Broken promises, high-sounding hypocrisy, debt. To more and more graduates, it doesn’t seem fair. In their handouts and flyers and inserts and Web pages, the colleges profiled their graduates as world successes. Accordingly, parents shelled out up to $200,000 or the kids piled up student loans, and the degree followed on schedule. Now, though, they can’t find a job.
Here is what one of them wrote on Craig’s List (warning: expletives in abundance). Apparently, what prompted this alumnus in Seattle to write it was receiving a request for donations along with promotional literature about the school. It was too much, and he or she had to reply, adding the simple and salient fact of unemployment:
“So, what I want to know is, why are you wasting money on glossy fundraising brochures full of meaningless synonyms for the word ‘Excellence’? And, why are you sending them to ME? Yes, I know that I got a master’s degree at your fine institution, but that master’s degree hasn’t done jack —- for me since I got it! I have been unemployed for the past TWO YEARS and I am now a professional resume-submitter, sending out dozens of resumes a month to employers, and the degree I received in your hallowed halls is at the TOP OF IT and it doesn’t do a —-ing thing.”
Who knows how smart and conscientious and skilled the graduate really is. He might falter in face-to-face interviews, or have an overly-thin resume. But that doesn’t change the fact that the school in question admitted the student, put him through a public policy curriculum, and accredited him. If the writer is a klutz, then that, too, reflects upon the university that trained him.
The resentment goes beyond unemployment, too. He remembers his education like this:
“I was in a public policy program, so that meant we got to sit in classrooms and listen to Professor God up at the front of the lecture hall glorify Himself and Creation as He saw it and talk about how much smarter he was than anyone else and how much he’d learned at MIT and the RAND Corporation.”
Universities shouldn’t be surprised at resentment like this. If they claim their “excellence” on the basis of the career success of their graduates, then they have to admit the failure of their graduates as well. Obviously, this student doesn’t recall any non-vocational learning that happened, or doesn’t respect it. He even terms the education he received “imaginary.”
This is the gamble institutions make on the market. As long as graduates find decent jobs, the costs won’t come back to haunt them. If they don’t, they’ll hear more analyses such as this one:
“Since 1987, higher education expenses have gone up 450 percent, while personal income in this country has gone up 87 percent, making tuition IMPOSSIBLE to afford without special financing. But, during this time, you were thriving because people could come up with the cash in two ways:
“1. Get a home equity loan and use the inflated value of their house to pay for their kid to get drunk and/or raped at your school and then lose the house when the market crashed.
2. Get a federal loan.
“HAD IT OCCURRED TO YOU THAT NEITHER OF THESE SOURCES OF MONEY ACTUALLY EXIST? THAT IT WAS BEING MANUFACTURED BECAUSE YOU MADE PEOPLE THINK THAT ONE OF YOUR DEGREES WAS NECESSARY TO CLIMB TO THE TOP OF THE BUBBLE?”
42 Responses to Postgraduate Wrath
goxewu - May 13, 2010 at 6:53 pm
A question which, I admit, has a considerable “can’t resist” aspect to it:This particular student seems to have gotten a master’s degree in public policy, and is ticked off because he or she can’t get a job with it. Prof. Bauerlein seems to be on the student’s side.But what if the graduate were the holder of a bachelor’s degree in English obtained at an expensive private university (say, in a major Southern city) and had basically the same complaint? Or–yes, I know I’m squeezing in a couple of extra questions–should the B.A. holder complete graduate school before reasonably expecting employment? Are $200k B.A. degrees in English a priori insufficient as tickets to employment?
jffoster - May 13, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Read the student’s post we were linked to I did. Obviously upset he was. On the other hand, he does share in the responsibility. If he really thought so little of his classes, why didn’t he drop out or move into something else. And what exactly does a Master of Arts degree in “Public Policy” train one to do? An MA is supposed to be about training, not just “general education and enriching experience. If the University really did “dupe” him into taking out large loans for the program, he seems to have been a willing collaborator and dupee.
markbauerlein - May 14, 2010 at 7:51 am
Fair questions, and here’s the problem signalled in this Craig’s List post: both sides, university and student, overemphasized the “job creation” side of the program. (I assume the student’s career ambitions were echoed in the promo materials of the MA program.) That puts the university’s value too much in the hands of the market beyond. It also downplays the general education one receives. In English, of course, we promise so little in terms of job prospect that these kinds of resentments never come up.
nordicexpat - May 14, 2010 at 8:14 am
Mark,I assume/hope that last sentence is meant ironically? Given that the economy seems to be polarizing so that there are job opportunities for plumbers and job opportunities for nuclear engineers but not so much in-between, who do you think will be able to afford a general education at a place like Emory where, unless I am mistaken, tuition will be over 40,000 a year?
potters5 - May 14, 2010 at 8:25 am
I’m not sure that the student was a willing collaborator and dupee. Perhaps he/she just had faith in the institution that they bet the farm on. Is it foolish to have faith? I hope not. Is it foolish to bet the farm? Perhaps. Ethical marketing is essential to avoid conflicts of interest and to ensure integrity. A modest proposal: After graduation, departments might accurately track all graduates for four+/- years, making this info available to any incomming student. The good: no one could cry foul. The bad: some colleges might lose prospective students and revenue. Ahh, ethics and the marketing of a dream.
drj50 - May 14, 2010 at 9:37 am
“Universities shouldn’t be surprised at resentment like this. If they claim their ‘excellence’ on the basis of the career success of their graduates, then they have to admit the failure of their graduates as well.”Exactly. And that is precisely the issue that increasing expectations regarding “assessment” are meant to address. Specifically, schools need to describe clearly what graduates may expect to know/do/etc. (no hiding behind vague assertions of “excellence”) and publish evidence of the extent to which those outcomes are achieved. “Put up or shut up” in other words. We’ll all be much better off when this becomes the norm.
dank48 - May 14, 2010 at 9:50 am
How about a money-back guarantee to back the promises, express or implied, that a college education “pays”? Is there anything or anyone in this country that isn’t for sale?
la_profesora - May 14, 2010 at 10:08 am
Uh, #5—we DO attempt to track graduates after graduation. Almost every college out there does perdiodic alumnae surveys. The problem is that well under half of the alumnae respond, because frankly, they have other things to do (four years after graduation, they are likely to be at the phase of their career where they are having to put in long hours, and many of them are starting families as well.) The feds think career placement data is so important that they actually require it to be posted publicly (such as on a school’s website.) Schools have entire offices of institutional research and assessment precisely to track student outcomes like these, so to say we aren’t tracking it or don’t care about it just isn’t true.
markbauerlein - May 14, 2010 at 10:09 am
Here is the vocational value of an English major, nordicexpat. For English-related fields (English teacher, commercial press editor, and the like), it has direct benefits. But for many of those fields, jobs are either hard to find or low-paying (at the entry-level). For non-English-related fields, the major has an indirect benefit, that is, reading and writing skills and general liberal arts knowledge. But the connection is indirect enough that it’s hard to make any claims about jobs for English majors. In both cases, the claims are hard to push to undergraduates.
victorl - May 14, 2010 at 10:24 am
After reading a letter like that, universities like Emory (see CHE article http://chronicle.com/article/Emory-Coins-a-Strategy-to-E/65023/ ) might think twice before sending a blue pig to all their “future” alums (first-year students) to help them start to saving up to “give back” to their beloved institution. I got a bit of flack for a comment I wrote on that article–well and good, everyone’s entitled to an opinion–but I still stand by what I wrote. It is in appallingly bad taste for an institution that charges $53,556.00 a year for tuition & fees to suggest that it’s critically indebted (and not in the way Emory would like to think) students need to begin planning their charitable giving so soon, or in quite that way.I sympathize more with the student than the University. And I agree with Mr. Bauerlein in his follow-up comment #3, that if universities are going to bill themselves as trade schools which virtually guarantee (“successful!!!”) employment, they’d better be prepared for some unhappiness from those who shell out $200.000+ for the goods. I do not blame the student for being so credulous that s/he believed all the hype shovelled out by a (any) university’s marketing crew. Chances are most of us drank this Cool-Aid at some point as well. Unlike the students, these are professionals who are skilled at doing their job. Perhaps the Craigs List poster should have majored in advertising? Or credit default swaps? You know, something that actually makes money for someone beside a university.
vcvaile - May 14, 2010 at 10:59 am
The ones that do track (or claim to) game the results like a middle school working scores for NCLB, although no doubt with less practiced skill. My former program lists employed PhDs but omits the unemployed ones and of course the ABDs – a category of non-existence reminiscent of Dickens characters shipped off to Australia.
livefreeordie2 - May 14, 2010 at 11:34 am
Hmmmm. . . as may be expected, I have little or no sympathy for the student. There are millions of others out there who “figure it out.” What are his main complaints? That a college education is expensive and has grown more expensive in the last 25 years? Well, duh. Let’s see. Faculty and staff salaries, the costs of technology, etc, etc., and the big one – student expectations! Higher education is a business and everyone has competitors. If the dorms don’t meet expectations, if the library isn’t the kind of “gathering place” that satisfies, well, everyone here knows what I mean. Of course the cost of education has gone up faster than inflation! On the whole, students get a lot more bang for the buck. If little Johnny there went to an institution that kept its spending over the last 25 years to inflation. . .well. . .chances are he wouldn’t go to that institution, would he?Now let’s talk about the student. What did he hear from the institution? That his education would prepare him for a better job? I’m not going to look them up, but we all know the stats on that. Higher level of education = higher income. What did he think was going to happen? I mean, part of it is bad luck in that the economy has been in the dumper for the past two years, but what did he think was going to happen? I read that letter and I can tell you he doesn’t have the attitude to succeed. And it undoubtedly shows through in other aspects of his life – including in interviews. I know that when I’m hiring, if I even suspect that kind of negative, blame someone else, oh woe is me attitude, the person never gets a call back.Yeah. . . institutions aren’t perfect and Development/Alumni sometimes send the right message at the wrong time (No, I’m still not going to sign my house over to you. . .sorry), but students have to take responsibility for themselves.
nordicexpat - May 14, 2010 at 11:51 am
Mark,I guess I just don’t understand what you want to say here. The first paragraph could apply to, well, English majors as easily as a public policy program. I certainly know the direct and indirect values of an English degree. (I think those values could more easily be sold if they didn’t come with a 200,000 price tag, so I wonder what #7 is getting at). I get the feeling you think universities shouldn’t be emphasizing university as job preparation and should emphasize the value of a general liberal arts education. Fair enough. But I really don’t see much in the way of a positive argument. Surely, we need to do more than rehash Newman’s argument against Huxley. The point I was asking rather indirectly was who is going to be able to afford a liberal arts education at a private university? What do you say to prospective students (and their parents) who aren’t independently wealthy about why they should attend your university, let alone major in a subject, that, as you point out, are hard to find and/or low-paying? I think people at one point were more buying the “status” of an elite university than anything else. A graduate of an elite university was a graduate of an elite university, regardless of what they majored in. But that seems to be changing, and now it seems like those degrees are becoming the equivalent of 19th century cultured — but impoverished — aristrocrats. I really don’t have an answer. It depresses me, to be honest, because I doubt that there is anything universities can do about the economic shifts that are the cause of so much anxiety. As I said, a large number of jobs that occupy the spaces between plumbers and nuclear engineers are simply disappearing. The student is lashing out at an identifiable villian, because the factors that are really to blame for his not being able to find a job are too abstract. The anger is real enough, and I am a bit worried about where that anger is heading…
potters5 - May 14, 2010 at 12:07 pm
#8, I understand how busy post graduate life and know responses can be difficult to get. I speak, in part, as one with twins just entering college. As such, we’ve interviewed more than a few selective schools upon acceptance. Our questions about post graduate employment rate and quality were asked every time. With few exceptions, the answers were confidently optimistic yet mysteriously vague when it came to the details – even when advisors were pressed. In the end we opted for the exceptional.In the business world, investment firms wouldn’t dream of offering consumers a 200-300k investment without a prospectus that included a historical track record, yet in my experience this is precisely what so many colleges do. I’m sure that if a creative ($) incentive or the right tactic was used, more recent graduates would respond to surveys. For instance, if universities employed work-study students with the same fervor to phone-survey recent grads about their employment as when calling alumni for donations, I suspect employment survey yield would be somewhat better. The institution could also use such data to determine where it needs to improve in its vocational related education.
markbauerlein - May 14, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Yes, nordicexpat, I think liberal art people should indeed rehearse Newman over and over. Knowledge not tied to use, learning not leading toward career . . . let’s push them again and again. Everything else in the young ones’ lives pushes in the other direction, and here’s an adversarial voice worth echoing. And it should come clear in community colleges as well as expensive private schools. Furthermore, I don’t believe the liberal arts message is in any way opposed to career ambitions. Rather, they should deepen and broaden the outlook.One problem with students accepting the general knowledge aim is that they feel they can’t rest and relax and be amateur intellectuals for a time because they feel so strongly the press of job and advancement and achievement. They rest their futures on performance from Day 1 on campus, as any freshman comp instructor knows from dealing with pre-meds. And maybe the kids are right. It certainly seems as if the consequences of late-teen and early-20s waywardness have extended. Lucky for me, back in 1979 thay wasn’t so much the case. I almost flunked out of school by the end of freshman year, and it took me five years plus two summer school sessions to graduate.
goxewu - May 14, 2010 at 12:41 pm
In the interest of that time-honored intellectual paragon, Oversimplification, the following factors seem to be in play here:1. The “American Century” is over. We’re not economically dominant–yea, even in the black–anymore. As China and India (yes, India) head toward being the world’s two largest economies in 2050, the U.S. is sliding back in the pack.2. Given (1), we have to “compete” like crazy, both free-trade internationally with the products and services other countries provide more cheaply, but domestically, with each other. To white-collar people near the top, “competition” means coming up with technological innovations; to white-collar people in the middle, it means longer hours, more stress, less buying power, etc. To blue-collar people it means near-minimum wage jobs, and a race to the bottom in real wages and working conditions.3. Given (2), the Great American Middle Class can no longer afford to send its children off to college to get a liberal arts education. (Alas, econdary public education is so undernourished and so battered by the social problems its students bring with them from home to school, that it can’t provide a decent basic liberal arts education. So that responsibility nominally falls to colleges.)4. Given (3), colleges are having to cut back on what liberal arts education they do offer. Where it used to be that college students would spend over half their course time studying English literature, history, the social sciences, a foreign language, and a dollop or two of the arts, and then top it off with a minority of their course time in specific pre-professional training (marketing, electrical engineering, physical education, etc.), the situation is now reversed, with the ratio skewing even more toward more pre-professional training.5. Given (4), for-profit colleges are undercutting traditional colleges by offering nonresidential degrees in specifically professional disciplines (e.g., designing video games–one of the few American products with a positive trade balance) that a student can earn online, with a completely flexible schedule, without paying for a lot of unwanted liberal arts folderol and unneeded amenities (e.g., a rec center) in the bargain.6. Given all of the above, liberal arts education at traditional private colleges (and some glamorous state universities) is reverting to what it was before the Great Depression cleared the board: the province of wealthy boys and (now, too) girls who are either dabblers who don’t (think they) have to worry about employment directly after graduation, poetic types who don’t worry no matter what, and a few exceptionally talented people who actually stand a chance of making a living as writers, actors, artists or scholars.Bottom line: If your mom and dad are forking over $200,000 so that you can get a degree in English at a private college in the the economic world we now live in, they either love you a whole lot, are totally deluded about your job prospects, or both.
22228715 - May 14, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Potters5… good point about the historical track record. But your analogy actually bolsters the university’s defense. This student is 4-5 years out from “buying into” in this master’s program. But how many people made investments in businesses or finanicial programs 4-5 years ago based on detailed (perhaps even accurate) historical track records, and STILL lost money? (I think the answer to that is almost all of us.) I agree that universities should not mislead prospective students, but any reasonably intelligent adult should know buying blue chip stock does not guarantee profits, and that getting a degree does not guarantee a job, although both are fairly good bets compared to playing the lottery or auditioning for Survivor. (And I don’t know of any universites that guarantee a high-paying job… sounds prohibitively expensive, such that the U would go out of business shortly afterward, leaving the graduate in an even worse bind.)I wish I had a dollar for every young person I’ve talked with in the past several years who was absolutely unshakable in the belief that more degrees equals more employability. I have been trying to DISCOURAGE twenty-somethings from becoming overeducated beyond the norm in their field, but they are amazingly resolute about adding degrees (and tens of thousands of dollars in debt). I don’t think it has anything to do with cost-benefit analyses… I think it has to do with fear of leaving the familiar, and being a student is very familiar.
lucapacioli - May 14, 2010 at 1:02 pm
There are two broad themes to American education: enrichment and occupational training. Resentment arises when those who took classes to understand their place in the world (e.g. literature) believe that they should get paid for their self-awareness. These are the same people who look down on business and engineering majors as crass and unreflective. Those who are career-oriented consider the first group to be naive.There is a vast economic literature on the return-on-education investment. Students who borrow $200,000 for an art history degree and then expect to be rewarded monetarily are going to learn a painful lesson about markets. A medical student who incurs a $200,000 loan to create an asset (an M.D. degree) that provides a revenue stream of $200,000 annually has made a sensible economic decision.As previous authors have said, there could be more disclosure of outcomes. However, there is abundant information on what careers are in demand. The older humanities student returning for a paralegal certificate is someone who has wised up. For the 18-year-olds, I wonder how many parents say, “I am not paying for college if you major in something not career-related?”
cassandra_prophesies - May 14, 2010 at 2:59 pm
The problem the student has is this:He or she paid for a very expensive but defective product and is now being harassed by the people who sold that very expensive but defective product.While there may be some benefit to any education, we all went to grad school for BETTER opportunities, not future unemployment accompanied by unpayable debt. [See Marc Bousquet's posts for a better discussion of the problem.]Most universities have raised tuition to astronomical proportions, essentially huckstering many of its students with false promises and bankruptng educations. The massive numbers of new programs and their many, many graduates have flooded the job market with sub-standard graduates, all of whom have the same credentials and spurious educations.My BA from 1993 is (generally) better than a BA from 2008, but I still owe all that money I borrowed from back then thanks to all the deferments and forebearances I took while in grad school and making too little money as a TA and adjunct. We who went to grad school should have SOME opportunities to gain employment, but, despite the escalating enrollments (and attendant tuition), we have been blocked from gainful employment that would allow us to pay our loans back and donate to the schools that recruited us. That extra money (both donation for future school grants and loan repayment to provide more money for future loans) will not be coming from the majority of the cash-strapped grads of the past 20 years.Those budget-busting admins of the last few decades may have just spelled the doom of higher education for the foreseeable future. These may very well be the consequences of the massive adjunctification, open-enrollment-let-anyone-in, athletics-spending pallooza of the 90s and 00s.This is what I see in the anonymous letter-writer’s scream into the void of Craig’s List.
drj50 - May 14, 2010 at 4:10 pm
goxewu (#16) writes: “it used to be that college students would spend over half their course time studying English literature, history, the social sciences, a foreign language, and a dollop or two of the arts, and then top it off with a minority of their course time in specific pre-professional training (marketing, electrical engineering, physical education, etc.)”I’ve looked at old university catalogs and I’m not sure this is true, particularly at the land grants that are now public flagship universities. (Harvard in the 1700s would be a different story.) Do you have evidence that most students took a majority of their coursework in the liberal arts — say 50 or 100 years ago?
ex_ag - May 14, 2010 at 4:43 pm
I think goxewu is overly optimistic when he assumes mommy and daddy must love you if they’re willing to bankroll you through an English degree.Maybe they really hate you? Maybe they feel that they’ve devoted way too many years of their lives to a project that has turned out to be basically useless (you) and they want you to feel a similar frustration?
goxewu - May 14, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Re #20:No, I don’t have statistical evidence. I was speaking–as oft we liberal artsies types do–from personal experience, direct and indirect (friends, colleagues, et al.). Also, in effort to keep myself within shouting distance of brevity, I delibrately left out “core” science requirements for majors having little or nothing to do with them (e.g., a marketing major having to take biology, a fine arts major having to take geology). Anyway, from my personal experience, I think there’s been a gradual tilt toward fewer credits in “core” or “general education” and more credits in an occupation-specific major. (Some college forego a “core” in favor of a menu of “distribution reuirements,” which complicates things because the courses a students select can be de facto occupational-major courses.) I could be wrong, of course. But one would suspect that the growth of lean & mean occupational-specific majors in for-profit colleges isn’t without parallels in traditional colleges.Re #21:There are lots of effective ways to get even with college-age kids you hate that cost less than two hundred grand. Send me an SASE and I’ll send you the list.
minnesotan - May 14, 2010 at 6:52 pm
It’s like I tell my students: if they want you to pay for a graduate degree, it’s likely a scam. Unless these kids are so filthy rich that they will never have to work, shelling out for a master’s degree in any humanities/social science field is just plain stupid. Keep applying until you get a fellowship or a full TAship somewhere. Otherwise, go make some money somewhere (anywhere!) other than academe until you can afford to earn a graduate degree.
profpeter - May 15, 2010 at 4:35 am
I am old enough to remember there was a time when college was not for everyone, when a high school diploma meant something, and when vo-tech schooling was a noble endeavour. When did a four-year liberal arts education become vo-tech? Are we supposed to be guiding our students through an education, or simply training them for a job? If it is the latter, the for-profits can do that more efficiently.Off and on during the last decade, I have asked students in one of the undergraduate classes I teach a simple question: “Why are you here?” The first response was always blank stares. So I probed more: “Why are you in this class?” (The class was an upper-division core (GE) class reqired for graduation.) “Why do you come to this campus? What is the point of your being here?” After a few seconds, some hands would shoot up. All of the answers I received over this past decade were one or the other of the same two, year after year: “To make more money” or “To get a better job.”What has happened to the fostering original curiosity, the seeking of knowledge, the joy of self-enlightenment?Things change. Perhaps I am too old and should be looking toward retirement. Except that as I press on I continue to find students in search of original curiosity, the seeking of knowledge, the joy of self-enlightenment.Not everything changes.
realtyannie - May 15, 2010 at 6:18 am
How about analyzing this piece in terms of our own (long ago) Freshman-level Literature and Speech classes? What is the symbolism? What is the bias? “Broken promises” suggests that college marketing pieces are lies. “high-sounding hypocrisy” suggests that elite colleges are full of pompous instructors. Thanks to their teaching and your own emerging awareness, you will eventually come to realize this. “debt.” suggests that anyone with any financial sense should strongly consider starting at a community college. You may or may not get a comparable quality education, but at least you won’t spend 30 years paying for it.Posts trying to determine the point of the piece are amusing. Kids, please don’t go into debt for your degree. Parents, please don’t go into debt for your kid’s degree. College employees, prepare to kiss your jobs goodbye. The good times are over; public and private schools as we have known them are no longer sustainable. People can’t afford them anymore. Schools are going to change, downsize, consolidate, even disappear, soon.
markbauerlein - May 15, 2010 at 7:38 am
To profpeter: When the High School Survey of Student Engagement asked high school students “Why are you here?” the top answer was “To get to college.” Number 2 was, “Friends.”
markbauerlein - May 15, 2010 at 7:39 am
Also, for goxewu, one can say that humanities majors took in a lot higher portion of overall college degrees than they do today.
performance_expert2 - May 15, 2010 at 8:53 am
A few things to say.1. Mark, Good to see your animate work. Break-em in two like twigs. You have the standing and temperance.2. It may not surprise you that there is more than one expert. The original performance_expert account was unceremoniously eliminated by a site editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education when I post a link to a YouTube video showing British military giving an old-school ass-whipping to some Iraqi youth. The audio commentary in the video was particularly noteworthy and vibrant. Apparently it was so vibrant that some air-conditioned nitwit in Washington DC eliminated my account but still expects me to pay $80. a year, to actually pay this person to deny my expression, to make judgment over my intellect and aesthetics, and to harass my account operation. Therefore, I am most pleased to see Mr. Bauerlein, who does not reside in the zone of … insert various characterizations of the Washington DC careerists. I’ll leave it at that, though I reserve a few expletives of my opinion of this publication, the Chronicle of I’ll Tell You What to Say.3. Emory actually educates people with high quality activity. They have a little system their to prevent exploiting the needy. It is called in-house financial aid. Let the rich pay, no worries there. For those without, Emory routinely provides substantial in house support. Therefore an Emory education for a qualified student with an empty wallet is not a 200k venture. If you want the particulars, apply to the school, get accepted, and find out.4. Therefore, the critical comments should focus on the 200k schools that provide little to zero grants to students, and there are plenty of them that really do send young people out the door with a 100-$200k debt donut around their neck.5. Where this essay really hits the bullseye is to identify and resonate the whole linguistic use of “excellence” etc. and self-promotion pollution from higher ed. schools. As a student, or even a professors, is it a sickened feeling to be exposed to this vulgar promotion in every day operations. Take it from the performance expert, after you are already a client, excessive marketing is an insult and creates externalities, creates negative costs.6. Which leads to an additional abstraction, has the USA been taken over by marketing people? Look at the grocery stores, the universities, the internet service providers, so much pushy vacant promotion. Maybe the marketing people, like the person at “The Chronicle” who pushed a button and banned my account, maybe these need to get a job and find out the meaning of the handle of a shovel. When performance expert read the news of the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, he knew because he has worked off shore in the Gulf. Performance expert does not talk fluff.P_E
performance_expert2 - May 15, 2010 at 9:09 am
A couple additional comments:1. No one seems to be linking the two-decade progression increase in cost of health care in the US to the increase in university tution / fees / operations cost. It is quite obvious.2. The comment system at this website is antiquated, circa 1985 Compuserve. Maybe “The Chronicle” should hire someone from Slashdot or Reddit to make a linked tiered comment system that notifies participants of replies to their comment. Currently, a participant is expected to return to the article and use their eyeballs to see if post #27 replied to post #2. There are machines to do this notification. I suggest you use them unless you think the whole world is looking at your wine glass and has the time to indulge you, “Chronicle.” If you going to promote dialogue, there is opportunity for you to be efficient and courteous. Maybe bring it up to circa 1999 AOL? It’s called threaded discussion. Maybe you should look into it. Lord Have Mercy, you should consider enabling hyperlinking.Expected reply from Chonicle Editor, “Holy crap! There’s a termite in the attic!”
performance_expert2 - May 15, 2010 at 9:19 am
Sometime in the last couple of years, I endured a presentation where the presenter was talking-down “elite” educational institutions. A week or two later I politely informed the person that they should be careful about this approach and that is was possible to offend someone important in the upper eschelons of management because there had been many cases of a family member getting an illness and, despite great effort, being unable to find relief from the regional health providers and that when things got dire, the patient was sent to the elite education institution so the doctors and teaching professors could determine an effective diagnosis and treatment and that there were many cases of persons getting their ills cured in this manner.
goxewu - May 15, 2010 at 10:46 am
Short version: There are more professors in the U.S. hoping to make their livings from providing occupation-irrelevant “enrichment” than can be sustained by: 1) the number of students who can afford to pay retail for such occupation-irrelevant “enrichment” or 2) the ability of governments to subsidize those students who demand occupation-irrelevant “enrichment” and can’t afford to pay retail for it.Re #28, 29, 30:If performance_expert2 is going try to impersonate Dos Equis’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World” while complaining about tiny injustices the digital world has dealt him, it would be best to avoid such syntatical howlers as, “As a student, or even a professors, is it a sickened feeling…”
goxewu - May 15, 2010 at 10:48 am
And t’would be best, too, for me to avoid typos: syntactical
mrmars - May 15, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Lies are an inseparable constant of human nature (IMHO). We lie to others to get what we want, or to avoid hurting their feelings (which is more or less the same issue), we lie collectively as part of whatever organization we work for to further its interests ( or we risk not being a “team player,” or worse a “loose canon”), and most importantly, we lie to ourselves. In all of these arenas there is some ill-defined point at which seemingly harmless exaggeration transitions into the morally significant with the potential for real harm (to all involved). One of the reasons this behavior has persisted is most likely due to it survival value. And it appears to be a necessary component of the “Big Dream” wherein someone lies to themselves about their potential for achieving great things or doing the “impossible.” But in a small percentage of cases the lie becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and great benefits accrue!My point here is that I think we should be chary of accusing young people of being naive dreamers and “dupes.” For one thing we oldsters actively encourage this behavior in our children (to a degree at least – no pun intended) and most often view it in a positive light. In this country we sell unrealistic optimism wholesale – all God’s children have the potential (loaded word that) to grow up to be president! All of us at some point or other (I’d wager),have been guilty of buying into this ourselves, which is why have advanced degrees instead of factory jobs, and (hopefully) the world is a better place because of it. So, gentle reader, when young people expresses bitterness and disappointment,and feel betrayed by the imperfect (and to some extent illusory) system “we” collectively encourage them to buy into. It would seem reasonable to express a bit more empathy beyond excusing the problem as merely a manifestation of individual naiveté. There are many sub-problems to the issue of un- and under employment of college graduates that are crying out for real solutions, but there are also far too many conflicts of interest involved, which is the main reason this issue has a long history and is unlikely to be solved anytime soon.
performance_expert2 - May 15, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Goxey-woo, He feigned, then retreated.Another tomato in the jar (slapping dust off of hands).p_e
markbauerlein - May 15, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Try inserting the Youtube video link in the comment box again, p_e.
performance_expert2 - May 16, 2010 at 12:41 am
Okay. Here goes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iEAjDDC5okA couple thoughts:1. the kids don’t look to be getting “that” terribly beaten.2. the commentators voice is quite entertaining.3. this shows the type of stress these westerners are carrying.4. Reminds me of the stress back here in the US, the continued mode, the motif, the fetish for control over people and stress.5. I haven’t seen this video since that ugly day when I prior posted it.6. I think the video is of social value and I see no problem whatsoever in posting it, though I am probably a little more hard-boiled than most.And now to clear the palate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h53Eo1x92XUGreat lyrics: “I’m just a farm boy / Just doin’ what I can / When I’ll be a killer / It’ll make me a real man.”p_e
performance_expert2 - May 16, 2010 at 1:01 am
And now for some art, the two videos combined. You’ll need a good internet connection for this. Pause them if they need to load then play (x2). Adjust volume per “desire.” You can do it, saddle up to the cutting edge.To see Art Exhibit, highlight, copy, and paste into browser address:http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dh53Eo1x92XU&start1=&video2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-iEAjDDC5ok&start2=&authorName=Performance_Expert2Be steady.p_e
performance_expert2 - May 16, 2010 at 1:27 am
To add, The songwriter/ music artists are British and also from the farm country. One group joined the gov and the other built a studio. If you have the perception, you are witnessing two castes.
performance_expert2 - May 16, 2010 at 9:53 am
production notes: set volume on left video to 1/3.
finaleyes - May 17, 2010 at 10:02 am
So is Mr. Bauerlein suggesting that people just skip college? Unfortunately, a four-year degree is like a high-school degree was 30 years ago. You couldn’t even get piled into the stack of resumes without a high-school degree, and now you can’t without at least a bachelor’s. Unfortunately, the high-school degree was free, and the college degree is far from it. My suggestion? Learn a trade. Then combine it with what you learned in college. Maybe between the two you can cobble together a living. On another note, it’s not just the fault of colleges; it’s the fault of globalization and multinational corporations that are watching their bottom lines and sending their top jobs overseas.
markbauerlein - May 17, 2010 at 11:10 am
No, not to skip college, finaleyes, but to reduce the emphasis on college as a four-year employment scheme. Your “learn a trade” advice, though, is right on.
commserver - May 17, 2010 at 6:06 pm
I would like to comment based on 2 different perspectuses:1. As the parent of a 1st year student going to a very selective college (translates into very expensive I appreciated that my daughter didn’t have to be saddled with loans. She is taking out Pell loans only to reduce the parental share. I happen to have bad financial circumstances and the parental share is a home equity loan which I am struggling to pay. At least my daughter wouln’t have too large a debt when she graduates.2. As an adjunct lecturer at local public Community College, I see many students whose only financial aid is the college work study and the ability to take out Federally guaranteed loans that the student might have problems paying off.Yes my daughter is lucky. I consider that my “investment” in my daughter’s future will pay off.