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

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one of the key moments in my life was when i worked the salvation army cash register and some poor redneck couple came up with brood in tow and the guy sorta looked away a little ashamed from me and the woman put a handful of not-so-gently used children's underwear on the counter and meekly asked if we'd be willing to do a quarter apiece instead of a dollar. following the moment i just put them all in a bag and said thank you, i think you're all set i said to myself, FUCK THIS NO MORE RETAIL EVER AGAIN and thus rejoined my grand adventures in the exciting world of waiting tables for another ten years or so.
i still wake up with panic nightmares that I have to go to work at a restaurant. may be scarred for life.
so what i'm saying is that I Wish I Had Known Then about the intern system cuz I'd never heard of it at the time.

a handful of not-so-gently used children's underwear

new board description

Four years apprenticing for free at basically ANY job WILL get you a job in more or less any field.

haha but not in consulting or medicine

At least not after the Nineteenth Century.

living with your parents is pretty awesome if you get along with them I don't know why everybody doesn't do it

I guess I'm lucky to be someone with a high tolerance for doing things that seem boring and uncool. Out of college, after some initial trouble finding a job, I took a job at a really, really shitty newspaper in NJ for $20,000 a year. From there I moved to and spent several years at a really monotonous and lonely job that was barely journalism at all but paid considerably better and left me time to play in bands. When I got tired of that I went to law school and basically made doing well in school my life. I did internships throughout school to build experience and contacts. After a LOT of interviewing I got a job, then lost that one because the firm couldn't afford to hire me, then scrambled to find another one and now I have this job in an area of law that wasn't even one I thought I was interested in, although it turns out to be more interesting than I thought.

I think the economy sucks and that's a bigger problem than any of us, but I also think people are coming out of school, especially nice private colleges/ivies, with too narrow an idea of what they could/should be doing at that moment. It's like "I want to work at the New Yorker one day, so I need to get an internship at the New Yorker ASAP," which just doesn't seem like how life works.

I mean what's so bad if you work on a dock for a year or two? At least you'll have something to write about in your first essay for Granta or whatever.

That's a good pt although in my life I seem to have dealt w a weirdly high number of low paying but high stress and long hour occupations, few of which I'd say were learning experiences. I can chalk this up to some poor decisions, certainly, but also just have found that there are more than a few employers at the bachelors deg level willing to take advantage? idk maybe this is getting too personal but I kind of feel burned by the 9-5 opportunities in a plethora of industries

I mean what's so bad if you work on a dock for a year or two?

Nothing at all. Except it's not just a year or two as of 2011. I graduated in 2002 from college, and I've had to take assistant-assistant/ad hoc/one-off/minimum wage/intern/low-level contract positions for seven years since then, even w/ 2 post-bac degrees. In exchange, I'm massively in debt, I've got terrible credit, negligible healthcare, mediocre references, and a spotty, incomplete, employment history that spans about 5 fields. For a combined total of 20 months I have been employed in a position that makes use of my education, and I'm currently applying for jobs that are at a "lower" level than right when I had just graduated from college. I've been repeatedly turned away and discouraged from seeking "professional" work because I am (a) "old to be starting out" (b) "got a lot of gaps in employment" and (c) will need to "start at the bottom - and wouldn't be happy doing it."

It's been my experience that employers will actively discriminate against those with higher degrees, either out of insecurity, to take advantage of a "better, more thankful" workforce, or because they (speciously) claim that more educated people 'wouldn't be happy' in X job. Education has been the worst for this. When I was 22, I was able to get work as a substitute teacher no problem: I'd taken education courses, and I was willing to show up at 7:30 in the morning. Then I got a MFA, and I was too expensive to be hired by the publics, and my certification process lapsed. To re-complete it, I got an M.Ed., but now I'm priced out of the job market w/ 4 (desultory) years in the classroom and 3 degrees. I've been told – recently - that I shouldn't bother applying in certain districts because budgets are so tight, and I'm too expensive to "gamble on." To get myself back in the schools – a job I held competently at 22-23, and have more training and ability for at 31 – I've had to complete a supervised 1-year internship for which I paid $30,000+, and soon I'll begin working as a part time teacher's aide at $12/hr for 20 hours a week to a 23 year old first-year teacher who's spent less time in the classroom than I had a decade ago. And this is a huge bet: I'm betting that next year the school will see my value and hire me, without guarantee or assurance from them. I'm betting a year of low-paid, low-esteem, high-stress work that my 'value' will be seen, even if it traditionally hasn't. I know anecdotes don't prove anything, but I've got a lot of friends – JDs, MBAs, MLISs – who are in very, very similar situations. I don't "deserve" the job any more than the 23 year old does, and I can't be bitter at her for taking it, but I have every right to be angry with her insistence that she is somehow more worthy and prepared for it than I am.

In other words: fuck the guy who worked on a dock for a year or two. Big whoop.

you guys, MBA dockworker graduated last year, and is on his third consecutive (not concurrent) low-wage job. not worth defending.

I also think people are coming out of school, especially nice private colleges/ivies, with too narrow an idea of what they could/should be doing at that moment.

I'm sure, but the rule-following, over-achieving mindset that gets you into, and through, a nice private school/ivy does does not then poof disappear on graduation day.

^^^ good points both, elmo/laurel

I've been avoiding this thread because I have some irrational thought that a good college education is still somehow an inherent good, but I'm trying hard to get over it.

In the old days, and I'm extrapolating based on what I know since I obviously wasn't around for them, a college education was prized because it was both a social mark and a sign that you'd be qualified for a tier of jobs that may have been attainable by working your way up through the company. Not that it was a way to skip ahead, but that positions seemed to have a higher worth if they required or were populated by an educated person. College took money to get into, or you'd work your ass off to pay for it, or you were somehow qualified for a scholarship.

I keep thinking of the jokey part of the movie The Graduate where he's taking time off after finishing school, presumably some sort of liberal arts degree, and there's this assumption that he's going to be able to find some sort of office job, in an era when non-office jobs still outnumbered office jobs by a lot. The jokey "plastics are the future, get into plastics" thing is unreal these days. I mean, if he's doing sales or copywriting or whatever else in 2011, he's going to just try to get a job wherever the hell he can! If you want to get into a field, you're probably studying chemical engineering or some shit if you think plastics are the future.

Now we're to the point where it's expected everyone has a college degree, most jobs in cities that college grads go for are office jobs, and a liberal arts undergrad degree means you're the same as everyone else, not that you're "educated."

I kind of wanted to get a pretty sweet degree in something that would certify me as a man of books and letters, but I ended up with computer science and the slight guilty feeling that I'm employable.

See, I wish I'd followed through on comp sci or psychology instead of a squashy English degree. At least I'd have a chance at an IT tech job.

My friend's girlfriend was telling a story about how she got her BA and then got a shitty apartment and started temping and immediately wanted out and decided grad school was probably a decent idea. Several years later, she's a "senior research associate" (went from BA in biology -> grad school in biogenetics I think?) and doing ok.

So yeah, maybe the key is just explaining to kids that the point of college isn't to train you for a specific career and that a degree in and of itself isn't a guarantee for a job. I don't know if I ever really understood that, but I lucked out. I still think education is an inherent good, but at some point you have to eat, right?

I think that a lot of education (especially liberal arts, which I love) is unfortunately a little too high-minded and detached from the working world. And while the cognitive conditioning and work habits it inculcates are for the good, and the acculturating it offers productive (even if only, like 30% of the US is able to get it), it's often useless and inapplicable in the real world. It's valuable in a larger life sense, and sometimes it helps make young people more globally aware, but I don't know that I believe it's better than four years of apprenticeship if we're looking at it as job training.

To be honest, even computer science is that way to an extent, which is why colleges are offering programs that sound like a more academic version of job-training courses (software engineering, for one). Most CS programs are still incredibly theory-based, with only the entry classes (intro to programming) and a handful of the junior/senior year classes involving actual programming. The rest is pretty much mathematical proofs, how processors work, and low-level theory.

I thought it was a good program at the time as it creates a more analytical mind, but I also ran into grad students who could barely operate a computer at the time even if they had a 4.0 in all the theory shit. So, it makes me sad that there's pressure to make college programs more like job training, but I see where the urge comes from.

the thing is, the large majority of office jobs don't need tailored training and w/ our economy people can expect to work in more than one field over their lifetimes. while *more* job training is good, it can't solve every problem.

big picture problems:
a. college is ridiculously expensive
b. there are no jobs

Yup, basically we've backed things into a corner by:
- Requiring a college degree for every entry level office job
- Increasing the cost of those degrees when they're no longer a scarce good

The problem is that most of the remedies I see proposed to this boil down to "Keep lower-class kids out of college."

they already are!

Making education more affordable has been a sidelined democrat standby for years! Meanwhile, the republican line appears to be to gut public education and focus on job skills.

I think we'd all have better careers if we stopped posting to ILX and got to work!

yeah don't really get the point that college is out of reach financially even to the lower classes---at my big public research university (in flyover country but w/e, it's not like *undergrad* is better at a public uni on the coasts), it's $230 a credit hour (for in-state tuition), and you need 120 credit hours to graduate, for a total of about $28,000 for a degree. If you work at a during for say 48 weeks a year, you need to earn $146 a week to graduate without tuition debt. At a minimum wage job, that's 20 hours a week. Around here it's reasonable to spend about the same amount on living expenses per year as tuition---that's room & board costs on-campus, & you can do it for less off-campus if you want to share a place with friends & eat less than the all-you-can-eat in the dining halls. I think most of our students graduate with some debt because they work 20ish hours a week during the school year & full-time only during the summer.

so yes of course private schools are ridic expensive, but if there's a sham in American higher ed it's the thought that a private education is worth it (though, hehe, all my degrees are from private universities, but I had scholarships / had a stipend in grad school, so obv ymmv).

xp haha it's helpful for me to think about these things as I am thinking about the value of what I offer students

fwiw i was given scholarships out the azz by my private liberal arts school -- there are more than a few that are basically like, if you get in, we'll make sure you can afford it. you have to do work study or w/e but \oO/ big deal

12-14 hours/semester at my flyover public research uni is $4500, without factoring in living expenses, books, etc.

Looks like resident tuition for a full year (well, just fall/spring) at the university I went to is $7,486 for undergrad. For out of state students, it's $19,357.

yeah don't really get the point that college is out of reach financially even to the lower classes

There are a lot of mechanisms in place to distribute tuition assistance/scholarships only to 'worthy' students. For instance, students who are claimed as dependents by their parents will almost always have an _expected parental contribution_ even though the parents will often be unable/unwilling to provide help. Students with interrupted schooling who have defaulted/delayed repayment of loans to one school will not be allowed to apply for loans at another school. Students who incorrectly fill out loan forms, or whose plans change during the school year – often because of work/work-study schedule shifts are unable to apply for additional loans to 'bridge' cost of living or increased course-content expenses. And $4500/semester is out of reach for a lot of people.

It's been my experience that employers will actively discriminate against those with higher degrees, either out of insecurity, to take advantage of a "better, more thankful" workforce, or because they (speciously) claim that more educated people 'wouldn't be happy' in X job.

And $4500/semester is out of reach for a lot of people.

Why? I'm actually serious: is it because they have to pay for other stuff besides their tuition & living expenses? because I explained above how much you have to work a week to avoid debt at these prices.

i would guess that a 40 hour work week would be necessary to support on-your-own living expenses for a not-so-great job and that college is, conservatively, an additional 30 hours a week of work. Money aside, that means that if you have a physical infirmity or a child, the chances that you can pull this off are both slim and none.
Sure, everybody knows somebody who does it but the barrier is fucking high.

What i'm getting at is that something's gotta give. You either have to go into debt or not have any other responsibilities at all but school and work or be independently wealthy. If you can't do any of the above, no college 4 u.

Assuming your minimum wage job clears $6.50 after taxes/FICA/etc. (which may be high or low, I haven't had a paycheck job in years), you need to work 692 hours or 17 full-time work weeks just to pay tuition, no other living expenses.

I couldn't really go to school at all until I was no longer a 'dependent' per FAFSA (which was 24-25, IIRC).

Because there's frequently debt going into a degree, and it isn't just a flat -$4500 every semester, it's an _additional_ $4500/semester. My BIL works 60 hours/week for $950 to support his family. If he stops working to go to school, the family isn't just adding an additional $4500/semester, it's also losing its only source of income, the schedule he's worked out for childcare, the health and benefits he gets for the family through his employment, the WIC payments and food/fuel assistance that mandates 20+ hours week (not work-study) for distribution.

euler, while there are some public u's that are 'relatively cheap', they're:

a. not options for people who don't live in those states
b. depending on what you're going to do, they will sometimes limit your options post-graduation.
c. generally raising tuition way faster than inflation

I mean I don't know where you teach but look up what the tuition was in 1980 and 1990

forks I did the math above & you're wrong; 20 hours a week at minimum wage at $7000 tuition a year is all you need to graduate without tuition debt, & you can expect living expenses to be at most the same cost at tuition, unless you're going to school in a ridiculous place in which case lol you.

milo z: 17 full-time work weeks just to pay tuition doesn't seem out of reach

I say this having worked through college (wanted the experience) & knowing that most of our students here do the same & do just fine

it's true that having a kid while you're in college fucks this up royally, but I'm hesitant to say that's a reason to university costs are too high

xp not $4500 a semester; at my uni $7000 a year

Frankly, college is also out of reach for a number of people because it's still not even on the radar. In a larger high school, you almost need at least one counselor doing full-time college application work, talking with students about how to apply for scholarships, doing workshops on how financial aid works and what options are. If the kids' parents aren't really there, or don't know anything about this stuff because they're busy working and they didn't go to college, then you have a lot of inertia keeping these kids in a place where college doesn't even seem like an option.

iatee: a degree from a public u might "sometimes limit your options post-graduation" but so does $120,000 in debt.

yes I agree, I went to a public u and I think (almost) everyone should! but it can limit peoples' options if you're intent on grad school, various high-paying careers etc.

and again, as far as $ goes - you're for the most part limited to the schools in your state, many of which are getting quite expensive so the fact that your school is (relatively!) cheap doesn't help anyone who doesn't live in that state

maybe we should take this to a new thread?

which states are known for having shitty public u's? alabama?

20 hours a week at minimum wage at $7000 tuition a year is all you need to graduate without tuition debt, & you can expect living expenses to be at most the same cost at tuition

hopefully this isn't you but I decided to google a random, probably comparable school, and went w/ the university of nebraska - this was their tuition per unit (before the recession! now it's 208)

1997 $78.50 4.7%
1998 $82.75 5.4%
1999 $87.25 5.4%
2000 $92.00 5.4%
2001 $101.25 10.1%
2002 $111.50 10.1%
2003 $128.25 15.0%
2004 $143.75 12.1%
2005 $151.00 5.0%
2006 $160.00 6.0%
2007 $169.50 5.9%

not too far off!

SUNY Albany (the flagship public uni of NY iirc) has tuition the same as my state, about $7000 per year.

binghamton is usually considered the flagship iirc

the article i posted scares the shit out of me btw because it hits a little too close to home