Columbia has a pretty questionable record with other masters programs in creative fields. The school is exploiting the Ivy brand, the NYC location and talent, and legions of students desperate to stand out in highly competitive creative fields. For instance, a 10-month MS in Journalism is $116k (including living expenses) while a 12-month M.S. in data journalism is $160k (https://journalism.columbia.edu/cost-attendance).
Yes, studying under true experts in NYC is a wonderful experience for people in film, theater, journalism, writing, the arts, etc. But there should be no expectation that a very expensive degree will lead to high-paying jobs in those fields. The fact that every year Columbia is setting up all of these new grads with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and little hope of repaying it in those professions is downright predatory.
The WSJ article that prompted the original Twitter thread is worth reading. A few graduates have managed to find low-paying, entry-level jobs in the film industry that pay under $50k per year, and probably did not require a master's degree. One of the grads they talked with is working at the local TJ Maxx ... the same job he had as a teenager.
Via one of the WSJ reporters who worked on the report:
At least 43% of the people who recently took out loans for master’s degrees at elite private universities hadn’t paid down any of their original debt or were behind on payments roughly two years after graduation.
It’s not just arts degrees. Other high debt, low-earning master’s programs: NYU publishing (debt: $116k, earnings: $42k), Northwestern speech-language pathology (debt: $148k, earnings: $60k), USC marriage and family counseling (debt: $124k, earnings: $50k).
All this is made possible by Grad Plus, the no-limit federal student loan program. Created in 2005, it’s now the fastest growing program. Based on partial data from the 2021 school year, grad students were on track to borrow as much as undergrads for the first time.
Wow I had no idea a Masters could be that expensive! I paid $16k for a Masters in Computer Engineering at a local unglamorous state university (half paid for by my employer) and immediately got a promotion for $30k when I was done, so it was a pretty good rate of return!
The general advice I give to anyone considering grad school, and the same advice I was given by professors, is: unless you are absolutely certain it will be worth it, do not go to grad school unless you are paid to do so by the school or through some other form of compensation.
Fundamentally, it's about whether the university views the applicant as a valuable resource or as a bag of money. At good research programs, professors convene to decide which PhD applicants they want to accept, with the knowledge that the people they accept are going to work with them for years as on their research projects as advisees. To receive an un-funded acceptance means that the consensus of the professors reviewing applications was that covering the applicant's tuition and stipend to have them as an advisee would be a waste of grant money. It's essentially a rejection, because it means nobody actually wanted to be the applicant's advisor.
Starting a PhD under those circumstances is just setting yourself up for failure. If a PhD program in science or engineering (or any discipline where professors have a fair amount of grant money to spend) isn't willing to pay you to attend, take that as a rejection and move on.
Edit: This is why you generally have to pay to attend a Master's program, but get paid to attend a PhD program. Teaching Master's students is just a waste of time, while teaching PhD students pays off when they become productive research assistants for the remainder of the time it takes them to write a thesis. The pro tip is that if all you want is a Master's degree, you should still apply for a PhD program and then leave with your Masters degree after a year or two.
Plenty of top grad schools are worth it, pay for their students, and are accessible from students who went to state schools in undergrad.
Also, top school names only matter when starting your career. What you do counts a lot more and can easily get you to many good jobs. It turns out good 17 yr olds can ride their momentum only so long. At some point you have to produce in your career.
Also, top school names only matter when starting your career... At some point you have to produce in your career.
I agree with this 100%. But, your school name influences your first job, and your early career is what usually, obviously not always, influences the rest of your career/life. If I didn't do well on my SATs and got into a local state school, no matter how hard I work for $35K at a $500K nonprofit I'm likely never getting past the first screens from DE Shaw, Renaissance, etc.; again, there are exceptions, like a friend who went to a state school, then Ivy grad, and ended up at a FAANG; or a guy I know who went to community college, got a job at a bank, then through a series of mergers outside his control he ended up C-suite level at one of the largest asset managers. But I don't think that's the norm by any means.
> Also, top school names only matter when starting your career
Yes, and then it determines the next phase, and then the next....
I'm sure there are some mediocre (strictly career wise, not academically) people who graduate from Styvescent and Columbia and go to work at no-name mid-tier companies (I've met one personally). But these people are still orders of magnitude better off than people like me, who are destined for failure and disappointment. If you ever looked at my resume you'd agree.
No they don't. What you actually do in your job matters a lot. If you're actually good, you get picked up by better firms. I've interviewed literally hundreds of candidates for top-tier companies I've worked for, and those candidates mostly cone from the 'rest' of the schools, not the top 10. I didn't come from the top 10 either.
Also, for grad school, the top 10 don't matter as much to an employer as relevant research to something they care about. Grad rankings are nearly useless.
I went to state school (VT) undergrad and grad. I've worked in plenty of very good places.
What you actually do in your job matters a lot. If you're actually good, you get picked up by better firms... Also, for grad school, the top 10 don't matter as much
This depends on the industry. I have plenty of tech friends who quit school, went to a local state school, etc. and ended up at a FAANG or launched a startup well-funded by VC. However, at the top management consulting, law, investment banking, private equity, hedge fund firms, etc., it is unlikely you'll get hired without a top 10 undergrad or grad degree, family connections, or something unique like you have a documented 150% return in the market over a decade.
I only work at Amazon so I’m not actually good. The “rest” are still only large in proportion because of their population size - most are like me and will never get into companies like Two Sigma or Google. I sure can’t.
You work at Amazon in IT? I don’t know your specific situation but you sure have a pretty defeatist attitude. That won’t serve you well. In my experience the most important factor for improving your career situation is finding opportunities and taking them and that requires a bit of a positive outlook and energy to expenditure.
I'm an SDE2, yes. I have no energy or a positive outlook because I already know that I'm considered an untermensch by everyone and society. It truly does feel like I have nothing, even my family thinks I'm a failure.
So you work for one of the most valuable companies in the world as a software developer, making decent buck, and you are a failure? I think you are young and have unreasonable expectations. You’re doing very good in the grand scheme of things; find your self worth and don’t listen to anyone that tells you you’re a failure, including yourself.
First, you're a really good writer, and no one can take that away from you.
The big picture is this - we are nearing the end of this society, and thus (in general) bad people succeed and good people fail. (I personally am doing OK if not stellar, this isn't sour grapes.)
You seem like a thoughtful, compassionate guy so it's no wonder that you aren't doing well.
My suggestion is artistic detachment. Treat life more like a surrealistic comedy and less like a game with live ammunition - it has aspects of both, of course. If you think of life as a dramatic presentation for your entertainment, even the bad parts will be more entertaining.
Turn on a "professional personality" at work which has nothing to do with who YOU are and then learn to turn it off after work.
Find something unrelated to... all this... to keep you entertained - something small and cheap and fun. In the past I've studied magic tricks and origami - right now my wife is doing watercolors and I'm reading 50 year old SF books.
In my case, people I met usually categorized me either into "everything is awesome" or "you're a failure". Few people took the time to listen and understand that things are going OK but of course there's always things to improve.
If you can get by financially and maybe save a bit for a bad day, then you're objectively doing OK or better. After that point, whether you're a success or a failure depends mostly on what you yourself think about it. There's a surprising amount of mean and selfish people out there. It's how they cope with difficulties in their own live.
At my old job, my manager was an ex-Amazonian. On my way out the door, he gave me one piece of advice - never work for Amazon. He left because of what they made him to do his reports.
You work for a company that negs its employees as part of its management playbook, and that’s bound to affect your mental health. If you can survive Amazon, you’re smart and can also hack it at other companies who treat their employees better. Don’t be obsessed with FANG. There are many many companies who pay as well as Amazon SDE2 but don’t systematically abuse their engineers.
It’s hard to believe that a SDE2 at Amazon is genuinely stupid. It sounds like imposter syndrome. Have you ever talked to a mental health professional? I’ve benefited greatly from that and I know many others in the same boat.
From my school? Yes it is. To get into a top grad school you need multiple first author papers. Most research groups at state schools straight up don’t have that research capacity.
I had 2 2nd author papers and people that I've shown my profile to say I have straight up no chance at good schools. They then trot out the 'ol "It matters more who your advisor is".
I'm curious: What are you considering as a top CS school? At the one I went to, virtually no incoming student was a first author. Granted, this was a while ago, but it was still the case about 10 years ago.
2nd question: Did you actually apply, or did you merely ask around and get discouraged? My experience is that most of the advice people give on this topic is wildly off. That includes advice from professors in top schools.
Finally, GPA mattered in my time, and I'm sure it still does. It's not at all sufficient, but a poor GPA would almost always kill your chances. I those days, beneath 3.5 would be a guaranteed reject, and around 3.5 would be a weak candidate.
1) I'd consider MIT, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley as the top, as well as the top schools that aren't CS top schools but are still well regarded (Columbia CS PhD, Cornell CS PhD, Princeton, Harvard). University of Washington and UIUC among the top as well, as well as Georgia Tech, UMass Amherst, and UMD, though those are hardly of the same recognition outside of the field as the other ones that are well regarded.
2) I talked to a 7 (off the top of my head) professors at a few institutions about this as well as a 5 PhD students, one from my undergrad (people from my undergrad don't generally go to top schools for PhDs in CS). All of their profiles had multiple first author papers and none of them got into any other top school than the one they went to. Ofc, the ones that went to top undergrads did get into multiple. The circles your professors runs around in at state schools absolutely matter. Mine is very well regarded in the research niche but that doesn't transfer well to even adjacent research niches.
I got a 3.92 at my undergrad, CS GPA around 3.98 or so.
I went to GaTech, picked a random PhD student and looked at his CV. He had only one paper prior to starting at GaTech, and he was the last author. Picked another one and that one did have a first author paper. Couldn't find CVs for the others I picked.
Went to UIUC. First random student I picked had no publications prior to joining UIUC. 2nd one I picked had one, but not as first author. 3rd one I picked had none prior to joining UIUC.
No particular subdiscipline. I just now picked a random MIT EECS grad student who went to a state school of equivalent ranking to mine (rest went to top schools or MIT itself) - he had 2 first author and 1 book chapter as well as a workshop (also first author).
I do want to emphasize that the people that go from Undergrad to PHD at the same school does skew the profiles a bit, especially if they already researched with the same professor.
Nothing to see here. The system is performing its desired function -- creating a reserve army of the underemployed to sustain a continual erosion of workers' real wages at all levels of skill and education.
I worked on my Chemistry Masters around 1980 and it cost me nothing, they paid me a pittance as a grad student to teach but I got free tuition at a public university. Strange how much things cost today.
Chemistry, at least c. mid 2000s when I was looking into it, is largely paid for by GAANN. There aren't many grad school slots available but those there are tend to be full-ride.
Sounds like they paid you a masters program tuition… granted back then that probably wasn’t a lot, but they were paying more than just your teaching salary.
Universities still think that there is a large enough population that is only interested in the pursuit of higher knowledge, but the private sector formed around attending these universities prompting the underclass (sorry, no other word in this context) to clamor to attend them and simply become debt serfs
So we can complain about the universities, refrain from calling the debt laden alumni dumb simply because they are so numerous now (degree-positive movement?), or complain about the federal government but the question is:
What organization does exist just for the upper class to pursue knowledge and maintain their connections?
Universities and fraternities were doing that loooooong before the private sector noticed
and its only controversial (it being: college admissions practices, debt, purpose, degree choice, admission corruption etc) because people that were never intended to be there feel they need to be there
So what is the replacement? Private clubs with professors? Summits and exclusive apprenticeships? Just admitting the same family’s children to universities anyway and they just pretend to be struggling students indistinguishable from the proletariat?
Universities will enter a period of consolidation. Many will shut down entirely but some will merge with larger fish. Highly motivated individuals will eventually be able to get their foot in the door to corporations via YouTube learning, IQ tests or replacements (SATs), provable signals like acceptance to the (remaining) good schools, and whatever else pops up that can distinguish people. The private sector is the first to realize what bullshit is happening because of their profit requirement, so as the university system falters they will be actively promoting its replacement.
I agree that separating the rich from the poor will continue to be an important function. Frats and other social clubs are proxies for wealth. I think simply that getting access to certain schools will be limited by wealth via the restriction on loans to certain schools and majors, and the academic world will revert to an earlier time of privilege.
> The school is exploiting the Ivy brand, the NYC location and talent, and legions of students desperate to stand out…
Sharp analysis. For film, an NYU degree is less bad (I hesitate to say “better”) bc at least you’re in the village, where some of the art scene still remains, rather than stuck in the boonies uptown.
But the real issue is that a masters in the humanities is only for the independently wealthy. In particular the MFA gets you a pan unpaid internship at a gallery where they home you’ll bring in your parents’ wealthy friends. In that regard not that different from the private banking business.
NYU seems to create a better network for the grad film students. It doesn't guarantee success any more than Columbia, but basednon the tiny sample size of one friend and his classmates, most of his film masters degree class ended up working in the industry in one way or the other.
For reference, when I went to Columbia for a master's in computer engineering from 2008-2009, it was ~$33k in tuition and ~$14k in living costs. It's _insane_ that's it nearly 2.3x'ed since then.
It's hard to discount how much the room&board aspect plays in as well.
2021 NYU has $20K room&board, you could go to UConn Stamford with in-state tuition for only $15k still!
A lot of these prestige schools are in places with very expensive real estate. Additionally for marketing reasons the schools tend to have much too fancy housing. For many NYU grads for example, its quite a come down having to actually rent an apartment on their post-graduation budget.
For reference I had friends who lived in NYU dorms the summer we all got bank internships in the the city. They were the nicest apartments any of us had for about the next 10 years.. working in finance!
Very true. I got lucky living in the International House which is a big dorm. 7.5x10ft rooms for $750/month with food included. I didn't mind it but I can't fathom folks who have families or want to live alone manage that.
Columbia also has the School of General Studies bachelors program for non-traditional students that costs $85k (including living expenses) a year, and it’s notorious for offering little to no financial aid for it.
You end up paying $340,000 to take the same classes as regular Columbia students while being almost cut off completely from the college social experience.
I went to Columbia. Many reasons folks wind up in General Studies. Two common ones are you didn’t get into good schools but your dad is both loaded and encouraging that a Columbia degree is worth it. Another is you’re between 40 and 60 and trying to reinvent yourself and/or your love life.
The implication is that you meet the students grads and professors of the university and they are now part of your social circle and your dating pool.
A while back a friend in her thirties went to Columbia's teachers college and ended up marrying one of her professors so I guess it's more common than I realized.
What I was remarking on was that there was a certain subset of the 'back to school' cohort, in my day, who were basically reinventing their life, and often post-divorce.
Having a brand name on your resume, can open up doors which would most definitely be closed otherwise. And the longer you are in your career, what you studied will count less and less.
And, as someone else mentioned, if your parents are loaded - then how much something costs may not mater.
The one about SLP making only 60k I truly do not understand. My daughter has speech problems and is doing 5 hours/wk of speech therapy with SLP for $180/hour (average rate for area) - just from us she is making almost 40k/year. All good SLPs are booked solid 2-3 months into the future and most do not even take new clients.
Two Possibilities: they work for a non-profit or government entity (school district, social services organization, etc), or they work less than full time. About 85% of speech pathologists are women, who tend to prioritize other factors (work-life balance, family care, etc) over raw earnings (https://www.zippia.com/speech-language-pathologist-jobs/demo...).
YMMV. A friend/former coworker of mine left to get his Masters in CS at Columbia. He was always a driven, strongly self-directed kind of guy.
The connections that he made in his Masters program led to him founding a security company with his professors and landed government contracts through their contacts in the federal government. That infosec company is one of the most competitive/exciting local employers.
Respectfully a Masters in CS is completely different from a masters in a 'creative field' because CS has an excess of demand for talent and tons of new opportunities.
Writing, Journalism, Fashion, Fine-Arts, Film - all of these master programs are producing legions of high-debt students with bad prospects, which is the point of the original article that the start of the Twitter thread.
I think another things is, these MFA programs aren't about scholarship or research. They're essentially exorbitantly expensive trade schools. Even weirder: in the past the idea of going to some ultra expensive trade school to learn how to make films would've been considered bizarre. Hollywood operated with an apprenticeship model (with, obviously a shitload of luck) that was kind of similar to the way a plumber-student would need to apprentice.
Even journalism schools when they first started, weren't bathing in the cache of a MFA program, they were trade schools for making reporters. They taught you bare bones shit about writing a column to set lines, and had you interning at newspapers and shadowing reporters right away. MFA programs and the rise of "creative non-fiction" are now making journalists think they're artists.
I don't have a problem with MFA programs existing (I mean, some CS programs are awful and churn out students who can barely code), but I think some applicants need to take a hard look at whether they even serve a purpose for their future employment beyond the letters "MFA" after your name; and, whether Columbia is actually the best MFA program to go to.
I worked in the film industry for about six years post college (camera: loader, 2nd AC mostly) and a member of the Cinematographers Guild. The apprenticeship model is still largely in place and folks come into the industry from all sides. That said, above the line and below the line are different worlds, and people I knew who came from money/Hollywood legacy did seem to have real advantages there. I ultimately left because the lifestyle wouldn’t be good for me long term (even if it was fun in my 20’s).
It's a rich environment where you can build relationships with world class faculty. It's also an excellent launching pad to work in finance. There was, when I went there, a tight relationship with IBM Watson. I remember taking a course with a guy who helped design the Cell processor found in the PS3.
I don't know if I'd do it today given how expensive it has gotten. But it made sense when I went there a decade ago.
> …through their contacts in the federal government.
In other words it’s not what you know but who you know and the key is to know people who know other people who can get you that sweet sweet tax payer funded government money. Not to get political but that’s why you had Trump’s son in law and daughter working in the White House and Biden’s kid went straight from rehab to $10M contracts with the government of China to selling his art for $500k a pop.
Not exactly. I'm familiar with my former colleague's research and his firm's work. It was groundbreaking, novel work with high utility. He broke ground on an important, mostly-overlooked area of hardware security and built a world-class product.
The DARPA money and contracts were well-deserved and exactly the sort of research that government money should be going to.
The connections are what enable you to create that in the first place. He’s not going to create it in his bedroom by himself and by virtue of that, have contracts land in his lap. There are lots of great things people could do, but they never get the opportunity to do them.
They should at least let you know how long you'd need to work in an average, entry-level-plus job in that field, to realistically pay back the loan. That should be on the disclosure form for the loan.
Not just creative fields. A relative of mine did an MPA from Columbia-SIPA. He spent around $200k all told (including indirect costs like housing), and on graduation the best offer he got was for around $60k. Eventually he took up a job (outside USA, as his visa expired) based on his previous experience, so the entire expense on the degree was just sunk cost.
Yes, studying under true experts in NYC is a wonderful experience for people in film, theater, journalism, writing, the arts, etc. But there should be no expectation that a very expensive degree will lead to high-paying jobs in those fields. The fact that every year Columbia is setting up all of these new grads with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and little hope of repaying it in those professions is downright predatory.
The WSJ article that prompted the original Twitter thread is worth reading. A few graduates have managed to find low-paying, entry-level jobs in the film industry that pay under $50k per year, and probably did not require a master's degree. One of the grads they talked with is working at the local TJ Maxx ... the same job he had as a teenager.
Via one of the WSJ reporters who worked on the report:
At least 43% of the people who recently took out loans for master’s degrees at elite private universities hadn’t paid down any of their original debt or were behind on payments roughly two years after graduation.
It’s not just arts degrees. Other high debt, low-earning master’s programs: NYU publishing (debt: $116k, earnings: $42k), Northwestern speech-language pathology (debt: $148k, earnings: $60k), USC marriage and family counseling (debt: $124k, earnings: $50k).
All this is made possible by Grad Plus, the no-limit federal student loan program. Created in 2005, it’s now the fastest growing program. Based on partial data from the 2021 school year, grad students were on track to borrow as much as undergrads for the first time.
https://twitter.com/anfuller/status/1413160574205284352