ZeChocMoose

Rising_star raises all good points.  The other thing I would think about if you stay and he leaves, but he is still willing to be your primary advisor -- is that really the best for you?  I would worry that so early in your program - not having a faculty member physically in your dept that currently knows you well may be very detrimental when you run into hiccups along the way.  He won't have much if any power in your department if or when you need him to advocate on your behalf.
 
Also how well do you work with this person?  If you work well together and there is no one else that has similar enough research interests or you feel like you could work well with, it might make more sense to follow your advisor to his new institution.  You could also see if he could negotiate with the dept and get you waived out of certain first year requirements so perhaps you will only lose a semester - but not a year.  And yes - definitely check on the funding situation.  That is also important.

It seems like you are really trying to make a public/private distinction rather than a quality distinction because there are public and private schools at each level of quality.
 
Unfortunately - not all PhD programs in Education are fully funded.  Some are known for funding only a small proportion of their PhD students like Columbia.  Other places you have to apply year-to-year to receive funding.  I heard UCLA was like this at some point, but hopefully they have changed their model.  
 
I guess you could argue that at places like UPenn and Harvard have higher stipends than places like Michigan and Penn State - but the cost of living in Philadelphia and Cambridge is a lot higher than in Ann Arbor and University Park so you would need to take that into consideration.
 
Ultimately - you want to find a place that offers you 4 - 5 years of guaranteed funding which can be found at both private and public schools.  It just tends to vary a lot within subdisciplines of education so I doubt anyone can really make an accurate generalization given that we don't know your subdiscipline.  I could tell you about higher ed, but that is only important if that is your area because how educ policy or curriculum & instruction (for example) fund students can be very different.
 
Personally - my funding packages varied a lot in terms of the amount of the stipend, how many years of guaranteed funding, and whether the stipend covered 9 or 12 months of work.  Once you can cover living expenses with your stipend, usually you base your decision on other factors.  You also want to know whether the funding requires you to do research or teach.  If your ultimate goal is to be a professor at a R1, you'll want to chose a funding package with more research over teaching.

I am assuming you are applying to master's programs?
 
If you are straight from undergrad and you are applying to top tier programs that fund their applicants - you will be competing with a lot of people and not having full-time work experience is going to be seen as a negative.  If you are applying to programs that assume that you'll pay for most of your education and you are not getting acceptances, I would assume it might have to do with either your SOP or your letters of rec as your GPA is good and GREs don't tend to be weighted too heavily in higher ed programs.
 
But honestly - it's seems a bit too early to tell.  You still have 2 apps pending.  I would distract myself as much as possible while waiting for the decisions.
 
If those apps aren't successful - then it might be a blessing in disguise.  You'll be able to apply for full-time positions in higher ed which will give you the necessary background to make the most out of your higher ed master's  and will give you some savings (hopefully!) to help supplement your income for when you do decide to go back to school.

I am assuming you are applying to master's programs?
 
If you are straight from undergrad and you are applying to top tier programs that fund their applicants - you will be competing with a lot of people and not having full-time work experience is going to be seen as a negative.  If you are applying to programs that assume that you'll pay for most of your education and you are not getting acceptances, I would assume it might have to do with either your SOP or your letters of rec as your GPA is good and GREs don't tend to be weighted too heavily in higher ed programs.
 
But honestly - it's seems a bit too early to tell.  You still have 2 apps pending.  I would distract myself as much as possible while waiting for the decisions.
 
If those apps aren't successful - then it might be a blessing in disguise.  You'll be able to apply for full-time positions in higher ed which will give you the necessary background to make the most out of your higher ed master's  and will give you some savings (hopefully!) to help supplement your income for when you do decide to go back to school.

I am going to go against the grain and recommend that you have a clearer idea of what you want to study in a PhD program before you start selecting schools.  It is not clear to me why you would want to study higher ed specifically.  Based on your experience so far - it seems like you would be a better fit for an Applied Linguistic/ESL PhD program not a Higher Ed PhD,  This assumes that you want to do research - which I am not convinced that you do.
 
Ultimately - you want to select PhD programs that have professors that you want to work with because their research interests overlap with yours.  Picking schools based on whether they require you to submit GRE scores or not is not a good selection criteria especially given that taking the test is only a couple hours of your life compared to being stuck in a program that is a poor fit for you for the 5+ years it takes to complete a PhD.  It just doesn't make much sense...
 
I also would narrow down what you really want to do and then decide whether you actually need the PhD.  I am not convinced that you need a PhD (at all).  I also recommend that you get work experience in higher ed before you decide this is the career path for you.  

It might be better for you to finish your bachelor's and then try to find a job in student affairs/higher ed for a couple years.  Then after about 2-3 years of working in the field, apply for a master's degree in higher ed/student affairs.  The other problem is since the field values experience a lot, I am not sure how much you are going to get out of grad school without having some experience to draw from to be able to talk about in the classroom.
 
Ultimately, you want to be competitive for a program that is going to fully fund you (pay tuition, offer a stipend, and give you healthcare).  As these programs tend to be competitive, it is going to be hard to secure an assistantship without any experience especially since you will be competing against other people who have experience.  You might be able to get into a program where you will need to self pay.  The problem is that these programs are expensive and they cost more than what your entry level salary is going to be.  Also, sometimes the professional experiences that they offer are not adequate to secure a job in the field after you graduate which is definitely concerning.
 
I think your best bet is to take a couple years off between undergrad and grad school to work on getting the experience so you'll be more competitive to apply to programs that are going to fund you.

Yes, but the OP is not someone straight from undergrad so while it is understandable that someone straight from undergrad is going to have limited experience, it is going to more difficult to reconcile why someone who is in their late 20s wants to change fields.  Granted late 20's is still young so it is definitely doable - but you are going to need to come up with a believable story of why you want to work in student affairs/higher ed.  Unfortunately, what you wrote so far of really enjoying school is not going to put an admission committees fear to rest that you don't know what it is like to work in the field.  In some areas - it is low pay for long hours and a good proportion of young professionals in student affairs end up leaving the field in their first couple of years.  
 
It is not even clear to me what you want to do in the field.  This is where experience comes into play.  If you can say I volunteered at this education organization or I am a mentor for first generation college students or I interned in the x,y,z office in this university it will help the adcom see that you understand what this work is about and are serious about this career change.  The problem is there is this idea that working in a university is a plum job - great pay for little work - so it is not uncommon to see career changers decide that they now want to work in a university because they are burnt out working in business, consulting, etc.  The problem is you need to convince people that you don't have a rosier view of the field than what it is and one way to do that is to couple your experience in the field with a compelling story. 

Yes, but the OP is not someone straight from undergrad so while it is understandable that someone straight from undergrad is going to have limited experience, it is going to more difficult to reconcile why someone who is in their late 20s wants to change fields.  Granted late 20's is still young so it is definitely doable - but you are going to need to come up with a believable story of why you want to work in student affairs/higher ed.  Unfortunately, what you wrote so far of really enjoying school is not going to put an admission committees fear to rest that you don't know what it is like to work in the field.  In some areas - it is low pay for long hours and a good proportion of young professionals in student affairs end up leaving the field in their first couple of years.  
 
It is not even clear to me what you want to do in the field.  This is where experience comes into play.  If you can say I volunteered at this education organization or I am a mentor for first generation college students or I interned in the x,y,z office in this university it will help the adcom see that you understand what this work is about and are serious about this career change.  The problem is there is this idea that working in a university is a plum job - great pay for little work - so it is not uncommon to see career changers decide that they now want to work in a university because they are burnt out working in business, consulting, etc.  The problem is you need to convince people that you don't have a rosier view of the field than what it is and one way to do that is to couple your experience in the field with a compelling story. 

It might be better for you to finish your bachelor's and then try to find a job in student affairs/higher ed for a couple years.  Then after about 2-3 years of working in the field, apply for a master's degree in higher ed/student affairs.  The other problem is since the field values experience a lot, I am not sure how much you are going to get out of grad school without having some experience to draw from to be able to talk about in the classroom.
 
Ultimately, you want to be competitive for a program that is going to fully fund you (pay tuition, offer a stipend, and give you healthcare).  As these programs tend to be competitive, it is going to be hard to secure an assistantship without any experience especially since you will be competing against other people who have experience.  You might be able to get into a program where you will need to self pay.  The problem is that these programs are expensive and they cost more than what your entry level salary is going to be.  Also, sometimes the professional experiences that they offer are not adequate to secure a job in the field after you graduate which is definitely concerning.
 
I think your best bet is to take a couple years off between undergrad and grad school to work on getting the experience so you'll be more competitive to apply to programs that are going to fund you.

Since it sounds like you are dealing with a lot of back and forth - I would just give them a deadline for this to be resolved or you can no longer work there.  I would give about 3-4 days to resolve it as it sounds like this has been dragging on for a couple weeks now.  I would tell your PIs and HR the deadline and explain that if it is not resolved by that date that you can no longer work in the lab as you need to seek out paid employment to cover your living and moving expenses.
 
Although since it sounds like this lab, department, and possibly university has some serious issues, this might be a good excuse to just walk away now.  Sometimes it is better to heed the red flags when you see them.  It also sounds like you are really not getting much in return from this internship.  The environment sounds terrible as all of your coworkers (fellow grad students) are miserable, you don't have the necessary equipment to do the research, and you don't have IRB approval for the research.  I am also not sure why you are contemplating going into debt to continue to work there?!  Don't put one credit of tuition on your credit card in order to get paid!  Clearly, the other grad students are not getting paid either so it sounds like there is a money flow problem in general not that you are not a student anymore.  As I have previously hired students once they have graduated to continue working in my office at a university - it is not that difficult.  There must be other issues going on that they are not telling you about or that your PIs are so disorganized that they can't go through the right channels to get it done.
 
I am not seeing any benefits for continuing to work there except for maybe some contacts that you would like to get from one of your PIs.  That doesn't seem enough of a pro to continue to put up with this situation.  If it was me, I would schedule a meeting with both of your PIs (or I guess email if they are difficult to meet with because they are so busy) and tell them that this situation is not working out (you can go as much or as little detail as you want to go into that - or- you can entirely blame it on not being paid and not being able to affordable to continue to work there if that seems easier) and say that your last day is X and that you will hand over all your notes/documents on the research to them on your last day.  I would schedule my last day to be in a couple days.  Two weeks notice is not warranted here as they have not held up their end of the bargain.

It is much, much more important to have relevant experience within the particular subsection of higher education that you want to go into.  I would strike any program off that list that is not going to offer you professional experience in the field.  If you have limited experience in the field already, you are going to want to maximum the experience you can gain by attending a 2 yr program over a 1 yr program.  One year programs in higher ed only work really well for people with sufficient full-time professional experience already or people who attend school part-time while working in the field.
 
Would LSU allow you to do an internship in assessment/admin?  My assistantship in my higher ed master's was in admissions and I ultimately decided that I wanted to work in educ research so I took an internship in institutional research which helped me to gain those experiences. For assessment work, you are going to need to take classes in methodology and statistics to gain the necessary skills.  Does LSU offer those type of classes?  
 
In general, 40K seems a bit high to attend a "prestigious" program especially given that the entry level salaries range between 35 - 45 K.  Perhaps if you were only taking out 10 - 15K and they were also offering you an internship/assistantship in your field of interest - assessment/admin, I would say well that sounds reasonable since that is not too much debt to be burdensome on your entry level salary given that you said you don't have any other huge financial obligations and you will gain direct experience in your subfield of interest which is fairly critical.
 
In the majority of cases, prestige in itself is not particularly helpful in higher ed if you don't have relevant work experience.  I know that when we were hiring for new analysts in my former office, we often got three types of candidates.  (1) Master's/PhD from well known school but with limited to no relevant, professional experience, (2) Master's/PhD from lesser known or unknown school with sufficient, relevant experience in the field, and (3) Master's/PhD from well known school with sufficient, relevant experience in the field.  Usually, we would interview type 2 and type 3 candidates (type 1s would automatically get thrown out) and then it would come done to an assessment of how well they did in the interview process and data writing exercise.
 
If I was you, I would see whether you could work with the LSU program to get everything you need out of it especially since they are offering full funding.  Where do LSU students go after they graduate?  This will give you some information of whether former students were successful in gaining jobs in assessment/admin. 

"Completion rates" might be a misleading term. I believe that some schools omit the students who left with an MS from their "PhD completion rate". That means the school can conceal the number of students who entered the PhD program but who changed their minds/dropped out/were made to leave, etc. with the obligatory MS.

Your comments just remind me of a friend who use to say similar things when she was around your age.  Unfortunately, she had such low confidence and so desperately wanted a relationship, marriage, and children that she got involved with men who treated her extremely poorly.
 
It took it an extremely long time for her to break the pattern of choosing the wrong men and realizing that she did not deserve to be treated like that.  She's over 30 and not married, but she is a much happier person now because she took the time to work on her self-esteem, develop her independence, and figure out why she was settling for these men who didn't value her or her opinions.

Your comments just remind me of a friend who use to say similar things when she was around your age.  Unfortunately, she had such low confidence and so desperately wanted a relationship, marriage, and children that she got involved with men who treated her extremely poorly.
 
It took it an extremely long time for her to break the pattern of choosing the wrong men and realizing that she did not deserve to be treated like that.  She's over 30 and not married, but she is a much happier person now because she took the time to work on her self-esteem, develop her independence, and figure out why she was settling for these men who didn't value her or her opinions.

Your comments just remind me of a friend who use to say similar things when she was around your age.  Unfortunately, she had such low confidence and so desperately wanted a relationship, marriage, and children that she got involved with men who treated her extremely poorly.
 
It took it an extremely long time for her to break the pattern of choosing the wrong men and realizing that she did not deserve to be treated like that.  She's over 30 and not married, but she is a much happier person now because she took the time to work on her self-esteem, develop her independence, and figure out why she was settling for these men who didn't value her or her opinions.

If you are serious about the finding a husband thing - which it definitely sounds like you are, Pinkster, and you think having a husband would make you feel more fulfilled or happier with life than getting a graduate degree, I would change your strategy.  Most likely, you would be more successful in getting a husband by either (1) moving to a fairly large city, working in a service industry where you can meet a lot of different people, and living with a bunch of roommates -or- if you still are set on grad school - I would (2) select a graduate degree that has more equal gender balance as MSWs tend to skew towards women.  I am not sure what attracts you to a MSW program - but if you mention some characteristics, we can probably brainstorm a set of programs with a better gender balance.
 
I personally think (1) is the better bet if you are seriously prioritizing finding a husband.  You can always work/live in the city for a couple years and if that doesn't pan out to go back to school and try option 2 given that you are so young.  Grad school as a backup choice to starting a family is an odd choice that is why a lot of people are having trouble reconciling your strategy.  Working will also give you more life experience in general and a better idea of what type of characteristics that you are looking for in a partner too - which is win, win.

"Need-based" in terms of graduate financial aid is a euphemism for "loans."

First, I want to say that you're confusing bluntness with hostility. I don't mean you any ill will but I am being very blunt and honest with you, as I am with everyone else I know in graduate school or that wants to be in grad school.
 
Second, I'm not saying that I believe you'll take longer than everyone else to do a PhD. I am saying that it will be hard for people evaluating your application to overcome that perception. They are going to know the overall time-to-degree for your program, if they know anything at all. Otherwise, they're going to judge your application by comparing how long you took to do the MA to that of their own MA students and others with a MA in the applicant pool. You may think that you have overcome those obstacles but, you continue to place the blame on your advisor and accept very little of it personally. That won't read well in an application, especially since you aren't going to have a rec letter that says "Oh, all of X's students take forever to finish so actually 1000Plateaus finished quickly given who he worked under." Do you see my point?
 
Third, while you may be taking what people say under consideration, you come across as dismissive of everyone that does not support your entrance into a PhD program immediately, that thinks you took a long time to finish, that thinks your difficulties were personal and not just due to your advisor, etc. You are fairly one-sided in your thankfulness if you read the comments carefully. Those of us who have said that applying without your advisor's letter is a bad move have been brushed aside, for example.
 
I absolutely 100% agree with this. If I were in your shoes, I would try to schedule at least 45 minutes to meet with each one of them and find out what they genuinely wanted you to do, where they think you came up short, and why. Without their support (even if that just means they won't badmouth you if someone calls them), you are going to have a very, very hard time pursuing a PhD in a reputable program and with funding. If you don't care about either of those, then please tell us so we can stop giving you advice as if you do.
 
One year longer really is a lot longer for master's students. It's the same as going full-time, taking a full load of courses every semester, and taking 6 years to finish a bachelor's in the US. It's a lot of extra time and a lot of extra money, whether that's yours or the department's. And while professors may be jerks, it generally takes a lot to have two professors who worked with you on a thesis refuse to write you recommendation letters.

I can offer what I know about this program. Granted my info is about 5+ years old so things may have changed. In my application cycle, they invited about 40 people to campus primarily to interview for assistantships and learn more about the program. The people who secured assistantships, then were admitted to the program. I can't remember how many people it was, but 18 people or so makes sense. The stipend of 20K seems a bit high esp since it is not an area that has a high cost of living. I think our assistantship stipends were around 15K or so but it might have been lower.

I ended up not attending UConn because the program fit was not there, but it seemed like a decent program. They had also just revamped the program and I wasn't too keen on being a member of the first class under this new program. In general, I haven't met any graduates of the program working in higher ed. This could be for a lot of reasons though esp since it is a newish program with a small cohort size and I don't work in student affairs which seems to be the emphasis of the program.

I would also say there are a fair amount of programs that fund their master's students. I don't know where you hope to get your first job, but you might want to take that into consideration as well.

Man, there's some trainwreck advice being given out here. Listen, there are lots of reasons why you should be worried about the rec letter situation. Some schools actually require that you list the person's relationship to you when writing down who they will get letters from. So, it will be a red flag for them if you never write "advisor". Also, faculty know each other and they talk. Don't think someone you're applying to work with won't pick up the phone and call someone they know in their program (rec letter writer or not) to ask about you.  I've said this many, many times on here over the years but, when I applied to PhD programs, one of my rec letter writers got multiple phone calls from my POIs asking for additional information about me, to follow up on stuff in the letter, etc. That rec letter writer knew about two of my admissions before I did and even warned me that one of my POIs was going to call! So do not underestimate or doubt the amount of talk that goes on.*
 
Were I you, I'd think very seriously about pursuing this path. Take some time off to really consider your options and lay the groundwork for pursuing the PhD. Maybe you need to take additional MA classes so you can get better letters and write a strong writing sample. Maybe in doing so you'll regain the confidence of those you've already worked with. But just forging ahead now seems like a recipe for disaster.
 
 
*And please, don't tell me this shouldn't happen because of FERPA. Because it happens anyway and good luck finding a way to bring a lawsuit if you ever find out.

If you're clear that you want to be in administration, then yes, I would give this option serious consideration.

Generally, people start in entry-level positions in student life or admissions/enrollment and work themselves up to the dean or VP level (if it ever happens).  This usually requires more than a decade of working in the field (perhaps two decades or so in competitive locations) and moving around to different institutions to gain middle management experience.  
 
That being said, have you ever worked in this areas?  I would probably try to secure an entry-level position in one of these areas before deciding upon this is the career path for you. 
 
Teaching experience (as hesadork mentions) would not be a factor for these type of positions.
 
Most Ed.D. programs are not competitive in the sense that they accept more than 50% of the applicants that they receive.  Usually the model is that they are part-time programs for working professionals in the field of higher ed.  They typically do not fund their students so people either take out loans and/or receive tuition assistance from the college or university that they are working at.  
 
There is also some debate on whether they are worthwhile programs as some people in the field believe that the degrees lack rigor.  Have you researched what type of degrees do CC VPs/Deans of admission/enrollment or student life have?  I would also look at recent job postings for these positions to see what credentials or experience CCs are looking for.  Usually the job postings on the Chronicle, HigherEdJobs, AIR, etc would have some of these positions listed. I would also try to talk to admins in CCs to get their perspectives. I have only worked at 4-year HEIs and I know that how things work can be different between 2-year and 4-year schools.   

I love Fuzzylogician's categorizing.
 
Here's what I do.
 
Local stress:
-Put the work down
-Exercise
-Go for a walk, usually in a public park
-Read a non-academic book
-Surf the Internet, watch stupid videos on YouTube
-Go out with my friends, even if it's just drinks at their place
-Watch TV, especially TV where other people have a lot of problems (Grey's Anatomy is really good for this).
-Play video games.  Smashing things rules.
 
Existential stress:
-Talk to my advisor
-Talk to a therapist or counselor
-Cry and call my mother
-Complain to my husband
-Talk with my friends
-Exercise a lot
-Neglect my work for a week or so, sometimes more (one time an entire summer)
-Sit in the park
-Drink coffee for hours at a coffeeshop
-Get really drunk with friends
-Sleep
-Smash things in video games
 
Lately I've been finding healthier ways to deal with stress.  Running is awesome; normally I hate running, but there's something about it that's so mindless and helps you shed the stress.  When it starts to creep up on you, you just run faster.  I'm planning to start swimming 1-2 times a week this year.  Also when I eat and drink healthier, I feel less stressed.  Drinking more water has done wonders for keeping the stress down, surprisingly enough.
 
I also really like being outside, so sitting in the park on a sunny day (even when it's cold) calms me down.  I have really understanding friends, many of whom have gone to grad school so talking with them about how much I hate it and listening to them make sympathetic noises is also really helpful.
 
I've also started always doing at least 2 other things that aren't grad school, but are long-term that I can feel proud of.  Years 4 and 5 I worked part-time in student affairs, so when I was having an existential crisis for my doctoral work I turned to my successes as a hall director.  I really liked that job and there were lots of little satisfactions and gratifications (helping students solve personal crises; supervising my resident assistants; advising students on planning careers; writing recommendation letters, etc.)  I also started volunteering for an organization that helps low-income minority students go to college, and this year I am considering doing volunteer SAT tutoring for a small group of low-income students (reviewing my time commitments).
 
You just really have to remember that you are a real person with a full life outside of your doctoral studies.  It's a marathon, not a sprint, so make sure you pace yourself and get yourself involved in your community and your hobbies outside of schoolwork.  Don't isolate yourself, and don't feel like all of your friends and interests have to be related to school.

I find that I can identify two distinct kinds of stress, which I shall call "local stress" and "existential stress." Local stress normally happens a result of over-working for some period of time, for example right before a deadline for a submission or towards the end of the semester. Existential stress happens more at certain important junctions of my career, for example when transitioning from doing mostly coursework to doing mostly research, getting ready to defend a paper or starting to seriously think about the job market. I deal with these two kinds of stress differently. For the local stress (by far, the more common kind), I do as others have said - I allow myself to take time off to recover and I do things that are not related to my work at all. For example, if I can allow it, I might go on a short trip or go sit in the sun for a while, or I might watch something totally brainless on TV (I love cooking shows and design shows), or I might take on an elaborate baking project. For existential stress, I do the same as for local stress but then I regroup and seek out my close friends and mentors to have a frank discussion about my concerns. I find that the best way to get myself remotivated to work is to acknowledge the fear and stress and find a way to turn them into a productive tool that pushes me along instead of paralyzing me. I have close enough relationships with two mentors who I feel comfortable admitting such things to, and they always have great advice on seeing the broader picture and getting myself out of my tunnel-vision state. 

That is super bizarre, Goobah.  I have worked in transfer admissions and I had to deal with transfering of credit all the time.  Usually what happens is the university makes a determination whether the credit will transfer not the grade!  I actually never heard of a school that uses the grades of the transfered credit in calculation with the home GPA for graduation purposes.  
 
I would also reach out to the Dean of your school if you have one or the VP of Academic Affairs and explain your story.  The other factor which I would think is relevant is these courses are from 1992  I think you could argue that including 10 year old classes in the calculation of your GPA is a disservice to non-traditional students.  I am assuming that you need these transfered courses to graduate?  The other thing that I would think you could do is refuse transfer credit for them if you don't need these credits to graduate.