More than 14,000 new master’s degree programs have been created in the last two decades, which is likely driven by an effort to increase institutional revenues during challenging financial times. But this expansion creates a risk that these new programs fail to generate a return on investment for students or taxpayers. We examined student debt and debt-to-earnings outcomes for students attending newer versus longstanding master’s programs and found that new programs at private universities tend to graduate students with less debt than their more established counterparts. There were no consistent relationships between program establishment and debt outcomes at public universities.
Kelchen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.