quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

fwiw I think ygl is right on this and the american university system is pretty much gonna implode in our lifetimes

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/09/01/309988/bold-prediction-of-the-day-universities-are-the-new-newspapers/

i never did an internship -- no one ever really impressed on me how much easier it would make things -- i wish they had

never mind the fact that 99% of all internships nowadays are unpaid!

kind of comment always rubs me wrong. if you're not independently wealthy then you can't opt out of this, but there's nothing wrong with pointing out that it sucks

― horseshoe, Thursday, September 1, 2011 5:14 PM (1 minute ago)

I've had incredibly shitty high-stress jobs, but damned if I'd let the public/clients know that I was unhappy. I valued my work that much. It was only when I was under actually-abusive working conditions that I let any of the strain show, and that was (unfortunately) mostly to coworkers, and I got out of the position as soon as possible. I don't think anybody should suffer needlessly for work, but, let's be honest, being a dickhead while you work a relatively cushy job at starbucks is NAGL whatever your college degree.

fwiw I think ygl is right on this and the american university system is pretty much gonna implode in our lifetimes

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/09/01/309988/bold-prediction-of-the-day-universities-are-the-new-newspapers/

― iatee, Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:17 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah feel like theres been a lot of that kind of talk going around recently, prob true

not all internships are created equal, some of them are just abusive free labor in return for getting to put a fancy name on your resume, some of them are actual-lead-to-job things

all of them should be illegal, too bad the american gov't pretty much runs on a big pile of interns

xp

not sure what direction yglesias is pushing for in that article but I've been thinking for a long time that the american idea of college - a 4 year wonderland of drinking and 'finding yourself' financed by loan money - is unsustainable. not advocating that everybody should go to devry's or lincoln tech to become an auto mechanic instead, but

the white house is actually built on top of a foundation of intern bones, little known fact

too bad the american gov't pretty much runs on a big pile of interns

xp

― iatee, Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:19 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark

otm i was shocked when a very impressive go-getter friend of mine got a white house internship when we were in college and it was unpaid. she did not come from money, so she went into serious debt that summer.

Why don't we focus on the real enemy: MBA programs?

fwiw I think ygl is right on this and the american university system is pretty much gonna implode in our lifetimes

as someone at least partially in the business of teaching undergraduate science courses certain kinds of teaching have gotten much more expensive but i can see his point

i think the most unsustainable and 'broken' thing is the amount of degree-creep necessary to be considered 'qualified' for jobs that probably don't require a degree at all

dayo otm, kids should maybe get their drinking and self-discovery and shitty soul-crushing menial jobs out of the way before they even GO to college?

it's mostly employers trying to find ways to let people down gently

the GOP basically wants the president to be an unpaid intern iirc

i think the most unsustainable and 'broken' thing is the amount of degree-creep necessary to be considered 'qualified' for jobs that probably don't require a degree at all

i think the most unsustainable and 'broken' thing is the amount of degree-creep necessary to be considered 'qualified' for jobs that probably don't require a degree at all

― *clicks 'OK'* (Lamp), Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:23 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah itd prob be better if their were more alternatives to college, apprenticeships, school if lyfe, etc

tbh i feel like paid internship would be >>>> college in practical terms

i wish i had had a year or two between hs and college! tbh i am always going to feel that i took v poor advantage of my higher education because NO PARENTS HEY BONG BONG KEGSTAND BONG

ha xp exactly

you mean like an apprenticeship xp

who wants to become a blacksmith... my blacksmith

tbh i enjoyed goin right into academia but i was a pretty srs student who felt like i had earned it bcuz i didnt really get to goof off in high school ... there was the economic pressure like, if you dont get enough scholarships to go to college, u will be min wage

all kids should have to be bellhops instead of going to college

xxxp to IC: Also the lack of actual experience in that field. Want a teaching degree? Take a bunch of classes, do 200 hours in a classroom and blam, you're covered. Law school, medical school, roughly the same thing, before you're finally allowed to test the waters. There's very little value placed on real-world experience, except in trade schools –- and obv. those aren't highly esteemed. A friend of mine in culinary school has spent far more time at work than I spent in the classroom earning my M.Ed, and his initial career prospects are significantly lower than mine.

when u ride the elevator to the top floor u become boss of the hotel xp

at my last corporate job our interns made $10/hr, in nyc, and i remember being kinda o_O that most of them considered that 'decent', so many other firms didnt pay anything.

jobs that 'require a college degree' is more complicated than it might appear at first glance. most white collar jobs do not require a direct skill that you learned in college, but they still want a competent, generally skilled worker who's gonna show up on time. 'require a college degree' makes people oversimplify the idea of college, like the entire purpose is to specifically learn one skill that you're going to use in one job.

a good article on the subject

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

sometimes i look around and am like 'where r my interns'

it's probably also worth remembering that the idea of college as being accessible to everyone is a pretty recent idea, dating back probably to the... GI bill? for women, even later, not til the 60s/70s

haha I have had two different 10/h internships in my life

everyone i know who has a job in NYC had to work for free for 6 mo & gambled that they'd be offered a FT job at the end. they had to work for a year waiting tables or doing similar work at home in rural/suburban/midwestern [wherever] so they could afford this. many were basically out of money when offered the job

im guessing friends who 'didnt make it' dont advertise that

whoops the last claim is def wrong xp to myself

i went to college but i was always late to my first job, lol

mostly bcuz i was still living like a college student though

To get my teacher's license (2010-2011), I had to do an unpaid internship for 12 months. To the university granting my degree/license, I had pay a full 9-credit class-fee to register for the internship. Net cost for volunteering as a teacher for the year? -$7200.

yeah, i had an internship that was unpaid except for $5 for lunch if i worked 4 hours or more, but i took it because the company was in practice of hiring their interns.

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

I love this url so much

Oh, wait, there's more. I paid 150*6 for state exams, $130 for licensing (still hasn't arrived) , a $700 affiliation fee, $100 for CORI/background checks, and provided all of the materials for my classroom that the school wouldn't cover because, as an intern, I couldn't really access the school budget for supplies.

most white collar jobs do not require a direct skill that you learned in college, but they still want a competent, generally skilled worker who's gonna show up on time.

sure, i think the point is that there is probably a better, more efficient way for the economy as a whole to manage this selection process

like i get that employers like having another institution managing the work of pre-selecting 'competent, generally skilled workers' but as is its a p terrible process for the actual employees

not really sure being admitted to college/graduating from college has anything to do with being a competent, generally skilled worker

particularly since these days the hardest part abt a good school is getting in, colleges should perhaps just scrap everything save the admission process

I'm not defending it! I think overall it's terrible when combined w/ the neverending rise in the cost of college. but people do sorta miss how things are working (or supposed to work) when they view college purely as a trade school rather than a weird signaling system. xp

i read one blogg post by a guy who runs a software company and he says he relies on gpa above everything for hiring young people cause relative to other mesures it represents what the largest number of people think abt the applicants work

i read one blogg post

(sorry that was too snarky)

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

― iatee, Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:32 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

this was actually a really good article/one blogg post btw

i liked that article you linked iatee although i think hes way underestimating the role #4 plays even w/ elite college degrees e.g. your job/earning prospects look a lot different if you graduate stanford w/ an english degree than they do if you graduate w/ an engineering one

not sure what to say about the responsibilities of universities in 20somethings having shitty jobs when only 30% of Americans have college degrees anyway.

universities have a lot of responsibility when *that's why almost everyone is going*

This is all interesting –- the idea of the degree (and major) as an absolute signifier to a mushy signified