They pay the high sticker price because it's rationally their best choice, but the value they're purchasing isn't in the degree, but rather the favorable status they earn in the immigration labyrinth.
This isn't good for them, except in comparison to other options. It certainly isn't good for native-born Americans, who are (for the most part) stuck paying the same high sticker prices, without getting the features which justify the high cost of the product.
Typically, community college faculty (and sometimes university lecturers) require a minimum of a master's in the field, and at least the first is as true of physics as it is generally.
I have seen in electrical engineering some jobs advertise that they want someone with a masters, but really what they want is someone who understood and can use at least something from their undergrad and can be relied upon to exercise theory as opposed to someone who just passed.
If the education system was different, more people would want them, and they would be more useful. See commenter below who notes that CS masters are usually quite useful but also are not employment gating and have many reasons to stay competitive with other programs.
Aren't H1-B visa workers mostly in extremely HCOL areas and significantly underpaid / taken advantage of?
I imagine if you're from India and you really want to get out of India - this sounds like a good deal (although wouldn't $50k for tuition be hard to get?) But, I'm assuming most people just want to have more money / a better life?
Wouldn't the first option be better? And then you could stay closer to friends and family.
I would not want to try to pitch myself as a consultant as a foreigner with little to no American work experience. If you’re doing it yourself, sales will be a challenge.
Heck, I did consulting in school to support tuition.
I think there are a few factors to consider.
(1) Ability isn't one-dimensional. Consulting is a different skillset than full-time work. It's not harder or easier -- you just have to be more of a package deal -- finding business, contracts, billing, etc.
(2) Interest. Most people are happier in a full time job not because consulting is hard but because they'd rather not do all those things. If you don't want to deal with contracts and billing, consulting isn't for you.
(3) Consulting goes all the way from cheap Indian contractors, through boutique UX shops, through Caltech professors consulting on esoteric issues.
You definitely don't need to be a rock star. Companies hire consultants for a variety of reasons. Some need some particularly hard technical problem, but plenty simply need a talent for a short amount of time. It's the same difference between in-house counsel (which is good for ongoing legal issues) versus law firm (which is good for one-off issues). Or if you're worried about a tree falling down on your house, you might bring in a random arborist to consult.
I picked up the skillset because I needed to pay tuition, not out of any innate interest or talent. You might not have the skillset for it, but it's not rocket science. You could pick it up too pretty quickly if the situation arose.
Now double the age, I find I don't actually like consulting very much. I need to charge about double to triple my salary to cover overhead, and overhead is all stuff I don't actually enjoy doing. It does have upsides. I do like the variety. The boom/bust of consulting works well if you have a bit saved up and a low cost-of-living -- booms are intense, and busts make for nice vacations. I also prefer not having to worry about things like overarching employment agreements and an employer owning me. But that doesn't outweigh the hassle of having to sell myself, send invoices, negotiate contracts, etc.
It is fun and flexible but not as nice as a steady job. Plus, I have no people skills. :)
This is not meant to be sarcasm. There are many other characteristics necessary and better indicators. I am smart skilled and successful. But I made a lousy consultant when I tried it too early in life - (self)salesmanship, business skills, tenacity and courage, people skills, and a specific view on risk acceptance are far more important. Relationships and a full Rolodex and branding / reputation don't hurt either.
(A specific view on integrity and ethics too. I'm not saying no integrity or no ethics. But the salespersons / deal closers in my area are all honourable truthful people whose job I couldn't do because my view of truth wouldn't necessarily correspond to theirs)
Finally, if we grant your last statement that most people want renumeration and happy life, for many smart and skilled people, stress and risk that comes with consultancy business does not contribute to happiness.
The office was near Mastercard's global operations headquarters and it seemed like they also employed a lot of visa holders. So I don't think we were particularly unique in our willingness to offer visa sponsorship in a LCOL area.
Seems rather unlikely. What I guess you might mean is that you couldn't find qualified candidates at the pay ranges you were offering.
Source: partner was one, doubled salary after, is friends with dozens more who went through the same exploitation now making significantly more.
2. Nope. At least those working for FANGs aren’t. You can see so many cases of folks were for low paying consultancies in India getting masters and then getting a job at FANG.
3. Getting an education loan for STEM is really easy and people are willing to put their parents house up for collateral.
I think with a FANG or good tech job you can be done with your loan in an year or two. Some people go to state schools and don’t get into any debt, or pay it off via internships. The US in most Indian people’s head comes with a better quality of life, a lot more money and better infrastructure. Perhaps some status too.
as an interviewer, I see many w/ masters degrees who are neither.
In software, you DO need a lot of skills. But I think more important than that is having the ability to learn new things/skills quickly (being smart). The industry is always changing and evolving.
College is only going to get you the skills - maybe, a lot of times they teach you things that aren't that useful in the job market and don't teach you the things that are.
If we were talking about people with master's degrees from MIT or Stanford, it'd be a different ball game.
But I can't tell you how many candidates I've seen with something like a "Master of Science in Information Systems from the University of South Central Appalachia".
Beyond that, the international Masters students are really subsidizing the education of other students. Every time there is some friction added to the student visa process, all but the top schools with huge endowment funds feel the financial pressure.
Most narratives I read about this situation paints the picture of the students buying their way into US residency via Masters program. But it works the other way too - many US citizens are able to get educated at an affordable price because of the money these Masters students bring in to the school.
I'm not talking sadistic google interview questions, these were things that anyone with a BS should be able to answer.
I don't think this experience can be used to draw general conclusions on the quality of education across Masters programs in US.
As a sidenote: a lot of CS/Software Engineering graduates with a bachelor in my own country (Italy) can't pass simple programming tests, because most of the education is (too?) focused on theoretical aspects, and most of the time people is tested with non-practical exams.
Not just the US. Most countries in Europe offer international master degrees in english that serve the exact same purpose.
But with a typically enterprising capitalist mindset, the American system also wants to ensure that talented individual don't go back to their country (or elsewhere) immediately after getting a degree. This is where the high cost of a US college degree comes into the picture - the burden of paying for it acts like an anchor for most students who come from developing countries or econonomically weak background. Even if they get some kind of scholarship and / or do part-time work, they still have to take a huge loans to live in the US to complete their education. And often the fastest way to repay these loans is to work in the US or other developed nations. This may take another few years. The American system hopes that by then the potential immigrant would be sufficiently exposed to the American culture and lifestyle and consider staying here.
(The high cost also ensures quality of education is high in the US, thus attracting talents from around the world. And the money is also pumped into a lot of R&D in the college allowing US to maintain a big tech lead. It's a neat system that seems to work so far.)
The other aspect of ensuring that higher education remains costly in the US is to also ensure that a blue-collar workforce continues to exist, and wage is suppressed among the white-collars. Perhaps the law makers also feel that it acts like an incentive to work more diligently, out of anxiety and worry - after all, people with more qualification, experience and higher stable income often tend to jump around more (which the big tech try to thwart by entering into illegal agreements to not hire each others employee).
I've seen that in CS programs at University of Buffalo and Yale, a majority of Masters students are from abroad, especially from Asia.
Basically, if you wanted to work in tech in the US, you could either:
- Find a multinational company in your home country, work for them for a year, and request a transfer (highly competitive)
- Find a job for a company in the US while abroad, ask them to sponsor you for a H-1B, and hope you win the visa lottery (unlikely, since companies don't like their chances on the lottery)
- Get a Masters degree. Sure, it's $50,000, but you're guaranteed a 3-year work visa (OPT with STEM extension) during which you can apply for the H-1B multiple times (it's a winner!)
This is actually completely rational, and benefits both the students, the school, and arguably the US since it gets some highly skilled workers who did not take out loans.
Are Masters degrees outside of STEM (and online ones, like the OPM-managed ones this article mentions) that cater to local Americans in low wage sectors a scam? Maybe!
Are Masters degrees in STEM (which definitely are cash cows) a scam? Almost definitely not; in fact, they're a great workaround until the US reforms its immigration system