Trapped by a $50,000 Degree in a Low-Paying Job

[menloparkmom]

Laura Sayer, unsure of what she wanted to do after graduating from college in 2006, figured a master’s degree was “a safe bet.”

With $5,000 in undergraduate loans from her time at the University of Cincinnati, Sayer was set back $50,000 more after completing the Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University. The 27-year-old now makes about $45,000 a year as an administrative assistant for a nonprofit group, a job that didn’t require her advanced degree.

More people are losing the same gamble as a 33 percent jump in U.S. graduate school enrollment in the past decade, coupled with an 80 percent surge in tuition and required fees, runs headlong into a weaker job market. Universities are fueling the trend by offering more one- and two-year programs in areas from environmental science to sports management that rarely come with financial aid other than the option for loans.

“Students need to be more skeptical that the income, debt and job-placement statistics that they’re being shown about graduate schools may not reflect individual experiences,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, a website with educational-lending information. “It’s like the advertisements on TV for weight-loss programs: the results are not typical.”

Trapped by $50K Degree in Low-Paying Job - Bloomberg


IMHO, Young people should be REQUIRED to do financial calculations and sign reams of paperwork before being approved for debt amounts that can take them decades to pay off!
We just refinanced our home [ the sign off alone involved 70 pages of documents] and it took days to get all the materials together to prove we could actually pay off this loan [ which we could- tomorrow!]
Why is it so easy for a student to be approved for loans that can add up to being the size of a mortgage ?????

[sybbie719]

What does one do with a Masters in Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought?

[pelicularities]

What does one do with a Masters in Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought?

As a Singaporean, I know some people enrolled in similar interdisciplinary Masters programs in humanities/social science at other schools (not at NYU - didn't even know we had one here), though I haven't really kept in touch with them. My vague impression is that often, they majored in one of the humanities/social sciences as an undergrad, are working in or have a job lined up in government, and want to learn the methodologies of related disciplines (economists wanting to learn about sociological or anthropological or historical approaches to problems, vice versa, etc.).

It's not all useless as it sounds. But HUGE caveat: in every case I know of, the degree is/was being funded by the employer - in this case the Singaporean government - and the students has/had a job to graduate into. And the issue of whether such a degree is ever worth $50,000 does remain (those are my parents' taxes!) But that's one answer to the question.

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by Bloomberg

at New York University

Seems like whenever someone wants to do a "student or graduate with too much debt" article, they go straight to New York University to find a student or graduate to feature in the article.

[akashdip]

^ well NY is the cultural hub of the world isnt it? any news about NY(even if its about NYU) will make hot news.

[sybbie719]

Seems like whenever someone wants to do a "student or graduate with too much debt" article, they go straight to New York University to find a student or graduate to feature in the article.

Because they are easy to find. NYU is known for not giving good institutional aid, and giving packages filled with loans. However, it does not stop people from thinking that these stories are not going to happen to them. So they enroll at NYU, big loans and all.

[Bay]

IMHO, Young people should be REQUIRED to do financial calculations and sign reams of paperwork before being approved for debt amounts that can take them decades to pay off!

I'm pretty sure the Stafford loan program does require this online.

[JHS]

In this case, I think it's probably that the Bloomberg writer is in New York, and these are her friends or friends-of-friends. NYU has big programs, so if you select a random person in Manhattan with a not-obviously-useful MA, there's a good chance he or she got it at NYU. The writer would have had a much harder time finding an underemployed NYU law graduate.

As for the program itself, I think it's primarily intended to function as a place for people to go to buff up their applications to funded PhD programs. It's amorphous because the programs of study are really tailored to what the particular student wants to do. It's mainly aimed at people who want to get PhDs in a field other than the one in which they did their undergraduate work, or who need to repair gaps in their preparation, or need to narrow their focus.

$50,000 is a lot to charge for that, though. Especially since a good outcome is you get into a PhD program, and make nothing for years, and a bad outcome is you decide you don't want a PhD (or the market decides that for you) and you are pretty much back at Square 1, minus $50,000. I can't imagine how clueless this young woman must have been to regard it as "a safe bet".

[Bay]

The monthly payment on a $50,000 loan at 6.8% for 10 years is $575.40. The woman in the article shouldn't have too much trouble paying that amount on a $45,000 per year salary.

[momofthreeboys]

Whatever happened to going to work for a company for a couple years and letting them fund your Master's degree? Are kids just moving right into Master's program to avoid hitting the job hunting pavement?

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by JHS

In this case, I think it's probably that the Bloomberg writer is in New York, and these are her friends or friends-of-friends. NYU has big programs, so if you select a random person in Manhattan with a not-obviously-useful MA, there's a good chance he or she got it at NYU.

Given NYU's financial aid reputation, it seems like "shooting fish in a barrel" to use NYU graduates as examples for this type of article.

[BCEagle91]

I see these articles - invariably a combination of a ridiculous amount of debt + NYU + a major with less than stellar financial opportunities. Is there a template for articles like this on the web?

[alwaysamom]

It's true that NYU is notoriously stingy for many/most students but my guess is that you can find students in this situation from many other schools, too. I met a young man at an event who had attended Ohio State and was complaining about his student loan debt which was close to $110,000. He was working in a cell phone kiosk at a mall, and likely making not much more than minimum wage and wondering how he was ever going to pay it off. I thought to myself that he, his family, and whomever gave him the loans should have thought about that when the decision was made to borrow. I'm not sure that he had even thought about the fact that what he would eventually have to pay to kill that loan was going to be far more than $110,000.

[JHS]

momofthreeboys: Given the job market in the last three years, yes, lots of kids have gone straight to graduate school, or have gone to graduate school after unsuccessful job searches. But a program like this was never designed to qualify anyone for a job.

No university awards great financial aid for master's programs like this one, although some award some aid to some students. These are cash cows. NYU's undergraduate stinginess has nothing to do with it. The relevance of NYU is probably that living expenses in NYC are really high relative to elsewhere, so the overall COA of the master's program is high.

[bluebayou]

well NY is the cultural hub of the world isnt it? any news about NY(even if its about NYU) will make hot news.

Let me fix that for you:

New York City is the hub of the universe...

(Copernicus and all those old-timers were wrong.)