said, itâs all Monopoly money at that point. Itâs just numbers on a paper you signed. Once youâre in itâs very, very difficult, psychologically and emotionally, to drop out. So you just borrow more and more and more.
If the federal government put caps on how much you could borrow, or forced universities to prove that most students would be able to repay the debt they are borrowing, or pinned loan caps to fields, Columbia et al. couldnât endlessly raise tuition because only the very wealthiest would be able to afford to attend. Or if state governments devoted more money and funding to their public universitiesâ competing programs (particularly the ones in public service fields), perhaps more students would make that choice (although no guarantees, as I knew more than one student who turned down excellent funding at their state university to pay $$$$ at Columbia for the same degree).
And I laughed when that admin said they were trying to raise more gift aid to the School of the Arts. LOL. You know that money isnât going to the students. Youâre going to build another black box theater, or plant some more flowers, or build another swanky building in Manhattanville.
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There was something called the gainful employment criterion for federal student aid eligibility, but it looks like it only applies to non-degree programs and all programs at for-profit schools: Federal Student Aid
If this is how salaries and prices were set, this thread never would have been started. Salaries would rise for those with expensive masterâs degrees as the costs of the degrees rise. But that isnât happening.
For healthcare costs, heavy subsidization increases costs. Next time a doctor recommends a test or procedure, ask him/her how much it will cost and next to none of them will know. You as the patient wonât know either. How much do you think cars would cost if the salespeople and buyer didnât know the costs and buyers had no reason to be concerned because they only have a small co-pay?
Costs also increase because of tech. New procedures, treatments, tests, etc. every day. Everyone wants the latest and greatest care. That all costs a lot of money (and again, patients are typically only paying a portion of the costs of it and may pay nothing more for additional tests/procedures.
In terms of MDs, they have done a fantastic job of limiting their supply.
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This is one of those times where a masters degree from the UK just seems to win. They are almost always one year in length, extremely respected around the world, and open the door to work experience abroad. Employers are likely to offer higher salaries to students who have significant study abroad experience. Further, UK grads now get two years to work in the UK following their degrees, and many European states have similar arrangements.
Also, UK (and Irish, and plenty of other European degrees) are just cheaper, too. A degree, plus travel and living expenses, costs about the same as just the tuition at a place like SAIS or Georgetown for a single year. Many European programs also feature industry placements.
Finally, most universities in the UK accept US federal loans, so the majority of expenses can be paid through Federal Direct or Grad PLUS loans.
If youâve got a funded place in the US for a masters degree, it definitely makes sense to take it. However, if youâre looking at paying full price for a masters degree, or even half price, it doesnât make sense to not look abroad.
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Not sure if still accurate, but in the not-too-distant-past Northwestern University sent multiple mailings to incoming & prospective theater majors showing typical earnings for theater majors in order to give both the student and parents realistic earnings expectations. The warnings were very clear.
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PhDâs tend to be funded, but masterâs degrees tend to be cash cows. One solution is to do a masterâs as part of a doctorate that is funded.
Loan forgiveness for public service/work for non-profits is being tweaked and hope that helps some of the masterâs students who did social work and other low-paying jobs in the helping professions.
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