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

the two are linked as college gets more expensive and the end result becomes less of a sure thing, 'the way out of poverty' is now just its own type of poverty xp

yeah that's a big reason why why the hs dropout is unemployed xp

why why why

> maybe some peoples' 2.3 gpas will haunt them more in that future?

After your first job or so, I don't know if anyone ever cares about your GPA again?

also, don't remember if this was posted yet: http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/just-dont-go-the-sequel/30693

that's partly due to your ability to hide it, if we have permanent online resumes, every stain from your past might be online somewhere

Facebook Timeline iirc

I mean, for real, you can probably tell most employers "yeah, I partied too much in college, but when I hit the real world I got myself together, and since then I've x y and z" and they'd wonder why you're even telling them about college.

Unless they're just looking for excuses to cut people, which has more to do with the economy &c. than anything else, then why would they care? Like Don Draper always sez, it will shock you how much it never happened.

I think that is true atm but less true in our linkedin-timeline world where your resume, academic and (just as much) work history is gonna be less in your own hands

this is just my crazy futurist predictions and not super important tho

I think the other thing college students get shafted on is lack of "experience." Dan's right in that CS degrees were (and to an extent, are) a golden ticket of sorts but most companies still don't want to hire a fresh from college guy these days. Once you get 2-3 years under your belt it's like job city, but finding the places that will hire you right out of school can be tricky.

I guess it's like that for a lot of jobs, but with even less demand and no particular skills requirement

failure to understand alcibiades' lust for socrates

Nothing simpler. By the same token as cannibals, who think they can absorb the virtues of their enemies by eating their choicest parts, Alcibiades felt (it was not a rational matter) that seducing Socrates would set a royal seal upon his powers of persuasion - and the power of seductive persuasion was the keystone of Alcibiades' career.

*gives aimless a job*

(aimless tuckshis thumbs under his galluses and beams benevolently)

http://bigthink.com/ideas/41034?page=all

I've got a good bit of student-loan debt myself, acquired studying philosophy in grad school. And then I dropped out before finishing my Ph.D.! Well, I don't regret it. Sometimes in grad school you'll hear students and faculty both speak with a certain dread of "the real world." It turns out, however, that universities aren't actually located outside this here space-time continuum, but are part of the real world, and a pretty great part, too, if you're lucky enough to get into it. I don't know that when I took out student loans to help support myself that I thought I was taking some kind of "gamble." I knew I was redistributing income from my future to my present self, and not really because I needed the money to make an investment that would payoff, but because I wanted to study philosophy and I couldn't otherwise afford it. I was buying the rarefied leisure of grad school and knowledge of philosophy. Now I know all about philosophy, will for the rest of my live, and I love it! Did I get some remunerative skills in the bargain? I reckon I did. I certainly sharpened my analytical and argumentative abilities, which came in handy as a think-tank fellow, and come in handy now as a semi-employed blogger for The Economist and Big Think. But so what! I spent years reading and thinking about Aristotle and Kant and Quine and Rawls, which is not everyone's idea of a holiday, but I'll always treasure that time in my life, and I've got more to show for it than a scrapbook of exotic snapshots. It remade my mind.

Now, what I'm not about to do is pitch a tent on America's lawn and complain that "the system" has done me wrong. That would be insane. I studied painting and drawing at State U on an art scholarship. I studied philosophy at two more State Us, subsidized by taxpayers the whole way, either in the form of tuition waivers (for being a graduate teaching assistant, a job that doesn't really ask that much of you, to be honest) or in the form of cheap loans I certainly couldn't have landed on the market. ("Please, sir: I have an art degree with a mediocre GPA, and I would like your bank to give me some money to read Roderick Chisholm. Please?") "The system" gave me a very nice time, and helped me accumulate some rather luxurious if not exceedingly practical "human capital." So I'm not complaining about debt-slavery or anything moronic like that.

he's the success story of someone in his position - can pay the bills, enjoys his work, even uses his analytical skills - but at the same time he misses the tragic aspect. the 'success story' - a semi-employed blogger has very little career security, probably can't really imagine buying property, etc. who knows, maybe he can bank on conservative think tanks employing him for the rest of his life. maybe his blog will get huge or he'll write a best seller.

but in reality
a. not everyone who drops out of a philosophy phd w/ tons of student debt can get a part-time blog at the economist
b. even people like him who 'made it' are often in precarious financial situations w/ unclear long-term prospects

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577030562170562088.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

when the WSJ sounds the siren...

"It shouldn't cost this amount of money for higher education," he said. "Class size of ten is not necessary for students to learn."

this comment must be from 1975 or soemthing

haha

dunno why the AEI funded this, but it's a good look at the consumer information problems w/r/t college

http://www.educationsector.org/sites/default/files/publications/HigherEdDisclosure_RELEASE.pdf

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/3188138/

this is just personal anecdata, but everybody i know who went to nyu is doing pretty well now. that said, most of them graduated in the '90s.

nyu tuition 1995: $19,798
nyu tuition 2011: $41,606

I like how they (legally) have to give you all the numbers, but they sure don't have to do the addition
http://www.nyu.edu/bursar/tuition.fees/rates11/ugcas.html
http://cas.nyu.edu/object/bulletin1012.ug.financialaid#TUITION

seeing nyu go from also-ran "safety school" to insanely rich & powerful elite school has been something

combination of right place, right time, right willingness to put suburban 18 y/os 6 figures in debt

i blame felicity

NYU's institutional factbook/common data set numbers

NYU seems to meet about 65-70% of demonstrated student need with subsidized loans and need-based grants.

By comparison, my expensive liberal arts college's corresponding number for last year was 91-95%. Harvard meets 100% of demonstrated need. Boston University, 89-90%. George Washington University, 93-95%.

If you're really interested in googling "<random college> common data set" the line I'm looking at is H2(i) in the financial aid section.

Basically if you do go to an expensive private college, don't go to NYU, because it'll be even more expensive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/homework-and-jacuzzis-as-dorms-move-to-mcmansions-in-california.html

man I wanna go back to school now

UC sprawl

such a horrible place to build a new research university

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/11/21/111121ta_talk_surowiecki

The bubble analogy does work in one respect: education costs, and student debt, are rising at what seem like unsustainable rates. But this isn’t the result of collective delusion. Instead, it stems from the peculiar economics of education, which have a lot in common with the economics of health care, another industry with a huge cost problem. (Indeed, in recent decades the cost of both college education and health care has risen sharply in most developed countries, not just the U.S.) Both industries suffer from an ailment called Baumol’s cost disease, which was diagnosed by the economist William Baumol, back in the sixties. Baumol recognized that some sectors of the economy, like manufacturing, have rising productivity—they regularly produce more with less, which leads to higher wages and rising living standards. But other sectors, like education, have a harder time increasing productivity. Ford, after all, can make more cars with fewer workers and in less time than it did in 1980. But the average student-teacher ratio in college is sixteen to one, just about what it was thirty years ago. In other words, teachers today aren’t any more productive than they were in 1980. The problem is that colleges can’t pay 1980 salaries, and the only way they can pay 2011 salaries is by raising prices. And the Baumol problem is exacerbated by the arms-race problem: colleges compete to lure students by investing in expensive things, like high-profile faculty members, fancy facilities, and a low student-to-teacher ratio.

The college-bubble argument makes the solution to rising costs seem simple: if people just wake up, the bubble will pop, and reasonable prices will return. It’s much tougher to admit that there is no easy way out. Maybe we need to be willing to spend more and more of our incomes and taxpayer dollars on school, or maybe we need to be willing to pay educators and administrators significantly less, or maybe we need to find ways to make colleges more productive places, which would mean radically changing our idea of what going to college is all about. Until America figures out its priorities, college kids are going to have to keep running just to stand still.

being a graduate teaching assistant, a job that doesn't really ask that much of you, to be honest

WTF?

why aren't teachers as productive as factories? honestly.

being a graduate teaching assistant, a job that doesn't really ask that much of you, to be honest

I won't sign on with this on any level, becaue its bullshit, but otoh, I knew grad TA's in school who really didn't do jack shit (and would admit as much!) and I could see how someone might get a dim view based on them. But I also knew enough other TA's that worked their asses off, enough to know that generalization is so wrong.

I don't get that Baumol's disease thing. Even if the productivity of universities hasn't increased, why would that mean that the cost needs to rise faster than the rate of inflation? As far as I know, salaries aren't rising beyond the rate of inflation (or are some people's?)

xpost

This argument is about as convincing to me as "Computers are getting faster; why aren't teachers?"
Ridiculous pretty much top to bottom.

Man, the ratio of the amount of work that was offloaded to grad students at one of my grad schools vs the pay would be some statistic...

the argument isn't that teachers should be getting more productive LL, it's that there's gonna be an problem w/ the price when there's a limit to the productivity gains

Tbf, I don't think the argument is that universities should be becoming more productive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

I get why productivity doesn't rise in the same way in the academic sector. But even accepting that premise, if wages are only rising with inflation (and I have to assume that they're dropping, considering how many sessional/adjunct jobs there are now), why should costs have to rise faster than inflation. Unless the issue is that salaries for admin and senior faculty really are rising well beyond inflation, which I can completely believe, and would give me one more reason to hate tenure.

xpost to LL

"... than inflation?"

I guess my view is impaired by the fact that my position combines loads of administrative tasks on top of curriculum development, teaching, and assessment, plus a fairly heavy ratio of required committee work. It's hard for me to see beyond these three and half walls (as if I have an office with a door! Ha!) Also at the bottom of the pay scale for my type of position at other schools. Whatever is generally true of the institutions he refers to does not seem to be really applicable to mine from where I'm sitting.

sund4r, the big idea is that when (most of) the rest of the economy *does* have productivity gains and this field doesn't, the wage might increase w/ everything else because a tenured professor won't work for 20k if she has better options

this is only one way of looking at the problem, I think the cost of non-academic faculty is prob more relevant. also it ignores how much of the 'people who are teaching' are getting paid...welll, 1980 wages.

Anyway, I've never been to Finland but I generally tend to think that this sounds right (from http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2011/11/04/a-two-tier-system/ ):

James Côté, who literally wrote the book on student disengagement and the quality crisis, takes an even bolder approach. He says that many students shouldn’t come to university at all, but, instead, be streamed into vocational trades, diplomas and four-year applied degrees that match their interests and abilities better than research degrees. In order to do so, he agrees with Hallgrimsson that we need a culture change, that non-academic skills need to be highly prized in our society, like university degrees.

A country that does things better, in Côté’s mind, is Finland. In many cases, only those who score in the top quartile on matriculation exams get into universities. But by the time students write the exams, roughly half of students are well on their way to a job already, as vocational training is provided to them in high schools. The other half, who were in the academic stream, have the option of attending polytechnics should they not get into universities. The benefits, says Côté, are no $50,000 bills to pay at graduation (tuition is free), those who do attend research universities get a rigorous education, and those who don’t can get jobs earlier, rather than making up for lost time after university.

It’s not surprising that Côté has the word “elitist!” hurled his way, as disadvantaged groups will inevitably end up in vocational streams more often than in universities. His counter is this: “If you take all these students and give them a B.A. Lite, they graduate and get jobs they could have done with a high school diploma, but the difference is they’re $50,000 in debt.” He wonders whether social justice has been achieved.

(Cote's and Allahar's book Ivory Tower Blues was quite good.)

xposts

Thanks, iatee, but, yes, this was one of my key issues: it ignores how much of the 'people who are teaching' are getting paid...welll, 1980 wages.

err 'how many'

(Maybe Tuomas could fill us in re Finland.)

I am getting 1890s wages

i've been thinking lately about what it's like to be a teaching assistant, since i've had one working for me recently. at many graduate programs they work teaching anywhere from 1-3 discussion sections from their very first semester on campus. that seems to me somewhat like if we expected college freshmen to also, during their first week of classes, start (with no previous experience) acting as assistant teachers, but under basically their own direction, with no in-class oversight, for a roomful of high school students. it's no surprise that it can be stressful for many of them and that often they respond, or appear to respond, by 'not doing very much'. those who ARE doing a lot are doing far more than their students probably realize, given how much catchup with this strange new kind of responsibility can be involved for early-career graduate students.

I've always found the system absurd for basically that reason. I'm not that old, and I went to a large public university, but all my undergrad profs were tenured or tenure-track afaik. This was what was great about the experience: these people had jobs where they had the security to do active research or creative work in the field; this informed their teaching. If I'd been taught by grad students and per-course migrant contract workers, I really don't think I might have decided that academia was a life I wanted (which might mean that I would have gone on to a much more promising career path...)

(I did have TAs in discussion sections and labs.)

being a TA is p stressful imo, i was lucky enough that my funding package allowed to work as an RA/professor's assistant my first year in grad school and had solid ground under my feet before i had to start running tutorials and labs. but there is a p wide range in the amount of work required to TA a course tho, i have a third year course w/ no labs, no assignments and sparsely attended office hours that i skim the reading for each week and thats abt it and i have first year survey course that is like a part time job all on its own