https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/08/25/how-predatory-masters-programs-get-away-with-it/ How Predatory Master’s Programs Get Away With It “Like other elite colleges, Northwestern University leverages its brand name to sign up students for grad degrees with astronomical debt and low career earnings. And the federal government does nothing to stop it.” “Like most graduates of Northwestern’s online master’s of arts in counseling program, Joe Vegas is buried in debt. A Buffalo-based mental health counselor, Vegas graduated in 2019 from Northwestern’s counseling program, having taken out around $189,000 in student debt. Now that he’s five years out of school and fully licensed, he told me, he’s on track to make $62,400 in 2024, which he considers to be a good year. “We all just laugh,” Vegas told me about when he talks to other Northwestern grads. It’s the only thing they can do. “That’ll never get paid. Ever.” Fifty-five miles from Northwestern, in an unfashionable west-of-Chicago suburb, lies Aurora University. The scrappy, unassuming institution offers an addiction-focused mental health master’s degree, also mostly online. It’s classified under the same counseling umbrella as Northwestern’s, but it has very different outcomes. Aurora students graduate with an average of $27,588 in debt, around six times less than the median debt of students in Northwestern’s program, $153,657. Five years later, they earn an average annual salary of $76,132, roughly $20,000 more than the $56,897 Northwestern grads bring in.”
