It’s a social science, there is math
Imagine someone presents themselves as a scholar when the do finger painting, or reading poetry?
Only one way to find out I reckon
Yes, of course, you are right to draw attention to the countless times forumosans brainlessly refer to these things as a science. Good catch!
Guy
the least interesting part of it, it’s all conjecture anyways, nothing really follow those fancy models. Some parts are fun though, finance is mostly boring to me though (and I work in finance).
If there are a lot fo Filipinos Western teachers can open their own places and really stand out, or advertise themselves as something different. Anyway the school system here needs Filipino teachers to fill all the positions of which there are a lot in rural areas and they are qualified teachers, all of them. Even with the increased budgets and teachers most schools will get to have a teacher for a give. class for at most one hour a week…at most (my kids have yet to ever see any foreign teacher in their classes…EVER), they STILL didn’t invest enough. Remember a single grade in Taiwan schools can have 20 or more classes im the cities , over 500 students sometimes. This is why the schools in the towns or rural areas may sometimes have a better environment.
Supply and demand?
You know what they say about models - all models are wrong, some are useful.
Someone has to pay the bills!
Guy
I wonder if you would have been better off investing the tuition fee 
I think about this a lot 
At a brief low point in my entrepreneurial career many years ago I looked at an MBA program and did the math, decided to forgo and keep doing what I was doing and have not regretted it.
Kinda eyeing the free ones in Taiwan now though, not for the degree per se, more just for fun. 
I think it really depends on the moment and what your other options are though. In that case I actually had an alternative path and a plan, so it was more a matter of weighing the cost/benefit between them. If I had no obvious other choice to compare with I might have decided the other way, 
It was the right choice at the time with the intention, information, and career path I was going after.
I just didn’t expect I would get the job I wanted in finance in London only to resign after a few months after my beauty supply business took off.
It all worked out but painful paying my student loan for the masters every month. I am trying to be aggressive and finish in a few years unlike those stories of people you hear been paying 10 years and the debt is higher than when they started.
A few people seem to have misundrstood your post, so I’m isolating that line.
To rephrase, you’re hoping to start a Masters in Social Work because you think that will help you get a professional job in your native country if your plan to come to Taiwan doesn’t work.
I know nothing about the market in the UK (?) for Masters in Social Work, but your idea for a plan B as insurance seems a good one.
My situation was kind of the reverse of your good plan. I dropped out of a BSc and transferred to a BA. Then after I graduated I realised that the only work it led to was something I didn’t really want to do, or being a teacher teaching the same subject. I failed to get onto a teacher training course due to lack of experience, was advised to get experience teaching abroad, so did a CELTA and met someone on the course who was raving about China and the teaching opportunities there. Eventually ended up here.
This probably depends on why and how you plan to come to Taiwan, and how long term. I think we need more info from you to answer you. Or if you search around, I remember several threads on the viability of careers here, staying long term, and these kinds of topics.
Other people have mentioned the possibility of using your Masters as both plan B and a way to improve your chances of getting to or having a career in Taiwan. In that case, the suggestions of Education related Masters is a good one. Most of my friends who are not teachers seem to be engineers of some kind, so I would also suggest engineering if you have good enough maths, but I think it’s simply a good choice for whichever country you end up in.
Like someone said, 2030 who knows. Not many saw Covid coming and the upset that caused. Not many expected an oil crisis that is turning into an “everything crisis” and apparently threatens the ability of many regions of the world to grow food. Taiwan is a rich country, so it’s not bad to be here right now, but how long will that last? And then there are things like “AI” being used to replace workers with technology at an ever greater rate. In that respect, a Masters in Social Work seems not a bad bet, because should any parts of civilisation manage to survive the oil crisis, work like that that requires empathy and deep human connection seems amongst the least likely to be replaced by “AI”.
From a stranger on the internet, I think you made the right choice.
When I did my master’s degree in math, I started learning that equations that describe nature are beautiful and elegant, and that econ models are convoluted.
That’s when I realized that econ isn’t what God meant math for. Doesn’t mean you can’t use it like that.
I still love economics though.
What would be the planned fall back job? If you’re looking at something like licensed social worker, look at additional requirements and whether that’s something you’d like to do (or if you moved to Taiwan and went back, something you could do). If in the US, you might (definitely?) need something like 3000 additional hours of supervised clinical experience, which makes it a tough racket as a fallback after a couple years.
Yeah I’m not criticising you, it’s more the irony of paying tuition for investment management.
I did a really shite computing course at university, if i sank the fee into something like AMD shares (I was building AMD computers back then anyway) then I’d have about £5,000,000 right now + the years of actual earnings instead of being a lazy bum student.
“yeah but what about those memories and good times”
I literally have PTSD from my university experience.
I like Econ, especially monetary theories.