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

college should start at age like 26 probably

i would be so much better at college now than i was back then

yeah i appreciated the last two years of my undergrad way more than the first two and i'm actually excited to be in school now

euler's tirade against the lazy generation ignores what I said earlier- most of his students have absolutely nothing to gain from working very hard in his course! (other than personal betterment - but surprisesurprise that's not why most people are paying tuition)

if the top 20% of his class were guaranteed good jobs - similar to the situation at a lot of law schools - there'd be incentive to turn in the best goddamn paper you could write. (watched 'the paper chase' a few nights ago...good movie)

right now there are two groups who are gonna do well:
a. do really really really care about plato
b. want to go to grad school or one of a handful of careers where yr gpa matters

the rest prob want white collar jobs and an A+ in your class is really not gonna directly affect their prospects at one. there's really no reason not for them to be out having fun. maybe they should care about plato cause plato is pretty interesting but that's not why they're there. they're not lazy, they're rational w/r/t the value of their time.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_dropout_factories.php?page=all

i basically had no idea there were tertiary institutions anywhere in the world with < 50% graduation rates until i read this.

I wanna see the list of dropout factories that went with that article because based on the comments they accidentally put Concordia College in MN on it

iatee that's nonsense: they're not rational with their time, they're fucking around, playing video games, getting wasted, watching tv. that's rational? for fuck's sake they could learn how to write! or fucking scrub dishes, if they're not going to learn to use their minds.

I mean if your point is that most people don't want to be part of the ~knowledge economy~ then fine; but I gather you're prepared to see massive wage drops compared to now? if I'm a business owner I don't want to pay some know-nothing good coin to enter data into a computer; I want someone with ideas & energy to carry those out. & you don't develop those playing xbox or watching Jersey Shore while cased out on Schlitz.

Listen, when you work as an office drone, having ideas will kill ya.

getting wasted and interacting w/ modern technology is prob more related to the life of a modern office worker than reading about plato

I'm sorry but you expect everyone to be steve jobs or something, yes I am prepared for massive wage drops and your field is included in that btw

yeah that's just a failure of imagination, on your part & on the part of so-called college students today. no wonder everyone's depressed these days!

i.e. tl;dr; goodbye America

I'd like some evidence that hard-working philosophy majors have been something that contributed new *ideas and energy* to the american economy, iirc they just become lawyers

why are you hung up on philosophy majors

cause euler's a philosophy prof complaining about his lazy students

ah, so you're using the rhetorical stratagem known as "being a dick"

i feel like ive lost the thread somewhere, what are the two sides of this argument

you could start with "what do philosophy majors do" About 5,940,000 results (0.21 seconds)

& yes this oughtn't just be about philosophy; I think it's nuts to say it's rational for people to waste their time rather than work hard at learning (& yes I'm aware that I'm on this message board right now rather than writing today's lecture but this is a kind of meta-work for me right now as I try to sort out how to handle my classes today).

euler: our generation is lazy / has a failure of imagination / needs ~ideas and energy~, his evidence is some people in his class go out and party and play xbox
me: sorry dude they don't really have any reason to care about your class they just want a BA, that is why they are there, this is nothing new btw, they might not have been there 30 years ago when they coulda gotten a decent job w/o a BA

as I understood the argument, iatee's claiming that it's more rational for future "office drones" (his expression) to fuck around than to work hard at university

I disagree

I think "office drone" may actually have been my expression but carry on.

making personal connections + being sociable is more important to your future job prospects than being rly good at writing papers on socrates

another one of those 'true value of college' things

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also iatee you act as though as a BA has no value aside from signaling which I guess is your "conceit" on this thread but I'm saying: it's not just that you have a BA, but what you learned getting it, that gives you value. are you saying that you wish students could just go to class & give minimal effort & get great jobs w/o investing intellectual effort? because if so, I think I understand what you're longing for, where you're really coming from, at least.

Great jobs?? I think they'd be okay with just getting JOBS remotely in their field of study.

Euler's point, though, is that getting a job in your field of study when you never actually studied it is... somewhat entitled.

right; he said decent jobs, that's fine too: minimal intellectual effort, decent jobs, that's the dream that this country was founded on, right?

is this just longing for blue collar America, get a factory job making solid buck? or do you want the jobs of the 90s, white collar management / consulting type work for the minimal effort folks?

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this has nothing to do with what I 'wish', we're looking at the situation irl for your students

I think a BA has value beyond signaling, just more personal-fulfillment type value than value that'd directly translate to the workplace. generally. it's a good experience and people should make the most of it. I loved college, sometimes I think I'm giving the impression that I didn't.

but someone who's there entirely for signaling reasons is not crazy or even necessarily lazy. it's not entirely irrational to not care about that personal-fulfillment aspect!

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euler teaches in a field where there is literally no job in the field beyond teaching more people about the field.

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I think there's a distinction between "great" jobs and just jobs...people at the top part of the field will obv be those who excelled in their studies, but they will burn out and die if they have to do all the immeasurably boring and repetitive grunt-work done at the bottom of their field, so those jobs are structurally slated for those less ambitious, less studious.

I'm on hold w my dental insurance so I'm a little fragmented but that's roughly where I was going.

It's not merely personal fulfillment, though; you can actually develop skills! like how to write clearly! how to work with statistics! how to plan & set up & run & interpret experiments!

iatee has no idea what majors in my field go on to do but if he wants to do the search I recommended he'll see

what you're calling IRL: as though that's independent of the attitudes toward learning & accomplishment amongst students! what you're calling "the real world", I'm calling a failure of imagination. likely the truth is somewhere between but I think it's a lot closer to me than you.

is this just longing for blue collar America, get a factory job making solid buck? or do you want the jobs of the 90s, white collar management / consulting type work for the minimal effort folks?

I'm not doing any longing I'm just trying to understand what's going on in the world. I don't see someone working hard in your class as something that's gonna affect their economic future in a significant way. why not play xbox? they're there for a piece of paper w/ important signaling power not because they think it's worth paying tuition to hear you talk about plato. as long as that's the case, you don't get to complain about their work ethic.

we don't have to write-off an education in the humanities - we could work on having more employers see the advantage in hiring people who can think critically

but there is def major grade inflation in the humanities, hard to see if a lit major got her degree the right way or by writing about how much she really sympathized with molly bloom

iatee's approaching this from the other side of 'what does the job market look like/what does it require.' you can obv argue for the value of a good education in and of itself without any consideration of whether or not it'll get you a job. then the question becomes, what value should we pay for an education in and of itself. $40k a year? seems high.

again I think a good contrast is law school where how well you do *very very directly* affects your economic future. and people work pretty hard! you can argue that there's a difference cause that's a professional program but really it isn't in the way we teach law.

I don't really know where iatee is coming from, actually. What he's calling "what's going on in the world", as if it's an immutable fact, I think is wrong. If students are putting in minimal intellectual effort, then why should an employer want to hire them?

maybe you just had lousy professors or a silly major? I don't really get the resentment here.

his point is that students do sometimes put in a great deal of intellectual effort at their philosophy majors but graduate and face the same job prospects as someone who cased a 6 pack of schlitz while playing battlefield i.e. 0

wait euler are you implying that unemployment is high because kids dont get good grades in college?

I know you live somewhere where panera will pay somebody $20 to slice bread but there are many parts of the country, where fresh grads graduate and they can't get jobs that are commensurate with how hard they worked in college!

it's not about grades, because of grade inflation. if we had realistic grading & mediocre students got Cs, then maybe grades would be enough. as it is, grade-hungry students without any appetite for knowledge or self-motivated drive end up striking out because what can they contribute to this economy? maybe in the 90s just showing up was enough. it's not now.

does that mean I'm wishing everyone were Steve Jobs? no, just come to class! do your homework! come to my office with questions! ask questions in class!

I'm probably just repeating now what DJP said yesterday concerning the infantilization of Western culture.

?? how does a philosophy major differentiate between grade-hungry students and those with an "appetite for knowledge" or who have "self-motivated drive"?

euler, in terms of employment prospects/"investment", how does a philosophy major justify itself?

as it is, grade-hungry students without any appetite for knowledge or self-motivated drive end up striking out because what can they contribute to this economy?

heh, this is a pretty.... unique explanation for unemployment

again I loved going to college and I went basically for free, I'm not personally bitter about how things went, but you should check the 99% tumblr if you want evidence that there are about a million people who are very disillusioned. the most disillusioned are the ones who *did work hard and don't see the fruits of their labor*. maybe they worked hard ~the wrong way~ but if there's any evidence w/r/t what ~working hard the wrong way~ is, it'd point to working hard during your 'mostly a signal' BA.

the fact that people in your generation are so incapable of understanding how the general dynamic has shifted so violently is amazing! and sad!

I'm not sure how you miss this again and again: employers don't want to hire lazy people but at the same time don't judge work ethic based on how they did in your class. internships, jobs, outside of class stuff generally gets more attention. that is pretty good evidence that the market doesn't currently place much value in 'how hard you worked in class' and considers it mostly just a hurdle to jump over.

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and again, a clear contrast is the law market. that's a market w/ a ridiculous dynamics for its own reasons (and again a place where this generations has things so, so, so much worse) but it's a job market that directly rewards working hard in class.

I don't think a philosophy degree is worthless btw I actually was accepted to college as one! didn't go w/ it tho.

good grief it's not "how hard you worked in class" that I'm talking about, but rather: did you make anything of that effort? do you see what you majored in as constructing some skill set that you can use to do work you value enough to warrant doing it, & that employers warrant? philo majors are doing fine enough (ours are, at least those who haven't sleepwalked through their degrees, & I'm not talking about service jobs).

keep in mind if it were up to me I'd eliminate all degrees except math, philosophy, & maybe physics and/or biology. I value skill-teaching over content-teaching, & think undergrads should have a pretty good idea after their first couple of years of what sort of work they envision. I think faculty & universities generally should help undergrads with this, but ultimately it's the student's responsibility to think through this for herself, & if she's too young to do so, that's not our problem.

you can use to do work you value enough to warrant doing it, & that employers warrant?

do you see that there can be a pretty big disconnect between the first half and the second half of this sentence?

and your viewpoint begs the question - the person who is self-aware enough to do that in college doesn't need college - she is steve jobs!

there's a disconnect between the first & second half mainly because we teach people to ~follow their dreams~ when thinking about careers / majors. Which is a mistake. Follow the money.

my view doesn't beg that question: I take it that students have some feeling for what they value, & we can help them shape that into practical career choices. If we did our job right, of course.

so euler your big theory of the economy right now is "recent college grads are unemployed because they dont know what they value and havent developed skill sets because they were lazy in college"?

okay, so what employers value the skill of talking intelligently about plato

I mean, under your view the logical step would be for high school grads to jump directly into employment after graduation - what better way to learn the skills that employers value than actually going to work for that employer and being forcefed those skills directly?

nobody is doing 'fine enough', the fact that you can even think that is astounding. I don't know where exactly you live and maybe the white collar job market is (in the short-run btw) a little better there but I personally know 'hard working' philosophy majors from name schools who are struggling. (I also know some who are famous bloggers otoh.)

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