Elite universities continue to push master’s programs that don’t pay off, as the jobs that graduates get with their degree from top institutions fail to generate enough income to pay down their six-figure federal loans, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Master’s students lured in by the idea of acquiring a degree from prestigious institutions have taken on debt beyond what their salary after graduation can support, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000, and two years after obtaining their degrees, half of the borrowers are earning less than $30,000 a year, the report added.
Columbia’s program is reportedly the most extreme example of how top universities have recently been awarding thousands of master’s degrees that don’t result in enough early career earnings for graduates to start paying down their massive student loans.
Recent Columbia film alumni had the highest debt compared with earnings among graduates of any major university master’s program in the United States, the Journal reports.
Meanwhile, at New York University, graduates with a master’s degree in publishing borrowed a median $116,000, and had an annual median income of $42,000 two years after graduating, the report added.
At Northwestern University, half of the students who earned degrees in speech-language pathology reportedly borrowed $148,000 or more, and are earning a median income of $60,000 two years later.
As for University of Southern California’s marriage and family counseling program, graduates borrowed a median $124,000, and half earned $50,000 or less two years later.
While undergraduate students have been facing inflating loan balances for years, now it’s graduate students who are accumulating the most burdensome debts, reports the Journal.
And unlike undergraduate loans, the federal Grad Plus loan program has no fixed limit on how much graduate students can borrow. The limitless loans make master’s degrees a goldmine for universities, which have gone on to expand their graduate school offerings since the creation of the Grad Plus in 2005.
And now, for the first time ever, graduate students are on track to have borrowed as much as undergraduates in the 2020-2021 academic year, the report adds.
Zack Morrison, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in film from Columbia in 2018, told the Journal that his graduate school loan balance now stands at nearly $300,000, including accrued interest.
Morrison added that he has been making between $30,000 and $50,000 a year as a Hollywood assistant, and from side gigs working in commercial video production and photography.
“There’s always those 2 a.m. panic attacks where you’re thinking, ‘How the hell am I ever going to pay this off?'” he said.
It’s the taxpayers, however, who will end up being responsible for whatever is left unpaid by graduates who took out the staggering loans.
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