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

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

i suppose it proves tom friedman isn't a sociopath because he has never had a great idea like that

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?

I mean the core motivation comes from the same place as their motivation to go to a normal 4 year school - better job prospects. kids also like the frills that come w/ traditional college - campus, sports, social life, whatever. but the frills are not why people are going into 6 figure debt.

and if colleges start competing on price, frills are the first thing to go

I'm not sure every freshman enters college with "better job prospects" as his number one motivator

I'm not sure every freshman enters college with "better job prospects" as his number one motivator

― dayo, Saturday, September 3, 2011 6:41 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark

i think its more 'my parents said this is what you should do'

'bone some hotties'

"COLLLEEEEEGGEEEEEE" *kegstand*

I'm not sure every freshman enters college with "better job prospects" as his number one motivator

maybe not but if 'better job prospects' didn't exist, the whole concept falls apart pretty fast. whereas people do go to schools without football teams. and without cute girls. people go to commuter schools w/ no social life.

sure, but lots of people take out loans to go to those third and fourth tier 'idyllic' 'pastoral' colleges just to enjoy the 'college experience' that's as much a media and cultural phenomenon as it is an economic one

sometimes i think itd be nice to time travel back to like the early 60s and go to college cuz like the classes were smaller and probably more fun and expectations were lower and everyone dressed so nicely and you could take six months off ofter you finished to kick it in france on the cheap and no1 wld give a fuck cuz you wouldnt even have a resume, youd just work in the office of whomever yr dad played golf w/

then i realize that no1 wld be friends w/ me and i couldnt text and sleeping w/ cute dudes wld be a cumbersome trial and i realize how much better it is now 2day

that's a good point, but I think the media/cultural phenomenon is gonna shift a bit when we have a national student debt crisis

everyone would be friends with you, you would be from 50 years in the future and would be the smartest human being alive

bring an iphone

i would be burned as a witch

hopefully a national student debt crisis would lead to legislation that would allow student loans to be forgiven

also legislation leading to free iphones for everybody

40 iphones and a mule

when i do i want to be buried w/ 1000 ipads like an ancient chinese emperor

just showing up in heaven giving out ipads 2 every1... hey jesus want to play angry birds?? well NOW YOU CAN

but maybe heaven is like an ivy league campus in the 50s... no jews or gay ppl

no women either

hopefully a national student debt crisis would lead to legislation that would allow student loans to be forgiven

I don't think this would happen without significant reforms that clamped down on the current situation easy money paying for colleges that get more expensive ever year / 4 years of kegstands in a 4th tier rural paradise might not be as easy for a lower-middle class person

but then again we paid for the financial crisis w/o regulating away the biggest moral hazards, so who knows

situation of

if we do forgive student loans I'm gonna be pretty pissed I didn't go to grad school

this board is now just a bunch of rich college kids

― chaki

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

so, b/c a politician arguably does one good thing then i should just drop to my knees and worship him even if he's done a zillion not-so-good things?!? by that measure, the only politician in my lifetime who hasn't passed that test would be Dubya.

what a pathetic, weak argument for Obama that is ... even for you.

seriously, dude, yer nothing but a cheap Chinese-made knockoff of Ethan ... without the wit, intelligence or class.

had no idea deej was chinese

no but he was made there

tremdendous work from the computational linguistics dept of the chinese secret services

nakhchivan I want to read one of your books pls post link to relevant amazon links kthxbye

damn

I don't wanna get aggro and shit about it but I too don't get "I don't see how you can read about this good thing an elected official did and say you wouldn't vote for him" - there is literally not one elected official in the history of the country who doesn't deserve your vote if that's how you make the calculations.

none such xxp

nakh fess the fuck up

bide your time. nakhchivan will have a book someday, but not quite yet. unquestionably he has that aroma about him, but he's not quite ripened enough.

I don't wanna get aggro and shit about it but I too don't get "I don't see how you can read about this good thing an elected official did and say you wouldn't vote for him" - there is literally not one elected official in the history of the country who doesn't deserve your vote if that's how you make the calculations.

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, September 4, 2011 11:23 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think there's a pretty distinctive pattern of obama having done more good things than his predecessor that, being the crassly cynical person i am, adds up to a better life for lots of ppl than if i choose not to vote bcuz im so angry at the crass cynical nature of politicians

but we've had this debate before

dont know what eisbar's problem is but while i like morbs & aerosmith as posters i find his posts in the political threads to be the most annoying & kneejerk, w/out any real humanity behind them. youre the dreadlocked dude on my college campus convinced that gore & bush are the same person

like, eisbar is consistently the worst on those threads, a bunch of generic rage & frankly youre the one w/ the ethan obsession

Black men

http://www.economist.com/node/21528226

generation lmbo

A recent study from Georgetown University’s Centre on Education and the Workforce argues that “obtaining a post-secondary credential is almost always worth it.”

ehhh complicated

other than that I think that's a pretty good take on the big picture in 9 paragraphs

quality xp

yeah I wish I had used that title for this thread g1

It seems like our global society really doesn't know what to do with the efficiencies created by automation. Or rather, efficiency is captured by the ownership class as profit rather than used to give humans a lot more free time I guess.