Nearly half of Masters degrees not worth getting

Monday, May 13, 2024

Is college worth it? Well, it depends on what degree you're getting and where you're getting it, according to a new paper from the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), an economic opportunity think tank. While more than three-quarters of all bachelor's degrees have a positive return on investment (ROI), according to the paper, master's and associate degrees are much riskier bets"with many costing students in the long run.

Posted by sitzkrieg at 11:55 AM | 15 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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The paper, by Senior Fellow Preston Cooper, examined data from over 50,000 degree and certificate programs at thousands of American colleges and universities. Cooper's analysis looked at how much students were earning immediately after graduation, as well as how much they were making 10 years later. The paper also took into account a student's chance of dropping out when calculating a degree program's ROI.

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An associate degree. That you get from community college. That's a bad investment.
Ok.

#1 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-05-13 02:31 PM | Reply

"After training as a scientist at MIT and as a physician at Yale Medical School, Avik moved to Boston to join a then-unknown investment firm called Bain Capital"

LOL

#2 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-13 02:41 PM | Reply

"master's and associate degrees"

These things are so different that do not belong in the same sentence.

#3 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-13 02:42 PM | Reply

Curious which types of students have the highest ROI for the student loan industry.

Not that it's really fair to call student loans an "investment" by the Student Loan industry, since the money they loan comes from Uncle Sam.

#4 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-13 02:46 PM | Reply

I never received a loan from Uncle Sam. Just from lenders had partnered with an decided to underwrite.

#5 | Posted by madbomber at 2024-05-13 03:42 PM | Reply

Underwriting is a process used by lenders to evaluate a borrower's creditworthiness before approving and issuing a loan. Like what's done for other types of loans, the underwriting process employed by lenders for private student loans focuses on your ability and willingness to repay the loan.

Notably, federal student loans don't require traditional underwriting. Approval, loan terms, and the interest rates you'll receive for federal student loans are not centered on your credit or income.
lendedu.com

#6 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-13 03:59 PM | Reply

"I never received a loan from Uncle Sam."

Mine says DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
I wonder if that's the same guy...

#7 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-13 04:08 PM | Reply

A degree doesn't just have value in the fields you end up in during your career. In the 1980s I switched from pursuing a Bachelor's in computer science to journalism because the comp sci teachers at UT-Arlington were terrible. I've ended up doing a lot more computer science anyway, but the things I learned in journalism improved my work in countless ways.

#8 | Posted by rcade at 2024-05-14 09:56 AM | Reply

Journalism does pretty okay even when not combined with comp sci.

"Majors in the middle of the ROI distribution include popular ones such as business (where the median payoff is $258,000) and political science ($262,000). Other majors with a decent payoff include mathematics and the physical sciences (which includes chemistry, geology, and physics). Some majors do better than one might expect based on their reputation " sociology and journalism each have a median ROI around $120,000."

#9 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2024-05-14 11:35 AM | Reply

I have never seen a loan that says "Department of Education."

Maybe it was just too long ago and I forgot.

I recently took out a small loan for my daughter...it's through a bank or something-but processed through FAFSA.

#10 | Posted by madbomber at 2024-05-14 03:14 PM | Reply

"I have never seen a loan that says "Department of Education."

I've seen four of them.

#11 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-14 03:15 PM | Reply

The Economist did a report a while back-2009ish-and showed that, statistically, there were majors where you were more likely to make less money than if you had not go0ne to college at all.

#12 | Posted by madbomber at 2024-05-14 03:15 PM | Reply

That's an easy one. Social workers, Librarians, Music, History.. no brainer, History is a minor at best. Fun when you're a museum docent, but it's almost always a volunteer job.

#13 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2024-05-14 06:21 PM | Reply

"Social workers, Librarians, Music, History.. no brainer"

Absolutely. Not making money off that degree, generally speaking.

In return you don't have to labor and probably have solid benefits and retirement and insulated from shocks in the economy.

That's worth millions come retirement.

#14 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-05-14 06:48 PM | Reply

Usually public jobs, first people fired during budget cuts, no security. Terrible long term prospects depend on marriage to somebody not in that field.

#15 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2024-05-15 07:10 AM | Reply