quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

all kids should have to be bellhops instead of going to college

xxxp to IC: Also the lack of actual experience in that field. Want a teaching degree? Take a bunch of classes, do 200 hours in a classroom and blam, you're covered. Law school, medical school, roughly the same thing, before you're finally allowed to test the waters. There's very little value placed on real-world experience, except in trade schools –- and obv. those aren't highly esteemed. A friend of mine in culinary school has spent far more time at work than I spent in the classroom earning my M.Ed, and his initial career prospects are significantly lower than mine.

when u ride the elevator to the top floor u become boss of the hotel xp

at my last corporate job our interns made $10/hr, in nyc, and i remember being kinda o_O that most of them considered that 'decent', so many other firms didnt pay anything.

jobs that 'require a college degree' is more complicated than it might appear at first glance. most white collar jobs do not require a direct skill that you learned in college, but they still want a competent, generally skilled worker who's gonna show up on time. 'require a college degree' makes people oversimplify the idea of college, like the entire purpose is to specifically learn one skill that you're going to use in one job.

a good article on the subject

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

sometimes i look around and am like 'where r my interns'

it's probably also worth remembering that the idea of college as being accessible to everyone is a pretty recent idea, dating back probably to the... GI bill? for women, even later, not til the 60s/70s

haha I have had two different 10/h internships in my life

everyone i know who has a job in NYC had to work for free for 6 mo & gambled that they'd be offered a FT job at the end. they had to work for a year waiting tables or doing similar work at home in rural/suburban/midwestern [wherever] so they could afford this. many were basically out of money when offered the job

im guessing friends who 'didnt make it' dont advertise that

whoops the last claim is def wrong xp to myself

i went to college but i was always late to my first job, lol

mostly bcuz i was still living like a college student though

To get my teacher's license (2010-2011), I had to do an unpaid internship for 12 months. To the university granting my degree/license, I had pay a full 9-credit class-fee to register for the internship. Net cost for volunteering as a teacher for the year? -$7200.

yeah, i had an internship that was unpaid except for $5 for lunch if i worked 4 hours or more, but i took it because the company was in practice of hiring their interns.

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

I love this url so much

Oh, wait, there's more. I paid 150*6 for state exams, $130 for licensing (still hasn't arrived) , a $700 affiliation fee, $100 for CORI/background checks, and provided all of the materials for my classroom that the school wouldn't cover because, as an intern, I couldn't really access the school budget for supplies.

most white collar jobs do not require a direct skill that you learned in college, but they still want a competent, generally skilled worker who's gonna show up on time.

sure, i think the point is that there is probably a better, more efficient way for the economy as a whole to manage this selection process

like i get that employers like having another institution managing the work of pre-selecting 'competent, generally skilled workers' but as is its a p terrible process for the actual employees

not really sure being admitted to college/graduating from college has anything to do with being a competent, generally skilled worker

particularly since these days the hardest part abt a good school is getting in, colleges should perhaps just scrap everything save the admission process

I'm not defending it! I think overall it's terrible when combined w/ the neverending rise in the cost of college. but people do sorta miss how things are working (or supposed to work) when they view college purely as a trade school rather than a weird signaling system. xp

i read one blogg post by a guy who runs a software company and he says he relies on gpa above everything for hiring young people cause relative to other mesures it represents what the largest number of people think abt the applicants work

i read one blogg post

(sorry that was too snarky)

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

― iatee, Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:32 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

this was actually a really good article/one blogg post btw

i liked that article you linked iatee although i think hes way underestimating the role #4 plays even w/ elite college degrees e.g. your job/earning prospects look a lot different if you graduate stanford w/ an english degree than they do if you graduate w/ an engineering one

not sure what to say about the responsibilities of universities in 20somethings having shitty jobs when only 30% of Americans have college degrees anyway.

universities have a lot of responsibility when *that's why almost everyone is going*

This is all interesting –- the idea of the degree (and major) as an absolute signifier to a mushy signified

i read one blogg post

― dayo, Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:44 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(sorry that was too snarky)

― dayo, Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:45 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wutt

The grade-inflating argument is key here, too, in that earning a 3.85 from Harvard Business in 2011 looks better than a 3.4 in 1995.

also MBAs are expensive but bachelors for a state school aren't really. My state university (which admittedly isn't CA but state research universities are all p much the same for undergrad education) in-state tuition is like $700 per 3 hour class. So I think there are a few different issues here.

I'm not even sure what we're arguing about anymore

and it pretty much all goes back to the fact that the economy is unprecedentedly shitty atm. like would it really make a difference if all the unemployed 20 somethings were holding engineering degrees instead?

if all of them did? then, no. but if some of them did? than, yeah, probably.

all i was arguing is that its unfair to lay the blame on the individual people in these situations, like horseshoe i hate the "you should be happy to be working at all" meme, thats what They want u to think maaan

for sure. i think i meant that you can be as unhappy as you'd like working at your job but

1) recognize there are people who would like to have it, even if u hate it.
2) if your job involves customer service/interacting with the public, don't take it out on them - they're not the enemy
3) take pride in what you do, as much as you can

i know that is all moralizing 'n' shit, but as a guy who spent 12 months working as a minimum wage security guard/junkie-catcher/puke-cleaner-upper/ guy who mopped hobo piss off the floor and wasn't allowed to sit down for 8 hours at a stretch, nor wander more than 20 feet from my "station" or talk to coworkers, i feel i've got a right to say that i know what it's like to have a shitty job.

my boss used to make me clean chewing gum out of the carpet, and offer me quarters at me as 'incentive'

This said I still think the louis bit is funny

so basically you're all just saying "don't hate the player, hate the game"

bizackly

for the record i think it's okay to hate being a dockworker and to tell the nyt that you hate being a dockworker

eh its not the moralizing that bugs me! i get it, ppl shd be thankful for what theyve got. but only to the extent that "what theyve got" isnt being determined for them by horrible policy/institutions/structures. *takes off blindfold of false consciousness, sees ideology for first time*

but yeah "dont hate the player, he doesnt even realize which game he is playing, because the refs lied to him, and so did his opponents" - friedrich engels

i must have skipped that one

But I agree entirely, Max. I'm just thinking out loud that when you're, say, 23 and working as a stock clerk at Home Depot with a 4.0 average from Columbia and you complain about how you deserve better, can do better, and were lead to expect better, and should get the next promotion, it's gonna rub your 40 year old LEP coworker with 4 years of seniority the wrong way, and actually makes you into a colossal cock.

Wait, somehow I glossed over the key part of this passage the first time:

Likewise, Amy Klein, who graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in English literature, couldn’t find a job in publishing. At one point, she had applied for an editorial-assistant job at Gourmet magazine. Less than two weeks later, Condé Nast shut down that 68- year-old magazine. “So much for that job application,” said Ms. Klein, now 26.

Wow, isn't that just like rain on your wedding day.

Some days you eat the truffle fries and some days the truffle fries eat you

http://www.benopipari.com/.a/6a00e553f11fb38833013488d6c6b0970c-320wi
"So much for that job application"

working as a stock clerk at Home Depot with a 4.0 average from Columbia and you complain about how you deserve better, can do better, and were lead to expect better, and should get the next promotion,

I don't think the last part comes up much

i'm so glad this conversation happened while i was teaching people at a college