It's amusing to see a bunch of Americans arguing about how bad their lives are. "It's worse for us than it is for you!" "No, it's worse for us than it is for you!" ad infinitum... Come with me on my next trip to Africa. Then you'll stop whining about how hard your lives are.
I've seen some pretty bad shit, but that doesn't change the fact that Millienals have gotten screwed over the Boomers and Xers who then turn around and blame it all on us. Facts are facts. We are worse off than prior generations. Pointing out that kids are starving in Africa doesn't change that fact.
...yet seeing Obama spend 4 years failing to fix the economy, they overwhelmingly voted to reelect him. Enjoy your Obamanation, Gen Y'ers.
Bad example. A friend of mine supervises a group of programmers for a global energy company. She interviewed candidates last week. 2,000 people applied for 6 openings. As for the Code Monkeys graduating next May? Universities are graduating thousands of people to compete for dozens of jobs. It's not Rocket Science to figure out why wages are lower and unemployment is higher. Another industry, that we all know and love, is headed down the toilet too. Lawyers. I had an interesting, albeit short, conversation with the Dean of an SEC Law School last year. He claimed that there were more people in Law School at that moment than there were total JD's in the US. He claimed that over the next 5-10 years the total number of people holding JD's in the US will more than double, but the number of jobs obviously will not. The, rather cruel, joke he made was that they would have to start including applications for McDonalds on the backs of diplomas. Nursing is approaching the same cliff after two decades of shortages and virtual negative unemployment in the field. When my mom graduated three decades ago, individual hospitals were falling all over themselves to offer scholarships, sign on bonuses, and high wages because there simply weren't enough qualified candidates for the number of jobs. It was an Employee's market. My mom graduated debt free because of this. But, that's not the case anymore. The pendulum has finally swung the other way and there are now more qualified candidates than there are jobs, but Advisors are still filling the class rolls just as fast as they possibly can. Two legacy hospitals in B'ham that closed in the last two years put 1,000 nurses out of a job. Those experienced nurses are getting hired to fill the available jobs and the new grads have nowhere to go. They can go outside of the B'ham metroplex, but starting pay gets cut in half or more. The 200 bed community hospital out in the sticks simply can't afford to compete on wage terms with the 2,000 bed world class teaching hospital. I said all that to say this. If your heart's desire has always been to be a Code Monkey, Lawyer, or Nurse, go for it. But, know that you're potentially facing a very difficult row to hoe. Your wages probably won't be as high as those in those jobs now, and it's easy to see why. More people than ever are going to college. I expect that trend to continue. But, the number of people graduating is far outpacing job growth in a number of historically "safe" fields. These aren't new trends that popped up over night.
when our daughter was little about 4 years ago, she had a fever about 101, called the 24 nurse line and they told us don't even bother going to the dr or er until the fever hits 104. Nothing you can do.
No, programming and the other examples are actually exactly my point. Almost across the board, in almost EVERY field the economy/job market has not kept pace with the population. It's not just the few you cited, but across the board. Not just programmers, lawyers and nurses, but chemical engineers, accountants, economists, finance, teachers, the list goes on and on. The few industries that have shortages now are so small that they don't even come close to balancing out all the historically safe fields that now aren't. Thus, as I said originally, Millennials have more college debt than any preceding generation. Millennials have higher unemployment at graduation than any generation going back to the Boomers. Millennials have lower starting salaries than any generation going back to the Boomers. These are structural issues created by preceding generations. These aren't result of just poor choices on the part of Millennials, or b/c they got gold starts on their homework. It's the result of structural issues created by preceding generations that don't wish to take credit for their own selfishness and incompetence and so come with these increasingly desperate memes to somehow blame Millennials for living in the world that they, the Boomers and Xers, created.
Oh hey, another Fox News viewer that thinks Obama has a time machine. But with the added bonus that he not only caused the Great Recession but went back even further and started cutting State support for colleges 30 years ago.
Every doctor has an office number which, after hours, rolls over to an answering service and a means to get to talk to a doctor, or, if they have one, a nurse practicianer. It might cost something (one dr I know charges $25) which is still cheaper than an ER visit.
All for solid, predictable reasons. So do you propose to leave those structural issues in place and use unending amounts of money to prop it up so "generation Y" and beyond don't feel left out, or do we rip the band-aid off now in the hope that the student debt and job markets might correct themselves in time for the next generation?
Yup. Forget I said anything. Black Jesus is doing fine. Yes, fossil fuel prices are remaining insanely high because of his policies. Yes, that means everything that needs to be shipped somewhere is now more expensive (or less profitable). Yes, Obamacare has created huge uncertainties and costs for employers that make hiring a bad idea. Yes, we're shunting money into "green jobs" like Solyndra--money that could be spent elsewhere. Yes, Obama's war on The Rich is causing Atlas to shrug, but I'm sure it isn't in any way his fault and Eisenhower is somehow to blame for the past 5 years of shitty economy. Him and Senator McCarthy had such a hard-on for communism that they were doing everything the Soviet way and... You know, I just can't keep a straight face anymore. Your President isn't the only reason there aren't any jobs, but he's a pretty goddamned big reason. When Carter had this shitty an economy, he lost his job and was a 1 termer. When Bush had an economy go to shit he lost his job and was a 1 termer (granted, Ross Perot splitting the vote and a Democrat legislature had a big hand in that, and granted, he got the ball rolling on some things like NAFTA and opening the Internet up that created the economic boom that Clinton was smart enough to not kill, but all that is a moot point). Any sitting President in charge of an economy like Obama's would not normally be reelected. Now I'm not in any way thrilled by Mitt Romney, but you know what? He was at least marginally successful as governor of Massachusetts. I mean, MA is still there and unemployment is lower there than the national average. And even Obama will tell you he was such a successful businessman that he made a shit-ton of money. Conversely, Obama was a freshman Senator, an uninspiring professor, and hasn't held a real job in his life--let alone run a business. He's run an incredibly corrupt and opaque administration. But hey. Let's re-elect him. I'm sure things will be different for his second term. What could possibly go wrong?
This. My son has plans to go to West Point. Barring that the options he is looking at are in Aerospace or foregoing a university and diving into the skilled trades. That is the one area that folks over look. Because they they bought into the hype of "You simply MUST go to college." Colleges raised tuition when loans became plentiful. It's not the other way around. The government pushed this. Now the colleges and universities are going "oh shit", realizing that they have basically priced themselves out of the market. As for unemployment, EVERYONE is hurting across the board. As for starting salaries, well with the economy in the shitter there aren't that many needs for employees. Couple that with a flooded job market and salaries are lower for everyone. Hell, 5 years after the magical fixes and EVERYONE'S earnings are still down about 56%. Gen Y ain't special.
[action=garamet]notices how many posters insisting "Not EVERYBODY needs to go to college!" have gone to college themselves...[/action]
No they did not. First off, point me out a university that get's to set it's own tuition. To my knowledge that is almost entirely done but the State Leg. Tuition goes up when they don't fund their system like they did for previous generations. What’s wrong is that after we got ours, we cut it off for them. The reason a summer at KFC could pay for a year of UW med school in 1981 isn’t that we were so hardworking and industrious. It’s that taxpayers back then picked up 90 percent of the tab. We weren’t Horatio Algers. We were socialists. Today, the public picks up only 30 percent of UW tuition, and dropping. Ignoring the reality that State Governments started cutting support to their University systems to pay for tax breaks, pensions, prison systems, etc. etc. and blaming it instead on the loans that filled the gap is confusing cause with effect.
...because you say so. Right. Again, you're confusing an observation with a "proof." It's the former, not the latter. But you figured you'd just shut it out right now so you wouldn't have to think too hard.
I love it when you give someone what they asked for and the realize it isn't what they wanted. It almost makes it worth it to be dragged down with them. Almost. The problem is, they still don't fucking see it. They just bitch that you didn't give them enough of what they asked for. " Who is John Galt?"
actually, you do. because otherwise you're competing for jobs that don't require a college education with college grads. what's even better is now some of the jobs one once worked up to, such as being a plant foreperson, now have diploma programs so the kids (once again) get to skip the dues paying line
A fictional character in a novel that appeals primarily to 18-year-old boys. Is that what you use for bait?
I read an interview from a local HS principal recently that said that the dropout rate in college was highest amount those with a 2.0 to 3.0 GPA in high school because they don't have the self discipline and/or aptitude for the rigors that college brings. And frankly, I can believe that, as many of the kids I went to college with were far more interested in spending their parents' money on keggers than learning anything. But I think many people's experience with school guidance counseling acting as though college was the only option and maybe a bone thrown in about the military (because that will pay for college, of course). But today's vocational schools are a far cry from what they used to be, and a good way for young folks to get in and get out into a field to support themselves as well as they could if they went to college and got their diploma in four years. But few counselors even bring that up as an option and too many parents are on autopilot and have no clue what options are available for their kids.
^This. Ideally it should be about screening for aptitudes and interests no later than junior year of high school, and then showing kids what their options are, rather than trying to herd them in one direction or another. I'm just amused at the attitude among some of the college grads in the RR. It's called kicking the ladder out behind you.
What rigors? The University I teach at has so many measures in place to coddle the students that it's nearly impossible to fail so long as you make at least a marginal effort to succeed. This is all done under the guise of "keeping retention up". Most of the folks who are dropping out are dropping out due to money.
So, how do we fix this problem, comrades? First, we force caps on tuition rates. Next, we impose a massive tax hike on top wage earners, to be spent paying full tuition for all college students. Of course, you will have to submit to career path controls to ensure you're trained in a vocation that can be of service to society. But they still need jobs. Can't have a glorious workers' paradise if nobody works. What we'll need to do is nationalize these industries, particularly in the areas of technology and manufacture. Fire the executive staff, seize all of the companies' assets, and use that money to hire more workers. What? Not enough demand for the widgets? Re-tool the operation to churn out something used by a government agency. But that's not far enough, is it? Those poor, helpless workers are still being preyed upon by evil creditors forcing their financial products on them. We'll need to break up these institutions, and while we can't quite manage to just erase all existing debt, we can freeze all existing balances and halt the accruing of interest, at the same time imposing binding arbitration that negotiates pennies-on-the-dollar payment plans favoring the workers. Not stopping there, though. While we now have standardized prolemobiles ( Paladin 2012 all rights reserved) manufactured in the Glorious Worker's Automobile Plants of New Detroit for everyone who is not adequately served by our newly-expanded, free public transit networks, the unfairly stratified value of property is still excluding some workers from home ownership. We will begin seizing overly large properties to carve up for the solidarity of cookie cutter neighborhoods (more jobs, comrades!), and establishing one absolute dollar value for a parcel of land and unit of housing, to be allocated by determination by the newly-empowered Housing Department.
Exactly this. Anyone who thinks that college graduates are sitting around unemployed just because we can't get jobs in our field is a fool. We still have to make ends meet, and so we take on jobs that don't match our skill sets and traditionally would go to people who aren't in possession of college degrees, making it even harder for non college grads to get a job.
It depends on the school and the program in question. When I went to the University of Michigan, it was anything but impossible to fail and many of the people I attended with did not make it through.
Certainly, but I would bet you that U of M has similar methods in place these days that were not there when you were a student.
So, Anc's got no problem with higher tuition as long as someone else pays it? Does it really make sense for the state to make it easier to get a college degree in X when the economy does not product very many jobs for people with X degrees? Anc seems to want to dictate what supply and demand are going to be. It doesn't work. You can't graduate a whole bunch of, say, nurses without tending to lower nursing salaries and making the job market more competitive. The "structural changes" Anc goes on about--which really mean "consequences of state intervention in education"--don't change the facts of the market for nurses. If every PENNY of tuition nursing graduates received were forgiven by government fiat, it would do NOTHING to improve their chances in the job market. Forgiving all (or a significant fraction) of every nursing student's tuition only motivates more people to pursue that track. But that's exactly the WRONG thing to do if the employment market isn't there for it. (I realize nurses are almost always in high demand; I'm just using it as an example.) Harsh dose of market fundamentalism: wages are indicative of how much opportunity there is in a given field. Low wages = supply of workers outstrips demand = fewer opportunities = probably should look for something else. High wages = demand for workers outstrips supply = more opportunities = go for it! You knew what the costs were when you went to college. You had four years to look at the opportunities in your chosen field and change course. If you didn't, too bad. More student loan debt than previous generations? Perhaps so, but since the population increases, there is increasing demand on lots of things. You'll pay more for a house than your grandparents did, too. And globalization is only going to add to the competitive forces on you. Maybe you should consider supporting pro-growth policies so that there will be more opportunities, eh?
A cursory look at the U of M website would indicate that, indeed, there are a number of measures designed to coddle their students under the guise of "retention". You and your friends may not have known about them and they may not be mandatory, but they're there.
This is exactly it. People are expecting that following their hearts desire will give them both the job they want and a top tier income. That was my biggest gripe about the blog entry. He wants to be a journalist but refuses to accept the reality that journalism is dead. It doesn't matter if he's skilled (questionable), the fact is, he picked a financial dead end for a job. If he loves it anyway, then fine, good for him. Just don't complain about the rest, he already has something most people don't have in a job.
