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

dayo, Drew Faust is a woman, of "Woman to lead Harvard" fame (actual headline!)

when colleges go back to charging $7000/year in tuition, I will go back to not judging colleges' value by graduates' paychecks

Or how about we cut her salary 50% and "Don't judge a college presidency by its paycheck"

but how will we find someone qualified enough to write articles like that and attend fundraiser dinners for only $500,000 a year

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/fashion/for-20-somethings-ambition-at-a-cost.html

eh, feels more like a quid-ag article if anything.

somewhere in between

in quidagation limbo, if you will

qimbo

IDK man, I used to have that kind of reaction to people bitching about working in "cool" jobs, but at some point we have to say enough is enough:

“We need to hire a 22-22-22,” one new-media manager was overheard saying recently, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a year. Perhaps the middle figure is an exaggeration, but its bookends certainly aren’t. According to a 2011 Pew report, the median net worth for householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662. Lest you think that’s a mere side effect of the economic downturn, for those over 65, it rose 42 percent to $170,494 (largely because of an overall gain in property values). Hence 1.2 million more 25-to-34-year-olds lived with their parents in 2011 than did four years earlier.

yeah I mean the article is a mishmash, I only posted it because I hope to get hired as ilx's social media manager, I think the last thing is pretty huge in that it's more than just an economic stat it's also a breaking w/ 'american culture'

ftr i think iatee should be ilx's social media manager

I have experience with all forms of social media including facebook, twitter and gchat

On her last day at one job, her 75-year-old supervisor asked her to help move some heavy things in her house. In her garage, the supervisor opened a door from which issued a blinding stream of light.

“It was a huge room filled with her own field of marijuana plants,” Ms. Schiller said. “She conscripted me for no pay to harvest it overnight. She makes $35,000 per crop and it goes straight to her retirement account.”

The intern’s payment the next morning: a breakfast burrito.

!!!

I feel like that was a weird example to use because it is probably not very representative

dear high times magazine,

i thought the letters here were fake until something similar happening to me!

lol mordy

that girl shoulda stolen the weed

I mean maybe the 75 y/o has crime connections to hunt down bad interns but if not is she gonna tell the cops 'my unpaid intern stole my illegal drug crop'

also kind of wondering how she managed to repeatedly put $35,000 in tax-free income into a retirement account without anyone noticing

well the kid might have been guessing about the financial side of things

I mean maybe the 75 y/o has crime connections to hunt down bad interns but if not is she gonna tell the cops 'my unpaid intern stole my illegal drug crop'

― iatee, Monday, March 4, 2013 6:58 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if it's denver it's legal and she should quit writing and start growing imo

the unpaid intern that is

ha rereading it you're right it was in denver or sf

it could be denver but it sounds more like something an old person in sf would do

^yeah that occurred to me as likelier

also I like how getting a job at collegehumor is making it to a respectable career

xp also if it was in denver it would be the basement not the garage.

you have to register to read, but this is well worth it on securitized student debt: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/03/04/1408332/having-toilet-papered-a-tree-students-move-on-to-trash-abs-market/

puts some things in perspective.

and a followup on broader stuff: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/03/04/1408892/damn-straight-im-a-college-grad-paper-or-plastic/

I like this:

Assume there are two colleges (A and B) that would both like to move up in the rankings. College A can only move up in ranking if College B moves down (zero sum game). A college can move up in the rankings if it can raise tuition and therefore invest in the school by improving the facilities, hiring better professors and offering more extracurricular activities.

If College A increases tuition and College B does not, the result is the upper right corner, which is optimal for College A as it scores a “1” while College B drops by one. However, if College B also raises tuition, the result is the upper left corner, which leaves the rankings unchanged, both with “0”. If College A does not increase tuition but College B does, the result is the lower left corner, which is the best outcome for College B. The final outcome is when neither raises tuition, which is the lower right corner. The dominant strategy is therefore to increase tuition to avoid falling in the ranks (Chart 8).

I think people really underrate how huge a negative influence one stupid magazine has been on higher ed

Why Twenty-Somethings Aren't Doomed to Be Poor (but Thirty-Somethings Might Be)

unemployment was 10.8% in december 1982 so using 1983 wealth as a comparison point is sorta misleading

not sure I get your point. Under-40s had accumulated 7% more wealth in 1983 than today's under-40s, despite that 10.8% unemployment.

haven't the measures of unemployment changed since 1982?

my point is that that it's a comparison that needs context, like the gap would prob be bigger if the start date was 1988

yeah I see your point

real problem is: "In some senses, twenty-somethings are collectively even better off than that blue line suggests. The fraction of 25-to-29-year-olds with a bachelor's degree has grown by almost 40 percent since early 80s, and while today that means more of them are saddled with student debt, in the long-run, it means they'll likely have higher earning power."

...unless the value of a bachelor's degree has in any way gone down in that same exact time period.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/company-immediately-calls-job-applicant-upon-seein,31669/

That's not that far from my post-college resume.

that article really hit a raw nerve w/me more than most Onion articles

I mean, English major from state school with mediocre GPA, writing for school newspapers and lit mags, non-fluent spanish, etc.

haha yeah, that one is definitely funny because it hurts.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/heres-how-little-math-americans-actually-use-at-work/275260/

haha, lower level white collar jobs

blatant mathism on display here.

that's not a thing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/are-student-loans-destroying-the-economy/275083/

questionable article, although it seems possible that maybe as bad as things are for college grads, degree is still better than no degree. Faint praise.

Great stuff in the comments though.

the argument only holds if we assume college really is an investment in human capital for the majority of people who go

in any case cars and houses are terrible investments too so it's kinda a wash

Is part of the problem that we've tried to convince generations that home ownership is an investment?