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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wall-street-and-the-ivy-league-readers-respond/2011/08/25/gIQATmmXMR_blog.html

I have worked on Wall Street for 25 years, and it is clear to me that college students who major in economics or business degrees often do so because they have no other passionate interests in topics such as history, literature, math or science. Economics and business are the “default” majors if you don’t have significant passion in other subject matters. For such kids lucky enough to attend elite colleges, the high cost of attending (think student loans) can be mitigated by high earning potential of working in consulting or Wall Street. In virtually no other industries can you be completely mediocre and earn a king’s ransom in pay.

::pets my liberal arts degree on the head::

elite college have some of the best financial aid in the country + 'the highest cost of attending' isn't limited to them

ie that guy still prob thinks about the world as 'ivy league schools are the expensive schools' and when he was young there was more truth to that

they're still expensive - there's a zone between like, 150k and idk 300k where students are still getting 'financial aid' in the form of maybe a few thousand a year. and then it depends on how willing your family is to shoulder the burden. or if your family is gonna be all AMERICAN VALUES and tell you once you're over 18, all your loans are your responsibility (until they die and then you get the inheritance)

oh yeah even public schools are 'way too expensive', but the student body at these schools is pretty skewed compared to the 'average college' so the narrative of 'things are so expensive, this is the only way they cope' doesn't make that much sense to me

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/nov/11/avg-student-loan-debt-shrinking-at-yale/

The study placed Yale’s average student loan debt for the class of 2010 at $9,254 — roughly $15,000 below the national average — and Storlazzi said the class of 2011 graduated with an average debt of $9,000, partly due to Yale’s generous financial aid policy.

(I know their financial aid was less generous when you were there fwiw)

well that only counts the loans that are given as part of your fin. aid package - that doesn't take into account the expected family contribution, which your family may or may not contribute. if your family doesn't, then you take out private loans

The Project on Student Debt report found that 28 percent of Yale students in the class of 2010 graduated with some form of loan debt — 18 percent graduating with federal debt and 10 percent with non-federal debt. The study also found that 11 percent of the class of 2010 received federal Pell Grants, which do not have to be repaid.

the 10% w/ no-federal debt is probably more representative of students who do graduate with private loans

I mean I think that 'do this to pay my loans' narrative can be true for certain people for sure. otoh j is tutoring one of these kids in french. a roth$child. that girl isn't going into finance to pay off her loans.

overall there are lots of reasons to take jobs that pay lots of money in nyc, idt it's a mystery. if the jobs were being tossed at people at rutgers, 30% of the rutgers student body would go into finance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/opinion/what-college-students-need-to-know.html

sometimes i wonder if 'what happens to harvard grads?' is maybe slight less important or indicative than the new york times thinks it is

the nyt is staffed by harvard grads so naturally it's very important to them

the 7k undergrads at harvard are the best and the brightest people in america and each one we lose to wall st is negative 100 billion dollars to the american economy, cause each and every one would have invented a new facebook

actually that's 150 billion dollars, not 100 billion

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/map_of_the_week/2012/02/student_loan_debt_an_interactive_map.html

"Our oldest and most prestigious colleges are losing touch with the spirit in which they were founded. To the stringent Protestants who founded Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the mark of salvation was not high self-esteem but humbling awareness of one’s lowliness in the eyes of God. With such awareness came the recognition that those whom God favors are granted grace not for any worthiness of their own, but by God’s unmerited mercy — as a gift to be converted into working and living on behalf of others. That lesson should always be part of the curriculum."

clearly. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/opinion/colleges-and-elitism.html

yeah santorum et al don't think about rich snobby people at harvard (which is more democratic / less snobby than it's ever been in history) they care about the fact that bio professors at ohio state don't allow term papers on creationism.

xp

I think it's a good lesson, whatever the origin. Substitute "luck of being born wealthy" for "God's unmerited mercy" if it makes you feel less queasy.

Exactly what part of that spirit of holiness, grace, and giving was responsible for the anti-semitic quota system at the ivies through the 1960s?

I think they would prob say it fell under 'grace'

lol

I don't know - I've been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which covers his undergraduate years at Princeton in the 1910s, and if anything it sounds snobbier then than it is now. The student body was 100% male and almost 100% white and upper class, and the main activity, which took precedence over academics, seemed to be jostling for membership to the elite social clubs.

oh yeah I saw that on an episode of Gossip Girl

well sure, it didn't even have a guise of being a meritocracy back then, except maybe in a purely calvinistic sense xp

they sorta get to have their cake and eat it to today by being half a meritocracy and half an f scott fitzgerald book

anyway professors at ivy league schools think ivy league schools are really, really important, for some reason

too

I wish I had the book in front of me. "Where did you prep?" seemed to be a typical conversation opener between students.

I don't know - I've been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which covers his undergraduate years at Princeton in the 1910s, and if anything it sounds snobbier then than it is now. The student body was 100% male and almost 100% white and upper class, and the main activity, which took precedence over academics, seemed to be jostling for membership to the elite social clubs.

an accurate portrayal btw. Princeton President Woodrow Wilson's main bragging point was his "breaking" the hold of the clubs.

I don't know - I've been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, which covers his undergraduate years at Princeton in the 1910s, and if anything it sounds snobbier then than it is now. The student body was 100% male and almost 100% white and upper class, and the main activity, which took precedence over academics, seemed to be jostling for membership to the elite social clubs.

― o. nate, Friday, March 9, 2012 4:15 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

they had maids! also here's a fun fact: the mascot for pierson college, one of yale's residential colleges, was the "slaves"

o wow

http://www.idealist.org/view/job/JC7BTfSh8b3p/

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WANT plz pray for me yall

good luck a hoos!

lol scandalously overpaid professors: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-college-professors-work-hard-enough/2012/02/15/gIQAn058VS_print.html

As far as I can tell most of my professors (the good ones) worked like 60 hours a week. Some of them just managed to arrange things so that they only had to come in three days a week.

I defy you to find a CC instructor who considers their job a "sinecure"

Since most of them are adjuncts with no benefits.

professors at community colleges, u to lazy, no deserve to be considered "upper middle class professionals".

Well comparing office time to teaching time is ridiculous and enough to ignore the rest of that article. Nonetheless, tenured professors have a pretty easy life for the money compared to similarly salaried professionals. But colleges have already been moving away from tenured professors and toward underpaid instructors and adjuncts for a long time.

yeah I'm pretty cynical on the subject of higher ed in general but that analysis misses the bigger trends
a. lol tenure
b. growth in bureaucratic + non-academic spending

some old tenured white dudes do have it easy and get paid 'too much', it's just not as important as other stuff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/mar/25/slacker-back-female-lena-dunham

I completely don't get this attitude: "oh, somebody's life (potentially) doesn't suck as much as other people's. they can work a reasonable amount of hours and not go deep into debt. well that's the problem! clearly things should be worse for them!"

or rather, i do get the attitude, but it's so transparent.

well it's a bit more complicated than that when you remember that people who 'have it good' are also people w/ vested interests in the status quo and are in positions of relative influence

he's only talking about teaching-oriented institutions so I don't have much personal stake in this but it seems to me with all teaching salary questions the wrong question to ask is "what's the value of this dollar by dollar"; the real question is: "what kind of person am I gonna buy with a salary like this?" because post-secondary teaching is not so great that good people would choose to do it for average salaries, not when there are lots of more lucrative options (yes, even with a Ph.D.).

idk seems to me like the post-secondary teaching market is not exactly straining to get enough applicants

lol maybe in a few disciplines like English & psych, but not in much else

& to the extent that's true it's only b/c people still have aspirations for better jobs; when that hope erodes then the shitty jobs will get fewer apps; i.e. those are only seen as stepping stones, given the shitty salaries & working conditions

waht

I feel like you live in a magical academic universe that is completely removed from the one there is a surplus of labor and a dearth of academic jobs in *almost every single field*

yeah are you kidding, the last faculty search I was privy to any details of (for a philosopher, even, for a 3-year visiting position) got 200+ applications. Pretty par for the course is what it sounded like too.

yeah I know the philo job market & for visiting positions like that, depending on the location, you can be talking about a search pool of 30 or less

how many applicants does a search for a tt chem job get at a not tier 1 institution in say Utah?

iatee maybe we're talking about difft things but I don't really see 2 yr community college profs making less than six figures/yr as having "vested interests in the status quo and... in positions of relative influence"