Could u plz explain it further Dominic. are those numbers false ?? or do they include the year end bonuses ?
I believe that programs massage the numbers to look good.
I'm not sure that Traderjoe is quite right that a 100K loan can be seen as risk free.
But...it is a strong signal of their confidence, sort of.
They are in effect lending to themselves, and the marginal cost of a student is very low.
In my view the most economically efficient way of funding professional education is by equity, not debt. The school takes X% of your pay, which means if you fly they do well, but if you bomb, then they don't.
Why is that superior to debt ?
Area under the curve...
It gives an incentive for them to ensure that you have a good career, not just a first job.
TJ cites the case of some schools that have excellent alumni networks, as part of what I think of as "after sales care". I've elbowed my way into running a chunk of my old college alumni network and it's hard work, but until I started we pretty much didn't have one at all.
The CQF works on a 'lifelong learning' principle, where you can sit in or new or old lectures years after you finished. Doesn't cost anything, so why do so few MFEs do it ?
A good example is the recent recession. Some people found themselves with skills that were focused upon business areas that were both bad and likely to stay bad for a while. An equity model of education would provide a powerful incentive for a school to suck these people back and help them retool. That ain't expensive when you're teaching the next batch anyway.
Incentives in the tails.
For many reasons, some people struggle, and having a financial interest in their whole career will provide an incentive to help them. Some places take a sink or swim view even during the course.
Also, some will become very rich, which makes punting excellence very lucrative.
Equity is less of a burden to the student.
At (say) 1% of income, it won't destabilise your finances at the start of your career, and is low enough that few will try hard to avoid it.
Content of Course
A common complaint is that the syllabus is stuffed with pointless junk.
But a newbie simply isn't in a position to judge that very well, I'm 48 and use things that I thought were pretty marginal when I was taught them. I don't believe many MFE lecturers teach stuff that they believe to be useless, but also that many don't try all that hard to seek out useful things either.
There is a trust relationship in education. When I tell people that learning econometrics is more useful than real options, they often literally have no other plausible source of information. I therefore have an obligation to research that. Hence you will find comments from me from 6 years ago that C# was a pile of shit that existed only because Microsoft wanted to screw with the Java bandwagon, and that it would quietly disappear. I now consider it a viable choice in which language to learn, not as good as C++, but easier.
Providing an incentive to keep the curriculum up to date and making informed bets on what areas will be valuable is good.
