No idea. I'm a programmer who happens to work at an investment bank, but finance does not interest me any more or any less than any other programming problem. The words we use to describe things are finance-related, but the problems we solve aren't.
I would personally never pay $150k for a degree, but that's because the programming world doesn't care about degrees at all. I have never tried to be a quant so I don't really know. My guess is that if you come in as a programmer on a HFT team and interest the right people, you can be a quant without any particular credentials.
I'm told by my boss that many of the people in our application support team are "blown up" traders. Which means they were traders, and now they help people reset passwords, leading me to believe that there aren't many expensive degrees required to become a trader. That's all I know, though.
I would personally never pay $150k for a degree, but that's because the programming world doesn't care about degrees at all. I have never tried to be a quant so I don't really know. My guess is that if you come in as a programmer on a HFT team and interest the right people, you can be a quant without any particular credentials.
I'm told by my boss that many of the people in our application support team are "blown up" traders. Which means they were traders, and now they help people reset passwords, leading me to believe that there aren't many expensive degrees required to become a trader. That's all I know, though.