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

what if they create an organic computer, ya'll silicon lightweight type engineers won't be sitting so high huh

Run it on carrots and parsnips!!!!!!

free range motherboards

fwiw, a friend works at John Deere and a lot of his engineer colleagues are Indian dudes who went to college in the US

My girlfriends brother graduated with an engineering degree in may and now has a job where he is being paid me and my girlfriends combined salary. Otoh his job sounds so boring.

Not really any reason for this post other than my own jealousy

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/11/why-kids-are-all-broke/44664/

generational warfare c/d

will it 'catch on'

I mean beyond the stuff already done by congress on a regular basis

with respect to those present i have been saying since i was 16 that the boomers left us fucked

some suggestions re student debt via mike konczal

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/two-steps-towards-tackling-our-current-student-loan-problems/

that's a good article

I like the framing of 'public option' tho irl we're drifting away from that instead if coming closer to having a feasible 'public option'. it's more complicated because education is more of an investment than health care. but it's a personal investment *and* a social investment and right now we're failing at funding the 2nd part.

yeah i liked that framing too. the demise of the public university is a really bad thing for everyone, private schools and their students as much as anyone, in particular w/r/t controlling costs.

heres a longer thing about "public options" that konczal has linked to before

http://slackwire.blogspot.com/2010/09/public-options-general-case.html

yeah there's a never ending price spiral atm w/ public universities capable of justifying any price increase - as long as they remain cheaper than private schools they're 'the bargain' and private schools operating w/ their own weird games - super 'competitive' w/r/t everything but price (even that isn't *always* true, which is why this is a weird market)

yeah shoulda read that first looks like he's saying that and more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html

otm

One of the two who is still in engineering plans to work in finance after graduation.

lol

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/the-tyranny-of-meritocracy/248061/

what is she saying here? my brain is too tired to parse this

oh who gives a fuck

i literally read that URL and went "pffffffffffft" at my desk

key graf

This overlooks a more important question, which is why the system went wrong. Don't tell me it got hostage to the wrong ideology--tell me why all those professors we paid millions of dollars to study economics couldn't provide a convincing rebuttal to that ideology in advance of the crash. Don't tell me that regulators were stupid or bankers got greedy until you first explain to me why tens of thousands of very well educated people, most of them graduates of colleges and professional schools that had aggressively winnowed them based on intelligence, barely outperformed a bunch of upstart micks, third-generation coupon-clipping WASP dimwits, and central bankers who still worshipped the barbarous relic of the gold standard?

yikes

I'm not sure I'm really following her point.

i think she's saying "the problem is the meritocracy, cause clearly it fucked us just as badly as the robber barons"?

which is totally fascist and batshit?

Interesting how she slips in "a few mick upstarts" -- McArdle who grew up on the Upper West Side etc.

Don't tell me that regulators were stupid or bankers got greedy until you first explain to me why tens of thousands of very well educated people, most of them graduates of colleges and professional schools that had aggressively winnowed them based on intelligence, barely outperformed a bunch of upstart micks, third-generation coupon-clipping WASP dimwits, and central bankers who still worshipped the barbarous relic of the gold standard?

like it sounds like she's saying "clearly these technocrats are all know-nothings and we should scrap the deal, cause i mean look at all those pre-depression people that did just fine clipping coupons"???

it's a sloppy argument but I think it's notable that someone like her is in a position that they feel like they *have* to talk about this. she might be ~occupying~ the right-wing corner of a left-wing subject, but watching conservatives approach ows-related issues is interesting cause a lot of the time they're basically forced to agree. there are not very many subjects outside of 'killing obl was a good thing' where that really happens these days.

she's better than david brooks fwiw

When she says "coupon-clipping" I assume she's referring to bond coupons, not supermarket?

her argument is something like

1. bad old blue-blood days
2. the ivies start letting more jews and catholics in
3. crash of 2008 happens

??

no i don't get it either

seems like a reflexive need to not-explain the crash by reaching for some kind of business-page friendly greater narrative. oh, it wasn't an "oligarchic" elite that wrecked the world, but a meritocratic one. hmm, makes you think.

I remember reading somewhere that there's a narrative that plays bigger in Western Europe of non-blueblood upstarts coming to wreck up the financial system -- class (and sometimes ethnicity) overtones are more present in stories about "rogue traders" and the like who don't come from the right backgrounds/schools.

she seems to be using "change in admission standards at elite colleges of 80 years ago" and "upward mobility" somewhat interchangeably, which is pretty fucking stupid!!! ps i hate megan mccardle she totally sucks.

Yup, she sucks and is dumb.

srsly

it's worth noting that whatever her definition of meritocracy is, she certainly includes herself in the category

and yeah the 'went to harvard' = meritocracy pov has a lot of faults w/ it esp since if you look at harvard (etc.)'s student body today you wouldn't think "wow that is a great institution when it comes to turning significant quantities of poor people into rcih people." otoh how do you define 'meritocracy'. it's a word that makes sense as a vague idea but when you try and sketch out a strict definition you run into a lot of problems. is someone who dropped out of hs but started their own successful business part of the 'meritocracy'? is someone who went to harvard but works as a (insert crappy job) part of the meritocracy?

does she really include herself in it? I get an old money vibe.

really what you have is 'successful people are successful people' and maybe our system of credentialism is more 'fair' today than it was 80 years ago and maybe social networks are slightly less important when it comes to moving ahead. but I mean george w. bush was president notsolongago - very old school oligarchy was still on top of the american cheerleader pyramid when things went to shit. maybe it was less prevalent than before, but it's hard to pretend like we've turned into some bizarro society where nothing matters but test scores.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/the-rage-of-the-almost-elite/247638/

Of course, you might think my outlook was jaundiced because I identified with the bankers; I did go to an Ivy League school, and I eventually went to business school and spent a summer with Merrill Lynch. But I didn't know I was going to business school until shortly before I applied; it was what I did when I realized that I was never going to care as much about the inner workings of a computer as most of the guys I worked with.

And if Orwell (and I) are right, then it is I who should have had the most resentment. I did all the same things they did--went to the right schools, got good test scores--and they ended up in banking, while I ended up making a small fraction of what they did. In fact, this happened to me twice: once after college, and again after business school. My first job at the Economist paid approximately a third of what the management consulting job that I'd originally accepted had promised to pay.

waht

that has to be one of the stupidest things i have read today

you guys are reading the Atlantic

their new cities section is pretty good

^^

also regularly enjoy connor friedersdorfenbergerdorf or whatever

Other than pure envy, it's hard to see how I could somehow be made worse off if Bill Gates' income suddenly doubled, but everything else remained the same.

lol behavioural economics, lol any economics

The old WASP bastions democratized or were swept away by nimbler competitors who didn't scruple to sacrifice profits because it might look bad to the boys in the club.

the benefits of an 'elite education' at work here, huh?

Whatever the systemic injustices, it's also quite clear to everyone . . . even parasitic leeches of investment bankers . . . that their salaries only come as the result of frantic effort.

as long as its quite clear to everyone, it certainly has to be true

Megan McCardle is such a moron.

her last name is fun to say

also regularly enjoy connor friedersdorfenbergerdorf or whatever

― what's happening to our based god??? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Tuesday, November 8, 2011 4:52 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Holy crap, I have had this guy on my gchat buddy list for like two years thinking he was some law school classmate I couldn't remember. Now I realize that I had an e-mail exchange with him a while back in response to something he wrote in the Atlantic -- maybe even an article about Law School.

she goes between 'troll' and 'doesnt know very much about subject she's talking about'

at the end of the day the fact thy people like her and Brooks have jobs as intellectuals is pretty good evidence that we dont have a great meritocracy.