attendance is at a high this year but the prez/board of regents is keeping it at more or less stable levels, so we're only about 500 students up this year iirc
my #s seem a bit down wait-list-wise but my classes are all full so things seem ok
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm not sure that four-year college is right for those students either, but I think a lot of the problem is that while the "go to college & ~find~ yourself" is great for upper-middle-class kids, I don't think it suits others so well.
fwiw I feel the same way about the sexual revolution
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
jeez I didn't find myself until about four years after college
― unwarranted display names of ilx (mh), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
also before you people tell me to get to work
a) I've got the stomach flu pretty wicked right nowb) taught 3 hrs yesterday & gonna do it again for an hour todayc) was an awesome Pete Sampras at the US Open moment yesterday, hoping to play like a champion again today
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
I thought you were tenured? it should be ilx+tennis 24/7 now
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
wait maybe some sleeping...and eating
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
remy otm - there is a huge disparity in the quality of education that a student can potentially get before college.
― dayo, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
this article instantly reminded me of a nearly identical piece in Time Magazine from the early 90s about Generation X - over-educated, aimless, without economic prospects, debt-ridden, unlikely to scale the economic heights of their forebears, etc. I wonder if that is online somewhere...
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
haha yeah tenure but like Sampras I wanna keep rising high
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah the thing is 'aimless college grads' has always been 'a thing', but right now we're in an economic downturn that's not comparable to anything else post-great depression xp
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
I guess part of what I'm getting at is that for students who require special accommodations, have either documented or undocumented LDs, speak mediocre English, need to take a slower, non-traditional (or interrupted) path through schools, or require additional mentorship or counseling, the the community college and state school system has often been welcoming, empowering and viable. Whether it's true or not, these students aren't perceiving the same help/options in these schools b/c of a one size fits all approach that now include a lot of more traditional students who need less in the way of support. For the school's bottom line, this is a good thing: accommodations cost money, and customarily the students who require them have a lower earning potential (as a group) than the students who don't, so why not focus on the most likely-to-be-successful students?
― remy bean, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
ah here it is
xp
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
"Reason: America needs them. Today's young adults are so scarce that their numbers could result in severe labor shortages in the coming decade."
yeah this part doesn't come up in many articles today
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
boomers kids are their own demographic bump, gen x was the lack of one
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
What worries parents, teachers and employers is that the latest crop of adults wants to postpone growing up. At a time when they should be graduating, entering the work force and starting families of their own, the twentysomething crowd is balking at those rites of passage. A prime reason is their recognition that the American Dream is much tougher to achieve after years of housing-price inflation and stagnant wages. Householders under the age of 25 were the only group during the 1980s to suffer a drop in income, a decline of 10%. One result: fully 75% of young males 18 to 24 years old are still living at home, the largest proportion since the Great Depression.
In a TIME/CNN poll of 18- to 29-year-olds, 65% of those surveyed agreed it will be harder for their group to live as comfortably as previous generations. While the majority of today's young adults think they have a strong chance of finding a well-paying and interesting job, 69% believe they will have more difficulty buying a house, and 52% say they will have less leisure time than their predecessors. Asked to describe their generation, 53% said the group is worried about the future.
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
69% believe they will have more difficulty buying a house, and 52% say they will have less leisure time than their predecessors.
that much turned out to be true!
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
Because they are fewer in number, today's young adults have the power to wreak havoc in the workplace. Companies are discovering that to win the best talent, they must cater to a young work force that is considered overly sensitive at best and lazy at worst. During the next several years, employers will have to double their recruiting efforts. According to American Demographics, the pool of entry-level workers 16 to 24 will shrink about 500,000 a year through 1995, to 21 million. These youngsters are starting to use their bargaining power to get more of what they feel is coming to them. They want flexibility, access to decision making and a return to the sacredness of work-free weekends. "I want a work environment concerned about my personal growth," says Jennifer Peters, 22, one of the youngest candidates ever to be admitted to the State Bar of California. "I don't want to go to work and feel I'll be burned out two or three years down the road."
seems a little different to me!
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
Euler what is your field?
― Do not go gentle into that good frogbs (silby), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah sure there are differences - I haven't read the article in 20 years fwiw
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
gen x: lazymillennials: overeducated, prob a little lazy, mostly just fucked
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
that article feels more like "aimless 20 somethings not sure of what they want to do", today's version of "aimless 20 somethings WANT to do something but finding all doors shut"
― dayo, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah as far as I can tell In This Economy™ what used to be entry-level jobs all advertise as requiring 3 years experience. I somehow have gotten a few interviews anyway but every time one peters out I just get less interested in applying for more programming jobs and more interested in killing time until grad school.
― Do not go gentle into that good frogbs (silby), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm a phil-ah-soh-pher
which btw shouldn't be conflated with "the liberal arts" b/c our students aren't usually the dreamy-wanna-write-a-story types, rather they're the mass debater types & go on to do analytic work & typically get pretty well paid (unless they go to grad school obv)
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
you mean @ your school or philosophy majors in general
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
Not really involved in the discussion but here's a link that might be of interest - http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/31/historical-trends-in-college-tuition/
The linked post about the retained value of a college degree is also worth a look.
― pullapartsquirrel (Jenny), Friday, 2 September 2011 17:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
both xp unless we're talking continental philosophers w/ all that crit theory bullshit & that's just dreamy-wanna-write-a-story stuff that isn't gonna get you anywhere
obv I am a pawn of the status quo
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
I dunno I think their prospects aren't much different from english majors or whatever, they just have a higher tendency to go to law school
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 17:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
if I owned 'generic business' I would totally hire a bunch of philosophy majors tho, seems like an undervalued asset (as long as I didn't have to talk to them)
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
what if 'generic business' was a 'medicinal marijuana shop'
― dayo, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
fwiw philosophy majors rank in the top three nationally on the LSAT, GMAT and GRE pretty much yearly; our only competition is physics & math iirc
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp lol
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
Got turned down for a job I had two interviews for today. FUCK THIS SHIT.
― gay socialists smoking mushrooms with their illegal gardeners (a hoy hoy), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
xps to Euler: see I don't like the idea of denigrating "the liberal arts" as a thing, I legitimately believe that the liberal arts (including liberal study of the sciences) are the foundation of a democratic society; this is why high school is at least in part a weird mini liberal arts education. College as a job-training-and-credentialing exercise is just going to become a worse and worse value proposition (though it honestly isn't now, as college grads are still outperforming non-college-grads in the job market, modulo debt I guess), especially because the academy moves so slowly that by the time it has figured out how to prepare students for the economy of 2011 it'll be 2038.
a hoy hoy: YEAH NO KIDDIN
― Do not go gentle into that good frogbs (silby), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
this is why high school is at least in part a weird mini liberal arts education it's becoming less of this all the time
― remy bean, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah I would like to see more discussion of the value of a liberal arts education itt. think a lot of ppl (though not all) who post to ILX prob have a degree in the liberal arts and went to liberal arts colleges?
― dayo, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
did anybody actually have 'shop class' in high school?
my hs had it, I didn't take it
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
^^^we did and I managed to studiously avoid all of them
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
we also had an auto-repair type class, I think
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
the stuff I learned in my hs journalism class - particularly how to write, use a computer, and lay things out - came in much handier professionally than anything I learned in college, really. but liberal arts degrees/colleges are not really about learning a specific subject matter imho, they're about training your mind to think critically and work in different contexts.
I would definitely be making more money in the same industry I'm in now if I'd gotten an engineering degree, but I always hated math.
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
school is awful - full of false promises and useless workmemorization and paper achievementsany kind of real sense of desires to learn or create are put to the side
― Birth Control is Sinful in the ILE Marriages (Latham Green), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah 'critical thinking' is the rote response to people who question the value of a liberal arts education
I'm still trying to think through the true value of the ability to 'think critically' in the job market
― dayo, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
dayo it was called the vocational wing in my hs
also folks, this is my line of work and i have a lot of relevant things to say, but i would really rather not discuss it publicly for a variety of reasons
xp - critical thinking is REALLY IMPORTANT esp if you don't have very good critical thinking skills
― i drive a wood paneled station dragon (La Lechera), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
Was v sad when I had to give up woodshop b/c there was no room for it in the college-prep curriculum. It was down to shop or band, and marching band won.
Just think, I could have grown up to be a stoner!
― brb recalibrating my check engine light (Laurel), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
I tend to take Dewey's line about the value of a liberal-arts-education in creating & nourishing a populace able to handle democracy
+ DFW's take in his Kenyon graduation address
― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh I totally agree that critical thinking is implicitly and in and of itself a valuable skill, LL - but that's not how all employers see it
― dayo, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
ps - i had shop class in middle school
it's an important skill to have as a human being, not as an employee
― i drive a wood paneled station dragon (La Lechera), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think that the american liberal arts education actually contributes substantial economic value to this country - overall we had a much more adaptable job market in the late 20th century than most of the world. more engineers would be good too, but an economy can't be 50% engineers (and really would anyone want to live in a dystopia like that?) most contemporary jobs don't require specific training and in better economic times can be learned on-the-job.
said it in the other thread but the bigger problems are:a. jobs! (I know underemployed engineers from good schools!)b. cost
― iatee, Friday, 2 September 2011 18:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
i do not work at a liberal arts school btw
― i drive a wood paneled station dragon (La Lechera), Friday, 2 September 2011 18:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
The key to this piece of rhetorical alchemy is that you can’t over-think it, in the way I just have. Brooks is taking something that lacks prestige and cultural capital—a mode of education that is not valuable, only expensive, not innovative or exciting—and placing the name “Harvard” around it makes it into something that suddenly is both valuable and worthwhile, as a function of Harvard’s symbolic role in American higher education, to define the new cutting edge.
harvard is doing this too
― iatee, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 19:05 (1 week ago) Permalink
which is the only reason moocs are suddenly relevant, but a real reason why they are
― iatee, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 19:07 (1 week ago) Permalink
if capitalism evolves to a point where basic life necessities are super affordable, birth control readily available, etc, how does it convince the majority of ppl to breed + work? a) give them 80k-120k in student debt, b) force them to work for decades to pay it off, c) meanwhile they're so depressed by having to abandon their creative aspirations that they start families to give themselves something to feel okay about
FINE U WIN CAPITALISM
― Mordy , Monday, 20 May 2013 02:12 (3 days ago) Permalink
wait what? lots of people want to breed, beyond any kind of sense, i don't see that changing anytime soon!
― Nhex, Monday, 20 May 2013 02:14 (3 days ago) Permalink
Thomas Friedman’s good friend Michael Sandel
burrrrrnnn
― j., Monday, 20 May 2013 02:30 (3 days ago) Permalink
I imagine people who have 80-120k in student debt are less likely not more likely to start families
― iatee, Monday, 20 May 2013 02:42 (3 days ago) Permalink
http://deadspin.com/youre-fucked-but-youre-free-a-message-to-the-class-498483665
Trust me, your competition isn't as intimidating as you think it is. You wouldn't believe how shitty the rest of your peers are compared with you. All you have to do is not text during your job interview and you'll probably make the final round of nominees. People are fucking morons.
― j., Tuesday, 21 May 2013 18:41 (2 days ago) Permalink
smh at the glorification of David Karp quitting high school.
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 21 May 2013 20:10 (2 days ago) Permalink
if capitalism evolves to a point where basic life necessities are super affordable
uh huh
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 21 May 2013 20:39 (2 days ago) Permalink
I'm sure David Karp is a smart, bright guy but the only thing he's shown is that he knows how to execute ideas with other people's money. Yay team.
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Tuesday, 21 May 2013 20:41 (2 days ago) Permalink
For any species an increase in the food supply predictably results in an increase of population, until such time as the food surplus is fully consumed. If the food supply dips, there is a die off until the population again matches available food. Capitalism doesn't much affect this dynamic, but it does appear to affect food distribution.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 21 May 2013 21:48 (2 days ago) Permalink
sorry, I couldn't make it through the article
― Nhex, Tuesday, 21 May 2013 22:24 (2 days ago) Permalink
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 8:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
and that he's self-aware enough to know when to hire a guy to make business decisions
― steening in your HOOSless carriage (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 02:34 (Yesterday) Permalink
that is not actually easy!
― eris bueller (lukas), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 03:13 (Yesterday) Permalink
OTM
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 03:42 (Yesterday) Permalink
It's way easier to execute ideas with other people's money than to build a billion dollar business that is profitable.
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 03:57 (Yesterday) Permalink
I don't think David Karp ever had any grand ideas on how to make any money. He had grand ideas on how to build a great product, but every day products are built that never find any significant revenue, let alone profitability.
And when given the choice to clear $250MM vs. trying to figure out profitability, saying that he's self aware enough to take the money is sort of a backhanded compliment.
But I'm very glad that he got rich.
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 04:02 (Yesterday) Permalink
tbh tumblelogs were also someone else's idea.
― 0808ɹƃ (silby), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 06:20 (Yesterday) Permalink
marco arment's piece on karp prob relevant here imo
http://www.marco.org/2013/05/20/one-person-product
Intense focus requires neglecting almost everything else. David’s focus on pushing the product forward meant that he didn’t want to think about boring stuff: support, scaling, paperwork, and money.Every time we’d get close to needing more funding, I’d try to convince David to hold out a bit longer or try to become profitable, and he’d convince me that everyone was better off if we’d focus on the product instead. And every time, he was right.We tried to hold out as just two (and then just three) people as long as possible. We were scared of growing the staff, so we just put it off — for too long, in retrospect.Eventually, David knew that we’d need to expand to handle the load, but his job never changed: rather than become a businessperson, he just hired one.
Every time we’d get close to needing more funding, I’d try to convince David to hold out a bit longer or try to become profitable, and he’d convince me that everyone was better off if we’d focus on the product instead. And every time, he was right.
We tried to hold out as just two (and then just three) people as long as possible. We were scared of growing the staff, so we just put it off — for too long, in retrospect.
Eventually, David knew that we’d need to expand to handle the load, but his job never changed: rather than become a businessperson, he just hired one.
― steening in your HOOSless carriage (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 14:44 (Yesterday) Permalink
More importantly, David had a couple of key investors that were telling him exactly the same thing. Building a advertising blogging platform was always going to require scale and significant outside investment long before profit was on the radar. David enjoyed an enormous freedom in building his vision and the people who invested in him felt he deserved it. And his runway was evaporating rapidly, so Tumblr was going to need a major infusion within a few months or an acquisition.
There's a big difference between MySpace and Tumblr and yet...
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:27 (Yesterday) Permalink
is tumblr today significantly different from tumblr 3 years ago?
― iatee, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:32 (Yesterday) Permalink
like after the site was successfully cobbled together and hit it big what did tumblr do other than not fuck up the formula?
― iatee, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:33 (Yesterday) Permalink
there's way more porn now
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:34 (Yesterday) Permalink
what did tumblr do other than not fuck up the formula?
I presume what they did was scale it up enormously, which doesn't look like much from the user's side of things, but takes a lot of management skill. Also, not fucking up the formula requires an understanding of what it was about the formula that works and what would fuck it up; the urge to fuck up the formula is not easy to resist, because it always presents itself in the guise of becoming more awesome, or more sellable, or more (insert desirable trait).
― Aimless, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:41 (Yesterday) Permalink
clearly idg how anything in this business works. how does tumblr make money, even theoretically, in the future? what is yahoo paying for?
― goole, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:43 (Yesterday) Permalink
i don't get what blogger does for google either, except work as another ad platform. is that it for yahooblr?
― goole, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:44 (Yesterday) Permalink
only yahoo knows what yahoo was thinking - maybe eyeballs and harvestable data?
― Aimless, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:47 (Yesterday) Permalink
so off topic
― iatee, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:49 (Yesterday) Permalink
oh ha whoops, i was just clicking thru bookmarks and didn't see what actual thread this was
― goole, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 19:50 (Yesterday) Permalink
Aimless is right--Tumblr refined the blog in quite a few ways but yes scaling (and keeping performance metrics) were high on the list of accomplishments. Mainly I would suspect the management skill was managing engineers and sys arch people. 175 employees is no easy task, not to mention 100million visitors. Tumblr found the sweet spot and kept adding users (until last November, when they started to lose them).
― now is not the time for motorboating (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 20:02 (Yesterday) Permalink
http://adage.com/article/creativity-pick-of-the-day/give-jobless-millennial-edge-a-free-yearly-businessweek/241634/
― iatee, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 20:11 (Yesterday) Permalink
millennials. what a cracked up bunch.
― Spectrum, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 20:14 (Yesterday) Permalink
Read "While giving millennials grief is highly entertaining" as "While millennials grief is highly entertaining" and almost lost my shit.
― ENERGY FOOD (en i see kay), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 20:40 (Yesterday) Permalink
both thru imho
― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 21:06 (Yesterday) Permalink
sorry iatee, didn't want this to be about tumblr
― Van Horn Street, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 21:18 (Yesterday) Permalink
it's okay, it's relevant that the average net worth of millenials went up this week
― iatee, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 21:21 (Yesterday) Permalink