I went to community college in the 2000's. Got an associates in CIS. I
still have no further education. The cost-benefit analysis told me
there was no point in doing so. I lived in the same town with Cornell
University, and people were coming out of there with 6 figures of debt
and a bachelors degree in English Literature. No thanks. I would have
been on this list or the earlier Part-15 mailing list with you old farts
during that same time period, and I already had a decent job in
communications before I even started school.
The high school guidance counselors were telling literally everyone to
go to college. "You'll make more money in the long run". "Statistics
show it doesn't even matter what your degree is in, you'll still make
more money than if you had no degree." I was only a friggin kid, but it
was pretty obvious to me you'll eventually saturate the market with
degrees and they'll become meaningless. Especially if you're telling
people an arts degree is the same value as a science or engineering
degree. You'll end up with a lot of arts degrees because frankly,
science is harder.
At college, the advisors would keep telling you to go ahead and take
loans because you don't have to pay them until after you graduate, and
by then you'll have a better job than the people with no degree. Again,
clear bullshit. The advisors must have believed it, and a lot of young
people trusted them. One financial assistance advisor described it to
me as "It's like THEY'RE paying YOU to go to college." Uh-huh.
Providing a loan is not paying me. I'm not as think as you dumb I am.
But clearly a lot of people believed that crap.
Maybe TV and movies play a part in this story too. Our works of fiction
focus on the drama and interpersonal issues at workplaces, and not the
fact that those people are spending all day doing something difficult or
tedious in between their drama sessions. Maybe on some level people know
that work happens at work, but on some other level they imagine they'll
have lots of fun hijinks and a paycheck too. Doesn't help seeing those
kids in "Friends" working menial jobs and living in a huge, well
furnished Manhattan apartment. Uh no. Young working people in NYC live
in Chinatown or Spanish Harlem, and in a space the size of a walk-in
closet which they share with a roommate. Their furniture is bricks and
milk crates.
And yes, as someone pointed out, the growth in cost of tuition has
dramatically outpaced all of cost of living, inflation, and wages. I
don't know what drove those prices up. If you tell everyone to go to
college that inflates demand I assume, but that can't be the whole picture.
So I think the issue is was driven by counselors and advisors who were
from a prior generation giving advice based on their time when college
was cheaper. Maybe they never rechecked their math. Maybe they really
believed the market will magically create more jobs for arts degrees. I
suggest that the kid with a degree in engineering or science who can't
get a job is just an idiot with a degree. He interviews poorly, or
doesn't show up, or has a bad academic record. Meanwhile there's a
smart and studious kid from India or Pakistan who will take that job on
a work visa instead. Sorry charlie.
Meanwhile a master mechanic or a journeyman linesman makes six figures
with no student debt and no degree at all. Who was the real smart kid?
Our electrical make-ready contractor accidentally emailed me his payroll
report......I almost asked him for a job. Those Mo-fo's are rolling in
cheddar. There's a shortage of them. Average age of linesmen is 50.
They are aging out and have no replacements lined up because everybody
has a friggin English degree and wants to have an easy job.
On 10/11/2020 5:27 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Here’s one I don’t understand. Not pointing a finger, I genuinely
don’t understand. Student loan debt. Is that the huge issue that
people say? And if so, is that a new phenomenon? Why?
I assume my dad went to college on the GI Bill after WWII. I worked
20 hours a week all through college making pizzas and burgers, and had
a coop job every third quarter or so until the coop jobs disappeared
due to a recession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1969%E2%80%931970
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1969%E2%80%931970>
Plus my parents helped out. I don’t remember my friends in college
talking about student debt, but maybe they had it and it just wasn’t
talked about.
I can speculate some possible reasons for a student debt crisis now:
- Tuition has gone up
- Part time jobs and coop jobs unavailable or don’t pay enough
- Less financial assistance available
- Predatory for-profit schools
- Lots of kids who couldn’t find jobs in the Great Recession went to
school or pursued advanced degrees instead
None of these seem like adequate explanations. College is too
expensive, not sure how much it has gone up adjusted for inflation.
You’d think with online instruction and extensive use of low paid
adjunct professors they could keep costs down. Certainly dorms, food
and other amenities are a lot fancier than when I was in college,
maybe those costs have gotten out of hand. You’d also think state
schools and especially community colleges would be affordable options,
Harvard and Yale aren’t the only places to get a good education.
But if there’s genuinely a huge student debt crisis, what is causing
it, and how do we fix it? Is “free college for all” really the only
solution?
I understand with the pandemic, people out of work can’t pay their
student debts, but supposedly this problem predates the pandemic.
*From:* AF <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Bill Prince
*Sent:* Sunday, October 11, 2020 3:54 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
Yah. Even though I'm a boomer, I think attributing the current state
of the economy entirely on boomers is missing the mark somewhat. There
are a whole raft of issues that are squeezing millenials like
globalization and extreme automation. You keep adding barriers, and
getting or creating a good paying job just gets more difficult. If all
you can do is flip burgers at Micky D's or pour coffee at Starbucks,
maybe you need to think a bit more creatively.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 10/11/2020 11:52 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Obviously I’m prejudiced, but I don’t think this whole trope about all
the problems young people today face being the fault of the baby
boomers (and wishing they would die and stop hogging all the good
jobs) is quite accurate.
Yes we had a long recession starting in 2008 (but of course there were
recessions back in the 1970’s as well), but I saw a lot of parents
dipping into their 401K savings and taking out loans on their paid-off
houses so their adult children could live with them, or to pay for
their kids to go to college instead of being unemployed.
Baby boomer 401K plans were a big cushion for millennials and the
economy in general during the “Great Recession”. I think what will
actually hit the millennials is when the boomers do die, they won’t be
inheriting as much money because those retirement funds got drained.
Also, don’t kid yourself that 70 year old boomer greeting people at
Walmart or bagging groceries at Kroger is just continuing to work for
the fun of it, or that a millennial wanted that job anyway. As far as
the “good” jobs, age discrimination kicks in around age 50. I don’t
think Google and Facebook have a lot of boomers writing code. How
many boomers does Elon Musk have designing Teslas and SpaceX rockets?
Still a funny skit, but I run into millennials who totally blame all
their woes on boomers screwing their generation over. And the “why
don’t they die already” viewpoint spills over into Covid discussions.
Lots of anti-maskers say things like “if they don’t feel safe going
out, they are free to not go out”. Or there aren’t that many deaths
if you ignore the old people who were going to die anyway. People at
least didn’t used to say stuff like that out loud.
*From:* AF <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]>
*On Behalf Of *Robert
*Sent:* Sunday, October 11, 2020 12:25 PM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer
very apropos...
On 10/11/20 10:04 AM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/millennial-millions/3867395
<https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/millennial-millions/3867395>
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