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

Not very insightful or newsworthy imo, the 1% thing is kind of just a hook. Who isn't aware that Harvard et al are full of high-functioning super-keen workaholic children of upper-middle class to upper-class parents? The reason that demographics at elite universities are a demographic issue is not because the top 20 US colleges provide anything like a standard deviation better education than the next 200 colleges; it's the (alleged) resulting insularity of the social networks that develop at those schools. Really tho I suspect that whatever outcome disparity exists between people with BAs from Harvard vs. SUNY Stony Brook—a world-class university according to the usual rankers—looks a lot less significant when you compare students with similar pre-college backgrounds.

http://hechingerreport.org/content/free-courses-may-shake-universities-monopoly-on-credit_7426/

Not very insightful or newsworthy imo

yeah p much

i do love that xp

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/23/udacity-and-the-future-of-online-universities/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?pagewanted=all

did this ever get mentioned on ILX? I see some truth to the entrepreneurial spirit yada yada yada, but I don't see it as commercialism and complete lack of rebellion and dissent, I think it's about trying to establish a life outside of the failed system of corporate capitalism, even if it's just a sideline to the job that pays your bills.

yeah we talked about it somewhere. maybe this thread. I made fun of the writer and then dyao said 'no he's cool' and now my gf really likes him because he writes about jane austen and h8ing academia.

dyao said 'no he's cool' (because he had him as a college prof)*

but I agree w/ your general assessment

he is my favourite academia hater

yeah we talked about it somewhere. maybe this thread. I made fun of the writer and then dyao said 'no he's cool' and now my gf really likes him because he writes about jane austen and h8ing academia.

― iatee, Thursday, January 26, 2012 6:05 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have not read that article but your gf otm

she got her mom his book for xmas!

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2094921_2094923_2105257,00.html

its like you can't even make it as an indie rock band anymore

keep working bb, http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

third thread that's been posted in

think maybe that belongs in quiddities and agonies

no it belongs in

hell

Deresiewicz follows up on that nyt piece

http://theamericanscholar.org/generational-conflict/

I don't think that stanford anecdote is very revealing as the stanford student body isn't very representative of the generation or even the college-attending generation. like, I'd imagine the numbers would be a lot different at cal-state sacramento. it can be dangerous to make assumptions based on yr experience teaching at Yale or living in Portland. etc.

http://www.quickanded.com/2012/01/tenured-radicals-strange-ideas-about-policy.html

that's the knee-jerk response when people start ~talking~ about mild reforms. cf health care

A real education policy would ban anaphora on the internet.

"One, for a small East Bay nonprofit, drew several hundred applications. The other, for the office of the Speaker of the California State Assembly—the second-most-powerful person in the eighth-largest economy on the planet—drew three."

Presumably people rationally calculated that at the small East Bay nonprofit there would be fewer layers between them and decision-makers and that they would get the kind of real-world experience with civic issues that people like WD constantly berate elite college students for not having. And that this was preferable to making coffee for the speaker of the assembly. I'm not sure this calculation is correct, by the way! But I'm sure it doesn't have to do with some kind of narcissistic entitlement on the part of Stanford students.

it's just such a weird thing to take in isolation - like, is your argument that stanford students don't get involved enough in gov't? cause I'm sure that overall they're well represented in the offices of politicians across the country.

oh man charles murray's 'coming apart: the state of white america' is just... the actual worst. im like 40 pages in and furious

its incredible to me that someone so stupid and gross gets to write op-eds in impt newpapers and magazines instead of being kicked in the spine repeatedly

this is how i feel about Malcolm Gladwell btw

lamp did you see this

"Is This Racist?" colloquy: the American Enterprise Institute asks "How Thick Is Your Bubble?"

tyler cowen thinks it's great for some reason

I like the sleight of hand that lets him only talk about white people (the calculations are complicated enough without adding race into the equation!!)

Has our addiction to education created the wrong sort of jobseekers?

tyler cowen thinks it's great for some reason

because tyler cowen is an idiot, is why he would think this

he posts good links but he is like the ultimate troll, it is sad how many times a day he trolls me

well honestly if you can place yourself within murray's 5% elite this book is tremendously flattering to you. your moral and spiritual superiority to everyone else is never the result of longterm economic trends or technological changes or trade policy or manipulation of institutions on a scale so vast its practically invisible no its because you dont watch nascar and stayed married

example:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/02/department-of-huh.html

yeah I mean on the one hand I think it's true that we need to look at cultural factors - like, staying married pretty clearly helps you as an economic unit (having few kids too), so that's not *not* a thing, it's just a pretty shitty explanation for why certain people are billionaires

my friend sent me a link to the david brooks op-ed on this dude and on a brief skim it didn't seem that objectionable to me. like he frames it in vaguely OWS 1%/99% language and talks about tribalism & segmentation, which I broadly agree with is a problem (in-so-far as it fosters an us-against-them mentality. like maybe rich people would be more inclined to pay taxes if the thought was 'I am contributing towards a common good' rather than 'I can't believe POOR PEOPLE are attaching themselves like remoras to my veins of flowing money.')

but yeah as max's gawker post points out, the whole enterprise is really gross, but I do think every rich white family should take in at least one poor white child so that the rich family's industrious can ~vibe~ into the poor child, it would make for a good reality show, you could monetize this

nah see here's brooks: "Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness."

the liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because the top 1 percent narrative is the narrative that actually matters. talking about the social gap between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent is hiding the ball.

what if I adopt chinese baby girl instead? x-post

that depends entirely on whether or not you are a tiger mom

guess that means you're no longer part of the tribe

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/the-one-percent-versus-the-twenty-percent/

I didn't read this before I said that I swear

haha yeah I just kind of glossed over that

I do believe that americans should stop being so individualistic though ~love your brothers and sisters~

maybe I've just been interacting with too many libertarians lately

i am not reading david brooks take on this book because the idea of it i have in my head is already depressing enough

yeah I mean on the one hand I think it's true that we need to look at cultural factors

i think cultural factors have to be put in proper context though. like its weird to use the gingrichian idea that young working class men 'dont value work' rather than think about the way say, our culture constructs gender roles so that young men are often shut out of low-skill low-wage service jobs like office cleaning, health care &c

no for sure. or if you want to go one step further start taking apart the phrase 'don't value work', the concept of 'valuing work' is itself very culturally dependent.

anyway I'm thinking about starting a gen limbo blog as a clearinghouse for this sorta stuff outside of ilx.

for some reason you can be an individualist and still make lots of money from other people

makes you think

Funniest thing about this stupid book is how all the publications giving it a good review don't publish the subtitle

seriously though lamp you should take that quiz its hilarious

haha i think im still much in the shaking with rage stage of my reaction to this whole thing to laugh at it much, even the idea of w/e illiterate nyt review its gotten is making me really mad in a way that suggests i cld use some ~distance~

the whole things is just so grotesque it should be funny but its getting treated so seriously! idk

just as a fun fact i was given a copy of the book by someone who works in securities at a party at bar specializing in craft and boutique beers i recognize that i am part of the problem