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

the old idea that having a good life is a sign of being chosen by god

"prosperity gospel" has been a pretty big part of modern protestantism, especially evangelicism

Well they've made all the right choices and should be rich & successful but since they aren't, it must be the other people who didn't choose as well, rigging the system to drag them down.

Laurel is on to something here

truly. this idea that the system could only ever be rigged to help the undeserving poor, rather than the undeserving rich.

Yah, I see it as primarily a resentment narrative that validates an otherwise "inexplicable" lack of singular success.

all the libertarians I know are poor as fuck, idgi

Wow, this is really far from my experience.

The few I've known have all been highly intelligent upper-middle-class students.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-income-inequality-may-boost-your-ego/2012/02/03/gIQAvcWpnQ_blog.html

A new study finds that countries with more income inequality tend to have more people who believe that they are better than average — a psychological phenomenon known as “self-enhancement.”

The lame NPR interview with Charles Murray never brought up the points mentioned here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/06/charles-murray-book-review.html

haha i would give quite a lot to be able to interview c.murray

frum's review gets at the big obvious points but doesnt really go far enough in pointing out how contradictory and pernicious murray's argument is.

i would give a lot for you to be able to interview charles murray, too!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/grads-sue-brooklyn-law-school-charging-school-fudged-employment-stats-article-1.1018685?localLinksEnabled=false

could happen w/ a lot of for-profit schools in the future

Could happen? It happens with EVERY for-profit school. And probably every "non-profit" private school.

Or do you mean getting sued? Hopefully that's the case – it will probably raise demand for young lawyers ;)

yeah I meant lawsuits

http://www.nacba.org/Legislative/StudentLoanDebt.aspx

I think ppl really underrate how big a thing this is gonna be

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/02/intern_xuedan_wang_sues_harper_s_bazaar_why_don_t_more_unpaid_interns_protest_.html

http://mathbabe.org/2012/02/17/how-harvard-is-failing-its-students/

Harvard fails its students in a lot of ways. Teaching students to be "professional test takers" is only, to my mind, like 1% of the problem. (But a good response, nevertheless).

A different angle on Harvard's shortcomings:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-16/harvard-liberal-arts-failure-is-wall-street-gain-commentary-by-ezra-klein.html

as someone who 'went hard' on his college applications i p much agree with most of the things in those articles

Klein is wrong, though, when he asserts

For many kids, college represents an end goal. Once you get into a good college, you’ve made it, and everyone stops worrying about you. You’re encouraged to take classes in subjects like English literature and history and political science, all of which are fine and interesting, but none of which leave you with marketable skills.

as the fault/problem of the colleges. As iatee and others have said elsewhere, it's more a problem that employers do not value this catholicism and awareness and the breadth of character this can create.

haha well its true that most hiring processes are relentlessly shitty and backwards

I think Klein's main point though is that colleges aren't doing a very good job of helping you to envision what you could do with those skills post-college. Maybe those are the right skills to teach, but they could still be doing more to try and pave the way to a post-college career.

I've said this before but I don't think 'a ton of ivy league ppl go into finance' is actually a big problem. wall st itself is obv a problem, but I'm not convinced that the american economy is really losing that many potential nobel scientists / facebook creators etc. if 30% of princeton's class goes into finance. it's really not that many people and I don't think the difference between the schools that get this type of recruiting and the schools that don't is that huge. (there are a lot more vassars out there than dartmouths.)

the process is interesting and revealing of certain aspects of the job market, prestige, etc. - like it's an interesting thing from a sociological pov but I'm skeptical of 'this is a real problem', considering how few people this really affects.

I think Klein maybe underestimates the sociological explanation. Leaving the college bubble is kind of scary, and it's a big reassurance to follow the herd. From an Ivy school, you're pretty much guaranteed that a good chunk of your classmates will end up in NYC. The finance industry is the biggest industry in NYC. So it's not too surprising lots of recent grads end up in finance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wall-street-and-the-ivy-league-readers-respond/2011/08/25/gIQATmmXMR_blog.html

I have worked on Wall Street for 25 years, and it is clear to me that college students who major in economics or business degrees often do so because they have no other passionate interests in topics such as history, literature, math or science. Economics and business are the “default” majors if you don’t have significant passion in other subject matters. For such kids lucky enough to attend elite colleges, the high cost of attending (think student loans) can be mitigated by high earning potential of working in consulting or Wall Street. In virtually no other industries can you be completely mediocre and earn a king’s ransom in pay.

::pets my liberal arts degree on the head::

elite college have some of the best financial aid in the country + 'the highest cost of attending' isn't limited to them

ie that guy still prob thinks about the world as 'ivy league schools are the expensive schools' and when he was young there was more truth to that

they're still expensive - there's a zone between like, 150k and idk 300k where students are still getting 'financial aid' in the form of maybe a few thousand a year. and then it depends on how willing your family is to shoulder the burden. or if your family is gonna be all AMERICAN VALUES and tell you once you're over 18, all your loans are your responsibility (until they die and then you get the inheritance)

oh yeah even public schools are 'way too expensive', but the student body at these schools is pretty skewed compared to the 'average college' so the narrative of 'things are so expensive, this is the only way they cope' doesn't make that much sense to me

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/nov/11/avg-student-loan-debt-shrinking-at-yale/

The study placed Yale’s average student loan debt for the class of 2010 at $9,254 — roughly $15,000 below the national average — and Storlazzi said the class of 2011 graduated with an average debt of $9,000, partly due to Yale’s generous financial aid policy.

(I know their financial aid was less generous when you were there fwiw)

well that only counts the loans that are given as part of your fin. aid package - that doesn't take into account the expected family contribution, which your family may or may not contribute. if your family doesn't, then you take out private loans

The Project on Student Debt report found that 28 percent of Yale students in the class of 2010 graduated with some form of loan debt — 18 percent graduating with federal debt and 10 percent with non-federal debt. The study also found that 11 percent of the class of 2010 received federal Pell Grants, which do not have to be repaid.

the 10% w/ no-federal debt is probably more representative of students who do graduate with private loans

I mean I think that 'do this to pay my loans' narrative can be true for certain people for sure. otoh j is tutoring one of these kids in french. a roth$child. that girl isn't going into finance to pay off her loans.

overall there are lots of reasons to take jobs that pay lots of money in nyc, idt it's a mystery. if the jobs were being tossed at people at rutgers, 30% of the rutgers student body would go into finance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/opinion/what-college-students-need-to-know.html

sometimes i wonder if 'what happens to harvard grads?' is maybe slight less important or indicative than the new york times thinks it is

the nyt is staffed by harvard grads so naturally it's very important to them

the 7k undergrads at harvard are the best and the brightest people in america and each one we lose to wall st is negative 100 billion dollars to the american economy, cause each and every one would have invented a new facebook

actually that's 150 billion dollars, not 100 billion

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/map_of_the_week/2012/02/student_loan_debt_an_interactive_map.html

"Our oldest and most prestigious colleges are losing touch with the spirit in which they were founded. To the stringent Protestants who founded Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the mark of salvation was not high self-esteem but humbling awareness of one’s lowliness in the eyes of God. With such awareness came the recognition that those whom God favors are granted grace not for any worthiness of their own, but by God’s unmerited mercy — as a gift to be converted into working and living on behalf of others. That lesson should always be part of the curriculum."

clearly. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/opinion/colleges-and-elitism.html

yeah santorum et al don't think about rich snobby people at harvard (which is more democratic / less snobby than it's ever been in history) they care about the fact that bio professors at ohio state don't allow term papers on creationism.

xp

I think it's a good lesson, whatever the origin. Substitute "luck of being born wealthy" for "God's unmerited mercy" if it makes you feel less queasy.

Exactly what part of that spirit of holiness, grace, and giving was responsible for the anti-semitic quota system at the ivies through the 1960s?

I think they would prob say it fell under 'grace'

lol

I don't know - I've been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which covers his undergraduate years at Princeton in the 1910s, and if anything it sounds snobbier then than it is now. The student body was 100% male and almost 100% white and upper class, and the main activity, which took precedence over academics, seemed to be jostling for membership to the elite social clubs.

oh yeah I saw that on an episode of Gossip Girl

well sure, it didn't even have a guise of being a meritocracy back then, except maybe in a purely calvinistic sense xp

they sorta get to have their cake and eat it to today by being half a meritocracy and half an f scott fitzgerald book

anyway professors at ivy league schools think ivy league schools are really, really important, for some reason

too