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What follows is part of an article at Parenting.com:
We know the unemployment rate (over 9 percent) and the number of us living in poverty (more than 46 million. That’s roughly one in seven). But Occupy Wall Street is not helping those people. Occupy Wall Street is a temper tantrum in a private park. And it’s parents, moms and dads, i.e. us, who are to blame.
At some point on the parenting evolutionary chart, we went from restrained to indulgent. We went from being parents to being friends. Peewee baseball games stopped keeping score. Everyone got a trophy. If there was a problem, there was always a Boogieman: allergies, ADD, auditory processing, a bad teacher. We stopped saying “no,” and started saying “no because…” We negotiated. We gave them options (Cinnamon Life and Frosted Mini Wheats? Big Time Rush or iCarly?). We told them they could be American Idols and astronauts, all while knowing they were tone deaf and terrible at chemistry.
Those kids went to college, and got useless degrees (full disclosure: film major with a psychology minor). They graduated, and then failed at being American Idols and astronauts. Without a decent set of coping skills, they’ve turned rejection into anger. They’ve lived a life where there were always options, where they never lost, where they thought the moon overhead followed them. They’ve been kicked out of the nest, having never been told their wings don’t run on batteries.
And now somebody owes them $150,000 for their education. No one said your major in horticulture was a coupon good for one free career.
This is the crop from the seeds planted in the mid-1960’s. We need to get back to disciplining our children in a way that gives them both structure and hope. We need to teach our children a work ethic that includes planning for the future and doing the work necessary to achieve that future. The author of this article hit the nail on the head.
Wrong! Why should a ypung adult who earns a degree have to have Student Loans at exhorbitant rates? Why do colleges keep raising tutition at astronomical rates? 40-60 years ago a kid could go to college for a “nickle”. Our parents and grandparents could work their way through college without the burden of student loans. These kids are entitled to demand more for their efforts and this how we show our respect to our efforts?
As more student loans have become available, the cost of college has risen much faster than the rate of inflation. The reason tuition has risen so drastically is government interference. Get the government out of the picture, turn it over to a free market, and tuition will go back to where it was in the grand scheme of things. I agree the cost of college is too high.
Joe fits the mold outlined in the article to a “t”. Student loans are at below market rates and allow for deferments. They are a good deal. Problem is people spend them on useless degrees. I probably spent most of mine on beer, but I did manage to get an engineering degree that allowed me to pay back the loans, buy a house and save for retirement.
As the cost of living goes up so to does the tuition for college. Every member of the staff and faculty in the college who provides the education that you pay for needs a living wage and benefits for their full time job. It isn’t their fault that you couldn’t figure out what you wanted to be when you grew up so you got an associates in liberal arts. That baccalaureate degree in business administration just means that you are qualified to be a secretary. The government run state college systems have been great at offering college educations for the masses but the down side has been that those college degrees mean have been watered down and are worth absolutely nothing anymore other than helping you get a job a little better than flipping burgers for a living. I have a friend in the IT field who has a BS in Chemistry which even 15 to 20 years ago meant the highest level job he could get using that degree was at a medical lab doing urinalysis tests. Sorry I would rather flip burgers. I don’t blame the kids and others protesting on Wall Street because I do believe we need to look at corporations, financial institutions, and other BIG money types and ask them if they have done enough to help the consumer base from which they derive their profits. Have they decided to maybe take a bit of a hit in the profit line so that Americans can work, instead of shipping jobs over seas? If the American consumer makes a living then they spend money which drives profits which improves the economy. You can’t keep expecting the American worker to increase their productivity at the cost of their health, family time, and wages. Every job you outsource to another country means at least one less worker that has money to spend in the most consumer conscious country in the world.
The cost of college has gone up much faster than the cost of living because of government interference. Get the government out of the loan business and the cost will go down.
The college loan isn’t what made college so expensive. If the government got out of the college loan business it wouldn’t make the tuition lower. The individual tuition rate is based on what it costs to run a college divided by how many students are expected to enroll and pay tuition the coming semester. The college or the government doesn’t set the atrocious cost of text books. Today it isn’t the degree you get that gets you a job, it is the College you got the degree from, the job experience you already have, and if you have managed to network well enough to be recommended by anybody who might be somebody. The people at Occupy Wall Street aren’t just complaining about their student loans or not getting the job they want. They are complaining that there are NO jobs. Working as a greeter at your local walm#rt isn’t a job unless you live in an area that has housing that costs less than what you make a month doing that job.
Sorry. We will have to agree to disagree. There is so much room for innovation in so many areas, a new college grad with a useful degree should be able to figure out how to make his own way. The cost of college has been subsidized by the government through the student loan program and the colleges have had no reason to be frugal. Check out some of the colleges that refuse to participate in the government program and look at their costs versus the ones that do. Also check out Cooper Union which gives all students a free education. The colleges right now have very bloated budgets because they can.