"A lot of Masters in Finance programs are ripping off candidates and need to be shut down"

You didn't get a finance internship. You didn't get a finance job after graduation. You still want to work in finance. Should you double down and pay the big money for a Masters in Finance to stay in the game?

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Maybe not. 

A Masters in Finance will cost you anything from $28k at Baruch to $119k at Yale and £56k at Oxford. There are many Masters in Finance courses out there. Some are worth it; some may turn out to be worth nothing at all. 

"A lot of these Masters in Finance courses are ripping off candidates, charging obscene amounts of money and need to be shut down," says Mark Ross, a careers coach turned tech CEO. "I feel really bad for the people who sign up to them" 

Ross is naming no names in terms of courses. He himself is a graduate of the Masters of Financial Engineering (MFE) at Baruch College, which is broadly recognised as one of the best in the US market. Recently released figures for employment of Baruch MFEs five years after graduating showed median pay ranging from $275k to $325k and the bulk of alumni working for banks (39%) and hedge funds (32%). 

However, a significant chunk of people who complete a Master in Finance or MFE don't find a job after graduation. A recent survey by Giuseppe Paleologo, the head of quantitative research at hedge fund Balyasny, found that 30% of MFE graduates don't have a job and that a similar percentage of graduates say the career opportunities on offer to them have been misrepresented and that they're unhappy with their career outcomes. 

Paleologo's survey was inspired by an X post from Christina Qi, an MIT graduate who runs a market data firm. Qi observed that Masters programs have sprung up as feeders to electronic trading firms like Jane Street and Citadel Securities. There are now, "100+ programs funneling thousands of applicants toward a handful of seats," Said Qi. As courses churn out students, even MFE graduates with perfect GPAs and top internships are struggling to get the jobs they want. 

Questions about the value of some courses are being raised as both the US and the UK are clamping down on the employment of overseas students, with the US this week temporarily halting interviews for the award of student study visas. Even before the new restrictions, however, students say it was the overseas graduates who found it hardest to gain employment after a financial services-focused Masters. One student in London told us his university has been using post-graduate employment rates for domestic students as a selling point for students coming from abroad. 

So, how do you know if the Masters in Finance or MFE course you're considering is worthwhile? Most obviously, there are rankings from trusted sources like the Financial Times. In Europe, pre-experience masters courses like those at St. Gallen in Switzerland, HEC in Paris or ESCP Business School in Europe often rank highly and may give you another good shot at getting an internship and then a job. 

What about the courses that won't get you a job? Ross says there are ways of sniffing them out. Firstly, they are easy to get onto. They won't expect you to have any prior financial services experience when you apply - even an internship; this is a red flag. Second, they mostly accept overseas applicants. Thirdly, they don't offer very detailed information on the actual careers of their alumni. - How much do they earn? What percentage are in employment? Where? What percentage are out of work? A long list of past employers or job titles is meaningless without the time period and proportion of the graduating class it applies to. Even these figures can be gamed: in some cases, students are presented as employed while working for funds sponsored by the school.

"They will charge you $100k and leave you to rot," says Ross of the worst Masters in Finance courses. Ideally, he says you need to do your own significant due diligence before signing-up: "The first thing you should do is to talk to actual students from the last cohort, reach out to them and have a conversation." You might be unpleasantly surprised. 

In the worst case scenario, Ross says overseas students who've spent $100k on US Masters in Finance courses return to their home countries for jobs that pay a fraction of that amount. They're saddled with debt and their dreams are shattered. It's a sorry situation that could be avoided.

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