generation limbo: 20-somethings today, debt, unemployment, the questionable value of a college education

yeah it seems sort of unfair to call the students you teach "unambitious," Euler; it seems more like they're inheriting a really uncertain future that likely adults in their lives have not fully understood/been explicit with them about. i can understand head-in-the-sand-i'll-just-ratchet-down-my-expectations responses to that even if they're not the best response.

xp what iatee said

I'm an unambitious college student, but at least I'm an electrical engineering major and not a philosophy major.

I have lots of extremely smart multilingual friends who are good at math and the only ones who are abroad these days are teaching english, not starting the malaysian facebook

re. how many kids want to pay that much to learn say philo; a fair number! we get them jobs because they learn how to write well & how to reason well; other degrees besides math & maybe bio I'm inclined to agree about.

I don't think it's "our university system" that's failing these kids, I think it's our culture, our parenting, our cultivation, our attention, that's failing these kids

there is more student loan debt in america than credit card debt

that's a failed system

I know how to fix it
more credit cards for everyone

BOOM

& another thing: going to college at least used to be a decision for the risk-averce: high costs, high opportunity costs, with pretty much a guarantee of steady if not spectacular repayment of that risk. so we tend not to get the "entrepreneurial" types nor do we train people to be entrepreneurial. we train the future servants of the corporate state. so horseshoe's right: it's a lot to expect college students to have figured out that this has changed, that the costs aren't gonna buy off life's risks. but we need to do that, somehow.

crut, i predict a future for you in designing and making thousand dollar analog synthesizers for the hipster offspring of Lamp's shoe-buyers

there is a part of me that def identifies w/ euler's POV, insofar as i think cultivating risk-taking as a skillset would potentially bear fruit in brave nu world of lame economy

and the underlying assumption is that anybody could teach, given the opportunity and necessity. It's the only job in the world that everybody thinks they know how to do!

increasingly folks think the same thing about lawyers. why do you think legalzoom and handling cases as a pro se litigant are so popular?!?

like, and that can be as simple as encouraging/mandating multilinguilism and labor mobility around the world, i don't know

xp

cultivating risk-taking as a skillset would potentially bear fruit in brave nu world of lame economy

In order for people to be motivated to take risks, apart from having thrill-seeking brain chemistry or something, they need to start from a place where the outcome of a failure to act is WORSE than the outcome of the failure of the endeavor. P much risk-taking starts with things being really shitty. So I guess we're on the right path?

some start-up $$$ isn't bad, either.

universal health care makes starting a business a lot less risky

In order for people to be motivated to take risks, apart from having thrill-seeking brain chemistry or something, they need to start from a place where the outcome of a failure to act is WORSE than the outcome of the failure of the endeavor. P much risk-taking starts with things being really shitty. So I guess we're on the right path?

― brb recalibrating my check engine light (Laurel), Saturday, September 3, 2011 1:35 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think so!

Primary text for study: Simplicius Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen.

what types of businesses are we talking about, here? Etsy storefronts and things like Elfster?

Buying children and selling the parts.

I think about this stuff all the time not only b/c of my job but because I have kids, & because of my egalitarian leanings I'm somewhat ambiguous about it but I think my kids are gonna do super well in this brave new jobless world b/c they've lived in other countries, speak multiple languages fluently, are super smart especially at math, & have a sense of how "wide" the world is: so that if what's needed is to open a business in say Malaysia they're just gonna do it---this is that whole "new global elite" thing that I posted about sometimes, & it's pretty much gonna rule to be those people, so I dunno

lol i wonder if my parents sd the same thing and ive spent the last couple of years living below the poverty line

i do think that the academy cant really do much abt the relationship of labor to capital in a ~globalized economy~, nor really can how you raise yr kids (other than to be wise and realistic abt the world i guess), im genuinely ambivalent abt the ability of real wages to increase in the next ten years period idk

universal health care would be a huge boon toward encouraging the kind of risk-taking I'm envisioning

Buying children and selling the parts.

Oh yeah that's the other thing that happens to street kids whose parents don't have the resources to secure their children's futures.

re: what kind of businesses/ventures: honest answer, i don't know...maybe more nanotech engineers taking root in developing countries, expats starting tex-mex restaurants in mumbai, more nonprofits starting schools for girls oprah style, dollar and a dream type shit

my secret dream is to start a good burrito place in paris

nobody steal it

nobody fucks with my masala dosa with refritos and guacamole

a non-ilxor just posted this on my wall

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/the_college_forprofits_should031640.php?page=all&print=true

the guy that article's about seems like an amazing dude

unrelated to the subject at hand but still, wkiw

if he had any free time

maybe this is heedless point scoring against the eisbars and morbs of the political threads but i dont see how you can read about how the obama admin finally held for-profit colleges accountable in that article & say that even if you were in a battleground state you wouldnt vote for him in the coming election -- / continue in other thread

iatee, thankin u for that link. Just posted it to my brother, who has two degrees in film production and is looking at getting a teaching cert instead.

The chief regulatory threat to the for-profits coalesced in the form of something called the “gainful employment rule.” The federal Higher Education Act states that, in order to be eligible for federal aid money, career-oriented schools must “prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation.” And so the Education Department set out to define “gainful employment” as a ratio of student loan debt to income. If students weren’t earning enough in the workforce to service their debts after leaving a school, the idea went, then the school should not be eligible for aid. The very premise of the rule shook the foundations of the for-profits’ business model. Their stocks dropped to four-year lows.

ya, felt a lot better about obama's ed policy after reading that, altho i still think arne duncan sux

Those who do graduate from Western Governors credit their mentors with being the single biggest factor in their success. Playing a role with no real analog in the wider world of higher education, WGU’s mentors operate from home offices and kitchen tables scattered across the country. (But unlike the armies of adjuncts and graduate students who do most of the teaching at both for-profit and traditional schools, mentors work full-time with benefits.)

not a big fan of arne duncan either

that's an awesome school! seems like more of a 'supplement' to the traditional 4 year college rather than a replacement, so far

a supplement when we're looking at 'the american college system', but on an individual level it would be a replacement for some people, and ultimately, some schools. harvard will exist in some form 20 years from now - the best 'signal' money can buy, a gdp-sized endowment, rich people are doin alright etc. etc.

but can public and private schools outside of the 'admissions tournament' 10% survive if a significant % of 18 y/os decide that WGU (etc.) is a better investment? esp w/ a political culture that seems intent on reducing both public subsidies to universities and research.

right - but as the article mentioned, the worst performing of WGU enrollments were precisely the 18 y/o fresh high school grad demographic. of course there could be many explanations for that - if it could draw on a larger pool of students than it does now, picking up some of those whom are now going to mediocre 4 year colleges, that might change things.

otoh the question with online learning is where does the motivation come from - it's easy to see where it does for the person profiled in the article and others in his age range, it's a little harder to conjure up for younger people. but hey, like we've been suggesting in this thread - maybe 2-3 years of independence after high school will be enough to motivate twenty somethings to go back to school and get a degree?

also the assessment/competency based system will lend itself better to certain subjects and not others - not sure how some of the subjects traditionally taught in the liberal arts would be, for example.

not trying to shit on the school! just thinking some things through. but some cynics would say that all they've done so far is create a cheaper, online (and more efficient) version of night school.

(also, don't mean to denigrate night school or adult education in any way! just trying to place it in context of this discussion.)

one big problem with college is that up until people turn like 21-22 they are all huge morons no matter what theyre doing

p much true

hence my big "work on a farm" plan

also solves: obesity, bullying, having to see teenagers out on the street

aww but teenagers can be so amusingly earnest about their weird little lives sometimes!

you can be one of the supervising farmers

it'd have to be a web app farm

you could call it max's adventure orchestra (mao for short)

Uhh nothing from kindergarden on up teaches the on-the-fly skills you'd need to make yr way in the world in another country, without significant (family) assets behind you. My experience w education is exactly the opposite -- they rly don't want to have to deal with kids who have traits that wd suit them for quick thinking/acting or high levels of adventure/excitement/flexibility.

― brb recalibrating my check engine light (Laurel), Saturday, 3 September 2011 19:16 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean if you want yr children to be world adventurers, take them out of school, move to Mozambique, and make them be friends with street kids who'll teach them how to pick pockets and lie convincingly.

― brb recalibrating my check engine light (Laurel), Saturday, 3 September 2011 19:17 (4 hours ago)

haw

very good