from Hacker News

USC pushed a $115k online degree – graduates got low salaries, huge debts

by alex504 on 11/9/21, 4:27 PM with 251 comments

  • by clpm4j on 11/9/21, 5:26 PM

  • by 999900000999 on 11/9/21, 8:35 PM

    Ehh eh.

    I went to a CSU for like 6k a year.

    If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it.

    > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

    This translates into paying 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad.

    Adults have a right to make poor choices.

    That said, having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea.

    The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money.

    Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ?

    I see the same problem with boot camps, instead of accepting that building a six-figure career just takes a while, people want a shortcut. I got to six-figure figures without even having a BA, but it took a long time in a lot of very hard work.

    Actually it only took me about 3 years from dropping out of college to my first six-figure job, but I was programming at least 40 hours a week back then. This was after work of course. Even now I'm off and happiest when I'm building my side projects.

  • by vgeek on 11/9/21, 5:26 PM

    Colleges have been quietly expanding the last 10-15 years with programs like these. They do it discreetly, sometimes with different campuses across town or simply online. From what I've seen, they may be an entirely separate school so as to not be reported on the same way (a 7% acceptance rate and high job placement rates at blue chip firms makes a difference when the major currency of universities is prestige), since many of them are essentially open admissions.

    E.g. On LinkedIn I frequently see Harvard listed on profiles, but upon digging in, it is Harvard Extension School which mostly seems to offer certificates. The recipients win (they get to put Harvard on their resume, albeit paying high fees for online only, ignoring costs/default rates) and the college wins (they get paid, the marginal cost per student is probably favorable, degree vs certificates probably doesn't matter if the same content and tests apply). The only people potentially negatively impacted will be the students of the traditional organization in that they paid full tuition for a college brand that is actively diluting itself by selling certificates that may have lower standards that traditionally associated with the organization.

  • by bluedevil2k on 11/9/21, 5:27 PM

    And almost all got loans backed by the US government that they won’t be able to repay and will fall on the US taxpayer to cover. Essentially USC bilked the US taxpayers out of millions, with these poor students serving as the unfortunate middlemen. Solution: make the universities have some skin the game - cover 20% of the principal on defaulted loans.

  • by vondur on 11/9/21, 5:59 PM

    Just a casual looks shows that salaries in the Social Work field don't pay that well. I'm not sure how getting a Masters Degree will help someone. I see this in some other fields here at the University I work at. Students will get a degree that has a limited job outlook, and in order to actually get a job in that field, they believe getting a Masters will help them out in the long run, but often times does not. If I were in that position, I'd only look at Public Universities where the pricing should be far better than a private University.

  • by maerF0x0 on 11/9/21, 5:47 PM

    not to be too cold about the real people hurt by the mischaracterization, but...

    My local ferrari dealership basically implies my life will be perfect (all the pretty women will fawn over me!!) if I just buy one of their cars. America made these institutions into for profit companies. We have to stop giving them the goodwill we'd afford to altruistic/idealistic academic institutions.

    Yes USC has a "not for profit" label, but just because the label says "water" doesn't mean there isn't gasoline in that bottle -- use some common sense and call a bird a duck by it's quack.

  • by hackermailman on 11/9/21, 5:39 PM

    Cheapest online US regional accreditation is WGU, which you can do at own pace so if you know calculus you can just write the exam. UK open u is probably the next cheapest but not by much. UoP is on regional accreditation path but only national right now.

    Everything else is going to be min $40k bachelor or $20k+ Masters but even Arizona pricey online deg is cheaper than this article or Florida U, both have real curriculum not extension school shenanigans

  • by TimPC on 11/9/21, 8:54 PM

    Degrees are often used as proxies for an IQ test. To get into school X you must be at least Y smart. As long as we ban IQ tests for employment employers are going to keep using this as the best practical proxy. It’s going to have these kinds of bad effects where people need to get $115k degrees to get a $50k job since some people will do so despite the nonsensical ROI. We need to remove the law banning IQ tests in job interviews and let employers test for the kinds of things they currently proxy by university degree.

  • by sgpl on 11/9/21, 6:21 PM

    I think the biggest reason why the price is so high (beyond the brand, and the fact that the government policy results in everyone getting whatever loan amount they want) is because they're contractually required to share a huge chunk of that money with 2U (the same company that bought EDx's assets).

    The article mentions that the old contract stated that about 60% of revenue gets shared with 2U but then there was a revision to the contract so it's not clear what the current figure is but even if they lowered it to 40-55%, that's still a huge chunk of change for basically running ads to target students into the funnel. It's actually sickening that the contract extends to 2030.

    So USC is only getting $115,000 * .4 = $46,000 which while still high is substantially lower and sounds like a reasonable amount to offer the degree at. I'm not sure why they haven't built out an internal function since and tried to get out of the contract.

    For the peak year of graduation mentioned (2017, 1500 students), 2U's take at the 60% figure is ginormous. $115k * 1500 students * 0.6. = $103.5 million.

    Anyway there's so much wrong with what's happening here.

    EDIT: I just re-read the article, it seems like the 1500 figure is a combination of in-person and online graduates for the year 2017. Still the premise holds true: a 60% take rate is excessive.

  • by woeirua on 11/9/21, 6:37 PM

    The only way to effectively address the college tuition bubble is going to be for Congress to pass a law that caps the amount of student loans that someone can draw to be proportional to their expected salary over X years on a per-school, per-program basis. That would put a lot of pressure on underperforming programs and schools to produce better value for their students, either by improving outcomes, or by reducing the cost of tuition.

    Yes, regrettably some programs would go the way of the dodo, but we shouldn't be saddling our kids with crippling debt so that they can do four years of college and end up in the same place they were before they went to college from a career prospective. If people want to spend their own money to study underwater basketweaving, then so be it.

    Also, federal loans should be extended to vocational training programs under the same stipulations.

    Edit: the DOE should also have the ability to give programs/schools the death penalty (no loans) if they are found to be manipulating data used for these calculations.

  • by imperialdrive on 11/9/21, 5:12 PM

    That's a great way to tarnish all USC alumni. I hope they give the school an earful for this disgusting practice.

  • by nsxwolf on 11/9/21, 6:27 PM

    Seems like people have been warned about this stuff for over a decade now and we keep hearing about it. When will students stop taking the bait?

  • by parm289 on 11/9/21, 9:12 PM

    Perhaps a bit off topic, but seeing the breadth of general discussion about online CS masters programs in this thread, figured I'd ask the HN crowd:

    How is a program like the Penn MCIT Online degree[0] viewed by engineering and product hiring teams in industry? I am looking at transitioning from venture capital investing to SWE (and potentially product, given my business background) and this seems like a good option to facilitate that change - education in CS fundamentals (vs. a bootcamp) but still a reasonably short/practical program (10 courses).

    Curious if there are engineers/PMs here that have gone through MCIT or similar to pivot into software from another field? Or, if any hiring managers here have hired graduates from these online degree programs and have insight/advice?

    [0]: https://online.seas.upenn.edu/degrees/mcit-online/

  • by adultSwim on 11/9/21, 5:44 PM

    USC's Computer Science Master's is also a degree mill, particularly targeting foreign students who must pay full tuition in cash.

  • by paulpauper on 11/9/21, 6:07 PM

    Low-ranking but expensive private colleges are such a racket, overall. Paying $100k for Brown has a way higher ROI than paying $100k for No-name U.

  • by mdavis6890 on 11/9/21, 10:29 PM

    It doesn't sound like the students have as big a problem as the LENDERS do! Why don't the students just not pay the bill and file bankruptcy? If the loans aren't government loans that aren't bankrupt-able, then I think we have identified the problem right there.

    What we need to do is ensure that lenders bare the full cost of lending to people who likely will not be able to pay them back.

  • by cm2012 on 11/9/21, 6:04 PM

    Way more of a scam than any bootcamp

  • by renewiltord on 11/9/21, 6:04 PM

    These degrees are worthless. The fields are worthless. And a constant ongoing propaganda campaign is waged to get people to pay for them. Helping along are an army of useful idiots who will pretend like this is academia when it is pseudoscience packaged up as a program to steal from unknowing young people.

    It’s time for us to publish expected income based on major and university.

    “God forbid someone study something for the love of it”. No, god doesn’t forbid shit. But the realities of the fact that you gotta put food in your mouth constrain you.

    If money isn’t such a big deal, why not just share the data. I’m sure people will say “Oh yeah, I think it’s worth it for me to live my life in undischargeable debt so I can ‘study’ this major at this place and work for minimum wage”.

  • by TheMagicHorsey on 11/9/21, 8:44 PM

    It's the degree that matters as much as (or more than) the institution. If you get a degree in a field that has low barriers of entry, few employers (or only a monopoly employer such as the state), and no opportunity to freelance, then you will not get high wages.

  • by autokad on 11/9/21, 9:25 PM

    I dont understand how online degrees cost so much. When I taught, I was paid around 10-15k$. I had 25 students paying 6600$ tuition + fees. I get that the 15000$<<165,000$ is because of infrastructure, etc, but online? really?

  • by varispeed on 11/9/21, 7:01 PM

    Is there a point today to get a degree in the IT space? Universities are a thing of the past where the access to quality knowledge is ubiquitous. I mean most of thing that get you a decent job you can learn even on YT for free. Sure you are going to need some self-discipline and a lot of practice but it is perfectly doable. For $115k you could have plenty of funds to hire some pros to mark your home works or give some pointers. I think only advantage of Uni is that you can get connections, but you can also get them by going to local meet ups.

  • by rayiner on 11/10/21, 4:05 AM

    We don’t talk enough about how universities are scamming young people and ruining their lives. Even the best universities operate these cash cow diploma mills. How do they get away with it? People are outraged at payday lenders or whatever. How many people do you know with a payday loan? How many with student debt and a worthless degree?

    We’re socialized not to talk about it. But it seems like half the people in my law school said they were there because their undergrad degree was worthless. But they keep feeding the beast by suckering the next cohort.

  • by rfreiberger on 11/9/21, 5:25 PM

    Not sure if this is the same but a few universities will offer certificates and degrees in various subjects off campus. I think these are mostly sold as "business development" but I always wondered if they were simply fly by night education with the stamp of "prestige college".

  • by IncRnd on 11/9/21, 7:10 PM

  • by nomilk on 11/9/21, 5:23 PM

    Doesn't seem to be on WBM yet. Any link to the full text (without paywall)?

  • by tapatio on 11/10/21, 3:26 AM

    This makes me sad.