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

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

*Typical Financial Profile
nah just playing there are literally only about 12 millenials like this

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Miseducation-of-America/147227/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/magazine/its-official-the-boomerang-kids-wont-leave.html

More than that, they represent a much larger anxiety-provoking but also potentially thrilling economic evolution that is affecting all of us.

They must be firing editors.

or hiring sixth graders to write thinkpieces

feel like it's one step away from: "no, you can't find security, but the opposite of security is risk, and risk has higher rewards, so this is an OPPORTUNITY FOR HIGH REWARDS DO U SEE?!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/technology/workplace-surveillance-sees-good-and-bad.html?smid=tw-share

will any of these employers pay me to curl up in a ball on my bed and claw my way up from catatonia because i can do that real efficiently

i mean jesus

The idiocy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/upshot/the-reality-of-student-debt-is-different-from-the-cliches.html

The response:
http://www.theawl.com/2014/06/that-big-study-about-how-the-student-debt-nightmare-is-in-your-head-its-garbage

The rebuttal seems sound, although my grasp of stats and sampling is weak at best. But I appreciated the point in the first article about students who don't graduate and are STILL carrying debt--because students who don't graduate often don't graduate for family and financial reasons, so there's a high correlation with ppl who won't be able to pay back the loans they took out, esp without that degree.

Right, there is that and also some other good substantive points in the times article, but the way they slice it up and present it winds up as "student debt is way overblown and nbd"

nice to see someone calling bullshit on that terrible brookings study

Love the headshots http://i.imgur.com/NpnxD7i.png

matthew chingos more like matthew chingados, pinche cabron

They look like smug fraternal twins doing a smug mind-meld.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/fashion/the-millennials-are-generation-nice.html

holy shit http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/is-that-whining-adjunct-someone-we-want-teaching-our-young/

I can only say that I have had full-time employment with benefits both inside and outside working in academia for over 30 years. I made choices.

I started out in a completely different era and everything worked out for me, so all you whining children who are starting out in today's world must not know shit about life. QED.

As one of my friends might say, “Time to put on your big-girl panties!”

"As one of my friends might say, if I had friends"

Courses taught: Google Applications; Social Networking for Business, Office Supervision, Business Communications, MS Office applications 2010 (and earlier), Introduction to Management, Voice recognition, Office Orientation, Keyboarding, etc.

(and earlier) <---- how you know she's a true expert in her field

office orientation: shld u point yr desk THIS way or THIS WAY? an ethnomethodological approach