Best Way to Fund a Master's Degree - Page 2

^^^^^^ Great reply, Svenn. 1) What is your current career and general salary range? 2) Is this degree tangentially related to your current career?

Stu,

In my opinion:

- If you are an established management career, the degree will do little to increase your value/income directly. Any benefit will come from your increased skills and competence, rather than the title you put in your resume. So do not count on an immediate sizable raise to pay back the cost of the degree.

- If you are looking for a career change, that will not help at all unless you take a major pay cut. Your experience in your field is far more valuable than a degree. In a new field, no one will match your current salary because you have just received a degree.

- Online degrees do not have too much credibility with employers, at least not yet. It seems to work a little better for degrees that are more concrete/science oriented than others.

- GWU is generally not considered a great university, not even in the immediate DC area, except for a select few specialized degrees. They offer all kinds of esoteric degrees to make money, such as "executive PhD" degrees. They are catered to company-sponsored management level employees. I have two friends who teach there (one lecturer and one tenured) and both complain about the absence of quality students. If you are thinking about an online degree, you should probably consider doing it somewhere cheaper.

- The education loan is variable rate. You will have an opportunity to consolidate your loans after graduation at a fixed rate. I just consolidated my master's loans at a rate of 2.5%. However, It might take a while before the rates get low enough to be worth consolidating (you can consolidate only once.)

Again, just my $0.02. Others might have different opinions and that is fine.

How did you do that? My rates average out to like 7 or 8%, I had no idea we could consildate the rate down, i thought we could only stretch out the time period. Did you do this through the feds or through a private company?

It is through the feds but there are limitations on what kinds of loans you can consolidate. Go here http://www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov/. You can fix the rate to whatever the rate is at any given time. So my effective rate was 2.5% this past year and that is when I consolidated them and got the fixed rate. If you sign up for automatic deduction they give you and extra 0.25% discount.

I checked with them and they said I'm stuck with the rate I signed up for, I don't think you can change it to whatever the feds current rate happens to be.

Quoted for excellence regardless of how sad but true this statement is.

I completed my undergrad 3 years ago and my perception of post-secondary education going into school and coming out of it went completely in the opposite direction.

Ok maybe that is the case with your loans. Just to be sure we are both talking about the same thing, you can not change the rate for your existing loans. When you consolidate your loans, which you can only do after graduation, all your current loans are fully paid and closed. I used to have sallie mae loans and federal loans. All of which were paid by the feds and now I have only one loan at a lower rate.