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

were there really full-time people working for the student newspaper and radio station in 1980? (I genuinely have no idea, but surely there are some people who went to college in 1980 here?)

If there are good jobs, won't people train to fill them? The vocational part of a college education should be easy, but there is a lot about working that cannot be taught. I think a college education is more about quality of life, quality of existence, of which working is eventually a significant part, for most people.

I tend to take Dewey's line about the value of a liberal-arts-education in creating & nourishing a populace able to handle democracy

― Euler, Friday, 2 September 2011 19:17 (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

where is the best place to begin reading about this?

liberal arts school

hiyo!

Dewey's "My Pedagogic Creed", from 1897, isn't a bad place to start. I have it in my copy of The Essential Dewey vol. 1 (subtitled Pragmatism, Education, Democracy), published by Indiana University Press in 1998.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/education/13loans.html

Many borrowers, even those who are unemployed or earning little, can avoid default by participating in an income-based repayment program that began in 2009 but is not as widely used as might be expected. Under the program, borrowers who pay 15 percent of their discretionary income for 25 years — 10 years if they are in public service — can have the rest of their federal student loan debt forgiven; in 2014, that will go down to paying 10 percent of discretionary income for 20 years.

“In the age of income-based repayment, there is no reason for a student to default, since even a payment of zero dollars is acceptable payment, if you have zero discretionary income,” Ms. Cochrane said. “But as of April of this year, only about 350,000 borrowers have entered income-based payment, a small subset of the eligible population. Students need to understand the options, colleges need to share the information, and the department needs to make it as easy as possible for students to enroll.”

one of my friends is going to grad school - 100k for a non-profit type degree at a 'good school' - only because the gov't started this program. he considered it considerably less risky. I dunno if that's a good system in the long-term? also it's only available for public loans, so "there is no reason for a student to default" is misleading.

One night she bumped into a friend, who asked her to join a punk rock band, Titus Andronicus, as a guitarist. Once, that might have been considered professional suicide.

― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Friday, September 2, 2011 4:57 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

+1

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/news/The-Art-Institutes--3531.shtml

Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice sued Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corporation, which is 41 percent owned by investment bank Goldman Sachs. The government has charged the company with fraudulently collecting $11 billion dollars in state and federal student financial aid between July of 2003 to June of 2011. EDMC allegedly collected $2.2 billion of that money in 2010 alone. That amounted to almost 90 percent of the company's 2010 revenues.

for-profit colleges are scum

Boger wanted a career in "live event and concert photography," and contacted the school after seeing its ads on TV, she says. "Ideally I wanted to work for Rolling Stone or Spin. They made it sound like if I went [to AI], they would help me find a job. They said 90 percent of their graduates are employed within one year in their field. They said, 'We have contacts at all the major music magazines.'

"I think [the recruiter] was telling me what I wanted to hear, because when I got out, they didn't have anything," Boger says. An AI career counselor gave her just two contacts at small publications in Austin. Boger was unable to reach one because that contact had moved to another job, "and the other said to me, 'You don't have the qualifications you need,'" Boger recounts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/education/21admissions.html?_r=1

In the survey, 10 percent of the admissions directors at four-year colleges — and almost 20 percent at private liberal-arts schools — said that the full-pay students they were admitting, on average, had lower grades and test scores than other admitted applicants.

But they are not the only ones with an edge: the admissions officers said they admitted minority students, athletes, veterans, children of alumni, international students and, for the sake of gender balance, men, with lesser credentials, too.

important to note that 'colleges with a real admissions competition beyond a hs degree' are a minority to begin with. which is to say that those % are going to be even higher at ''good'' colleges.

also we've just passed the peak of a demographic bump (kids of the boomers.) that's gonna hit both the marginal for-profit and non-profit schools eventually. 'peak college'

http://tfw.cachefly.net/snm/images/nm/pyramids/us-2010.png
http://tfw.cachefly.net/snm/images/nm/pyramids/us-2020.png

My parents were very much at the edge of boomerdom (born '52/'53ish) and had kids relatively later for their generation, I think? I think the kids of boomers are more in the 30-45 range now. I think the 15-30 year olds right now are mostly kids of early Gen Xers?

Well, obviously a lot of overlap there since some gen x definitions try to include people born up through 1980 or so.

nah kids of the boomers are that green bar in the top chart and the two surrounding it

You're saying kids of boomers are 15-30?

I guess the wider-ranged baby boomer def is people born from 1943-1960, so I guess that makes some sense.

I kind of buy into this concept, with the majority of kids of that age actually being the scions of this segment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

yup

gen x kids are the blue and purple bars. wouldn't make sense that gen x's offspring outnumbered gen x by a huge margin. xp

but yeah the drop from the current 20-24 group to 10-14 is substantial and will def be felt by (the ever growing number of) marginal institutions.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/09/american-youth-lost-generation/42814/

P. sure that hikkikomori refers just to the shut-in phenomenon and not to the concept of underemployed young adults more generally.

I think the idea is that there's something of correlation between that kind of behavior and a dire economy

Yeah but my strident animu stan side is just rankling against the minor inaccuracy

I used to always say that once we had invented virtual sex the world would shut down but it looks like naruto was enough

but without reading the article, just let me know if a comparison to japan was made at all

yes

I guess we can make the argument that at least it's easier for us to stay at home since we all live in suburbs

At many colleges and universities, the survey found, whom you know does matter. More than a quarter of the admissions directors said they had felt pressure from senior-level administrators to admit certain applicants, and almost a quarter got pressure from trustees or development officers.

“If external parties are trying to influence admissions decisions, that’s a concern that strikes at the legitimacy of the whole process,” Mr. Hawkins said. “We certainly have standards, but there needs to be awareness that when the economy starts to crumble, the standards may start to go out the window.”

I glossed over this part when I first read the article but this is pretty alarming too! there are so many incentives to admitting legacies from rich families - they pay full tuition and you put your hooks into their parents when alumni giving season rolls around.

At some point I became privy to the not-particularly-secret information that my school definitely admitted a fairly sizable proportion of full-pay applicants. It's a small place where most of the operating budget comes from tuition and fees (vs. endowment draw), a historically high attrition rate between the first and second years, and something like an overall 45% discount rate on the sticker price of tuition. So basically it's a situation where, to some extent, underqualified full-pay freshmen subsidize everybody else with their tuition, then drop out/burn out/get kicked out. This has been my interpretation of the situation; it might not really be quite that substantial of an effect, but I believe that it's there.

gen x kids are the blue and purple bars. wouldn't make sense that gen x's offspring outnumbered gen x by a huge margin. xp

― iatee, Wednesday, September 21, 2011 7:53 AM (Yesterday)

considering a number of gen x ladies didn't feel like breeding until their mid-30s, there are also gen x offspring in that 0-4 bracket, along w/the boomer grandkids.

yeah that would explain the size of it I guess

so, sometime in the past couple of years 20somethings stopped really clapping/whooing for bands? Like even at the end of a show. Pos just an indierockpunk montreal thing? It is weird. and, I believe, wrong.

(I have no stats abt their level of education and debt tho)

rrrobyn i have very little empirical evidence to back you up but what you say rings sadly true :(

I clap for bands, unless they suck

depends on the size/style of the show in my experience, but I've seen the lights come on and everyone kind of wanders around at smaller shows

if you are talking about the arcade fire show you just went to, I have no idea wtf their problem is

I am from somewhere where it is customary to clap and whoo after the last song until the band comes out to at least acknowledge and wave, if there is no encore.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/the_prestige_racket.php?page=all

clap for bands, say yeah

good article, lotta butthurt in the comments

it's kinda amazing how much damage one shitty magazine has done

but people really do like ranking things and one-upsmanship...it's also a good example of how 'competition' can lead to an increasingly dysfunctional market

more reasons to sentence mort zuckerman to 1m years in prison

Heh, I cheerfully attended the lowest-ranked college that I got into.

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/10/03/the-young-are-on-the-streets-because-they-have-the-most-to-lose-60389/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newdeal20%2FfJto+%28New+Deal+2.0%29

this thread came just in time, I think

agreed