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

I live out in the middle of the sticks and I hate the isolation.

I am also a child of immigrants and yeah there's something to that. I think that's one reason why I like big cities - it offers people a sense of place without requiring any connection from the person in return

that's an interesting idea, I've never heard it phrased like that

I've never felt like more of an outsider than when I've lived in small cities. The history of people is generally impenetrable; nothing worse than sitting at a social gathering listening to nothing but "remember when" conversations. In big cities I can get lost in everything going on around me.

My dream has always been to live in an apartment in a city. Sadly, I'm married to a man who is dead set against it (he actually suggested living in an RV in a city trailer park as an alternative!).

what's his reason? just a cultural thing?

every thread I start turns into the suburbs thread

totally euler's fault tho

It's because his dream is to live in the middle of nowhere.

But a city trailer park does seem like a compromise, unless you're thinking any place that would have a trailer park does not qualify as a city.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/will-dropouts-save-america.html

all college students should just drop out and start multi-billion dollar computer companies - y/n

Well, one thing that colleges can teach is critical thinking, which might have been of some help to the author of that strange piece. I think I expect too much out of the New York Times these days.

Not a shock, the author is one of those bizarro "business gurus". http://www.powerofeyecontact.com/

http://media.linkedin.com/mpr/pub/image-GB_zBD8gFRyhjJpHA4PTB-FqwUGaioiHIOAhB7KqSkkl9Y6c/michael-ellsberg.jpg

Eurgh

If the availability of student loans contracts, or if students are less willing to take those loans, I would guess the non-prestige big private unis will be taking an enrollment hit, if they don't differentiate their environments from public schools. This is just a random thought I had on this topic he other day.

Also occurs to me that plenty of places likely won't even do something to lower the nominal tuition price. As long as there's still at least one student who can afford full pay, they will cheerfully extract it from them, even if the average discount rate goes up.

yeah I think non-prestige private unis are gonna be at the forefront of the crisis, cause they've always been offering a luxury product - the idea that they're offering a luxury product (rather than a 'better investment') is finally reaching the mainstream.

lowering tuition is difficult when you have fixed costs dependent on that tuition, but there are only so many rich people interested in non-prestige private unis in the country.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-dangerous-are-college-rankings-and-the-rat-race-for-prestige/245850/

^ complicating factors for those schools. people will always secretly believe that more expensive things are better and the race for that elusive prestige signal is expensive.

schools should charge a sliding tuition based on their national rankings

"non-prestige private unis" are prob gonna take a big hit---glad I don't work for one---unless they can get kids jobs that pay better than state unis, or if the bad guys kill our public unis.

the prob is public unis are gonna have increasing enrollment regardless in the future as they're increasingly considered 'the pragmatic decision' - so they can be defunded again and again before they'll actually start losing students.

that's true but there's a lower bound on how defunded they can get (we're playing with that already)

http://persephonemagazine.com/2011/10/dont-even-get-me-started-mythical-bootstraps-college-student/

http://chronicle.com/article/The-US-Should-Adopt/129504/

we were talking about migration in this thread?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/us/americans-migration-patterns-shifting.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/education/cooper-union-may-charge-tuition-to-undergraduates.html

RIP cooper union ;_;

founded in 1859 to provide free education for the working class

lol that game's been over for a while

But here's a revenue idea: contract students out for arch/engineering jobs and make them work for free. Call it an internship.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities-why-are-they-failing/

Despite the grabby headline, that article at least calls out the writers of the myopic Jeremiads for what they are.

I need to learn more about this bit of data:

Their results are sobering. The Collegiate Learning Assessment reveals that some 45 percent of students in the sample had made effectively no progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in their first two years. And a look at their academic experience helps to explain why. […] Half the students in the sample had not taken a course that required more than twenty pages of writing in the previous semester, while a third had not even taken a course that required as much as forty pages a week of reading. […] two points come through with striking clarity. First, traditional subjects and methods seem to retain their educational value. Nowadays the liberal arts attract a far smaller proportion of students than they did two generations ago. Still, those majoring in liberal arts fields—humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics—outperformed those studying business, communications, and other new, practical majors on the CLA..

The goddamn liberal arts are still the foundation of our goddamn civic society, is what my takeaway is.

My problem: I don't have a degree. In anything. I should get one so that I can go farther in society. I'd prefer to get something like General Studies or Liberal Arts, something that gives me a good background in life. I know that no one takes either one of those degrees seriously. What should I do?

Sorry to drag this off topic.

my honest to god advice is to put a fake BA on your resume from somewhere inconspicuous and believable

that said, I know your situation right now is kinda shitty and there are things to be said about actually learning shit for 4(+...) years. you should look into the very cheapest public university you can find (generally = 2 years at cc -> transfer). you'd qualify for pell grants and there are actually *tons* of scholarships out there in america, some of them are pretty obscure and few people apply to them.

student loans are a devil, but if you only took gov't loans and planned ahead to pay them back w/ IBR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_Based_Repayment) you could be alright even if you didn't find yourself in a fantastic situation after your degree. IBR is new and I think some people think it won't last forever.

but 'going to college' might actually be a decent way out of your life situation, come to think of it. the process more than the career options afterwards.

Their results are sobering. The Collegiate Learning Assessment reveals that some 45 percent of students in the sample had made effectively no progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in their first two years. And a look at their academic experience helps to explain why. […] Half the students in the sample had not taken a course that required more than twenty pages of writing in the previous semester, while a third had not even taken a course that required as much as forty pages a week of reading. […] two points come through with striking clarity. First, traditional subjects and methods seem to retain their educational value. Nowadays the liberal arts attract a far smaller proportion of students than they did two generations ago. Still, those majoring in liberal arts fields—humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics—outperformed those studying business, communications, and other new, practical majors on the CLA..

― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Saturday, November 5, 2011 10:37 PM Bookmark

This strikes me as a bit misleading though -- since when are "natural sciences" and "mathematics" considered part of the liberal arts? And since when is communications considered a "practical" major -- I always thought that was liberal arts lite.

"liberal arts" is just supposed to be "general knowledge"--science is a liberal art! "humanities" and "liberal arts" are not the same thing

& ive always thought of communications as a practical major. its where ppl go to become like... ppl who work in "marketing."

I've heard many people knocking college over the past few months (touring in a band in the southeast, so maybe it's a demographic thing). I knew an arts degree "wouldn't amount to anything" but went ahead and got my B.A. and I learned many wonderful things, had some inspirational teachers, got to study in Egypt, and in general had my worldview opened up. I wouldn't take any of that back. Plus, having a degree went good on my resume and no doubt helped me get some work.

I do think things are changing though, with student finance laws, with tuition rising and program cutbacks. Back when I was in school, I had HOPE cover tuition and got a couple grand per semester from the Pell Grant, so I could work part-time and still afford to go to school. And have the spare time needed for studies. I think if I ever go back, it's going to have to be in another country.

& ive always thought of communications as a practical major. its where ppl go to become like... ppl who work in "marketing."

I've always thought of communications as the sorority girl version of a business major (at least at my school...)...it's practical insomuch as it might signal to certain employers that you're someone who was more interested in getting a job than learning for the sake of learning, but at the same time it doesn't actually give you a real skill

I don't think the people who give them jobs usually think that. They're probably communications, business or hospitality majors themselves, so they're not going to be snobs about it.

totally, that's not their actual thought process, but there's still this unconscious signaling game going on. even if it's just 'this person is demonstrating that they think more like me and picked a *practical* major* because we are *practical* people'

incidentally people getting business/communications/etc. degrees are probably a 'bigger part of the college bubble' (if we want to look at it like that) than humanities majors

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/figures/fig_15.asp?referrer=figures

communications is a made-up major for girls who arent rich/hip enough to major in art history

what do we think about girls who major in psychology

psych is the 'I like learning but I have absolutely no clue what I want to major in' major, tho I do know multiple girls who are now in psych phds so maybe they actually like it

^^had a long conversation with an old friend who is in the midst of her psychology phd. pretty sure i made some cracks back in the day when she was an undergrad, but she's sure shown me.

one hopes they like it, if they're doing PhDs xp

that was a p shitty post i dont know why im so sour this morning

i have lots of advanced opinions abt 'practical' majors but it mostly just boils down to the fact that a lot less ppl should be going to university than currently do

i'm doing a masters in critical theory

I think this thread more or less agrees with you on that last point. xp

plax I hope you aren't paying money for that

unless you are like wealthy or whatever in which case neat

anything that can be described as "practical" is stupid

i'm not a very practical person