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

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20140210.png

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/10/from_harvard_to_webcam_girl/

is there a religion i could join that would be deeply against this not for any perversion-related reasons, but because the post-post-post-whatever economy that drives it is destroying the fabric of society in which people can just get together and be perverted

All I see in that post is a petulant rich girl who is so mad that she didn't immediately get an awesome job that she decided to take her clothes off.

didn't get that at all

i can't help but relate to the life of a soul-crushing office drone. good for her *shrug*

I had recently earned my master’s degree from Harvard and had accepted a coveted yet thankless entry-level position at a well-known philanthropic organization in New York City.

A thankless entry-level job! They didn't tell me it was going to be like this!

nobody ever does

Hey, I've seen those ads for "entry level" non-profit jobs and I've complained about them before. List of requirements: be ivy league, have lots of internships, show a writing portfolio/x number of writing samples, know all these unrelated computer programs, speak a couple of languages, have professional AND character references, just really A FUCKING LOT of stuff...to be an office manager and be grateful to occasionally have the chance to serve NGO executives when their travel plans go wrong.

And be that very smart, accomplished person, and then be content to spend at least a few years just making appointments and ordering staples and if you're lucky doing basically uncompensated labor way above your pay grade.

Nuh uh.

So...don't work in a non-profit? Why do people think that a fancy degree entitles them to interesting, challenging and well-compensated work where they ALSO get to feel like they are saving the world, right out the door from school?

...

she got a MASTERS degree from harvard cmon anyone can get a masters from harvard

nobody's holding a gun to their heads!

ivy league schools + schools in cool places to live use terminal masters degrees as money printing machines

Most people don't know how to actually DO anything useful in a professional setting straight out of school

also what iatee said, although to be fair, I don't think enough people going into these programs really realize this

this piece is nightmarish to me, would not hold the pro forma "oh millenials oh lord" reaction against anyone over this

it also fits nicely into the Dunhamesque "I did a thing to be interesting" narrative

well they don't hand out publishing deals for just having master's degrees

look at me, don't look at me, look at me

i'm the first to react adversely to "you have opportunities, don't be lazy, make something of yourself" rhetoric. but if you have a masters from harvard then for fucks sake you have opportunities, make something of yourself.

her poor parents.

i mean why do you want to be published. that's not a thing anymore.

or maybe you know that if you write about like being an "intellectual erotic blahblah" then you will be published.

her story seems totally similar to a male friend of mine who is a recent art school grad who was a guy on gay cam sites for money to help him get by as he negotiated the post-graduation fallout zone. he went through the same cycle of suddenly getting lots of money and interest, and then it cooled down as his novelty faded, and then it became kind of alienating and forced, and gradually he just stopped doing it until he found a regular job that he likes better- but he was at it for about a year. he's someone who totally fits the "adorable gay twink stereotype" look - white and thin with good bone structure- so it's not surprise that he was appealing, but he said that you had to work at it if you wanted to make real money and that mostly involved always being available/accessible. So, not really an escape route from the typical work week, hours-wise, it was just different hours, and the sheer weirdness of having to babble "dirty talk" to strangers for hours at a time became really unpleasant for him.

i got a vague whif of untruth from that story (not tune's friend, the salon thing) but i can't really put my finger on it w/o rank speculation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2014/03/28/the-most-expensive-colleges-in-the-country-are-art-schools-not-ivies/

also posted this in the art mfa thread but I think it belongs here

so goddamn expensive

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/buying-the-future/

Given how finance has been able to convert the future of raw materials, corporations, and land into tradable instruments, what about “human capital?” University of Chicago economist Gary Becker defines human capital as investments people make in themselves, including their own education, skills and health. As with land and raw resources, “people cannot be separated from their knowledge, skills, health, or values in the way they can be separated from their financial and physical assets,” so they can’t just count as capital the way money in their bank account does. It resides in the human, as opposed to capital in the form of property, which exists due to a dense network of property law and customs.

The most likely route for human-capital futures is standardizing through funding for individual education. Startups are trying to turn young college students into cows or mortgages by trying to render predictable the future salaries they’ll earn based on their higher education, which comes with current known cost. A combination of state disinvestment, an exploding managerial class, and a grouping of elite schools that can drive up tuition have all combined to make a huge amount of upfront capital necessary for the sort of college degree that can secure employment. Finance will have to jump into the picture. If it proves a lucrative investment, it may flood people into higher education, assuming they can compel work and profit later. This could send so much money into higher education that its prices will spiral, as with the housing bubble.

What else could go wrong with a society where, as Malcolm Harris described it, “a sizable portion of our young workers are partly owned by other people—at least the ones who can find buyers”? The element of control over what students learn will become tantamount. The ideal graduate will have to be embodied in the contract itself, just like for healthy cows. Otherwise, students will simply learn rather than valorize their human capital at the investors’ expected rate. Whereas most financial engineering has tried (and at times catastrophically failed) to value contracts by extrapolating from past data, there will most likely be demand to directly control human capital more directly. You can’t bully a cow into avoiding hoof-and-mouth disease, but you can bully an 18-year-old into doing its organic chemistry homework.

i think the obv problem is that you can't really bully an 18-year-old into doing its organic chemistry homework

I have a *provocative question* to ask -- doesn't the private student loan industry already basically make an "upfront investment" in your education in exchange for a guarantee of future cashflows from your income (or even in spite of your lack thereof)?

I mean it's fun to write in dystopian language that makes it sound like we'll all be slaves, but I don't really see how that sounds worse than what we have now (which, of course, is bad).

well, i think the implication is that the more of a role finance has in education funding, the more it will follow past examples in asserting more detailed specifications of the product upfront?

which in my experience would be disastrous in particular for students who get locked in but cannot find their way to succeeding/thriving in a course of study initially chosen (of whom there are loads, maybe even the majority?).

http://i62.tinypic.com/28bftwn.png

fuck u salon + fuck u gen-x'rs, ffs

http://www.policymic.com/articles/48829/why-you-should-never-have-taken-that-prestigious-internship

sarah kendzior sayin strong stuff bout 'prestige economy'

kendzior is the shit

http://www.totalenter10.com/is-pearson-education-in-serious-financial-trouble/

v. v. detailed rundown of education vendor/octopus pearson education's current state of business

http://i60.tinypic.com/10z2ttd.png

Alan Singer's article is mostly nonsense. The share price uncertainly is more a reflection of concern that the educational materials sector is never going to be as profitable in established markets as it was three or four years ago. It isn't linked to a belief that the company is "overextended" - something he doesn't really provide any evidence of. Some factual errors and lots of speculation too - particularly relating to the idea that the spread of online education (in which it is only one player of many) will lead to the closure of thousands of colleges. The idea that tests are actively being made harder to generate more money is an absurdity.

It's frustrating as there is definitely a good article waiting to be written about the company and the potential conflicts between service provision and active participation in policy making but I get the sense that nobody really has enough of an overview or enough expertise to write it without a hell of a lot more research and consideration than Singer. The attacks are coming from people with an axe to grind where a scalpal would be more effective.

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=4464

Those millions aren’t enough, apparently, to pay translators to help the company extend its online courses, or MOOCs, into foreign markets. Instead, Coursera is taking the digital sharecropping route. It announced this week that it is recruiting skilled translators and asking them to donate their work to the company for free. What the volunteers receive, in lieu of income, is the satisfaction of being a member of Coursera’s “community.” Translation, says the company, is “much more than a means to an end. By joining the GTC [Global Translator Community], you’ll become a member of a tight-knit community of committed individuals and organizations.”

jesus did they pick that up at awesomeness fest

That's a bizarre use of the word "sharecropping." Also, no one's gonna fucking do that.

it is much more than a means to an end. to you. to us, it is a means to an end. the end of not paying you.

http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/images/lmphoto_tom1.jpg

http://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/ed33eb6bd1cb3a74ded14c1733617d7d/tumblr_n5hd5t1VFO1qz7k76o1_500.png

rage

facebook actually did that 'hey can u guys translate this for us thanks' thing back in the day

http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/26/facebook-files-for-patent-on-crowdsourced-translations/

xxxp

That's a fucking bummer

arrrrrgh that coursera stuff makes me so fucking mad

a milli a milli a milli