Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst?
Wed 01 Jul 2009 – 10.33
It’s almost a taboo to speak of colleges and universities as businesses. The decisions they makes aren’t based on profits, they’re based on academics, right? Well, sort of. Higher education is a business, where the “products” are the graduates, and the effort is to sell those graduates to the world with the goal of getting more raw materials, students. And money. And prestige. It’s tricky.
But in America, as well as other nations, higher education carries with it a massive pricetag; attending is a sure-fire way to start your young adult life in debt. While most parents and economists alike will tell us that it’s an “investment” in our future — one that will increase the earning potential over our lives as a whole — the upfront costs are painful enough to warrant some evaluation. After all, the most basic laws of capitalism show us that if the the price of goods and services gets too high, people will stop buying! This even applies to supposéd critical purchases like gasoline, clothing, food, and now education.
I read recently, for the first time, the notion of higher education as a bubble that will soon burst. An over-inflated industry taking risks on its own future, which is now less-than-certain. The main point here is about the ever-rising costs of tuition and fees, making education unaffordable for all but the super-rich. Here’s a sobering statistic:
According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.
posted by Scott in careers, education, personal finance.
Thu 18 Jun 2009 – 11.54
When it rains, it pours. The old cliché has nothing to do with weather, although this June finds that metaphor especially apt. Things are busy lately.
After many months, if not years, of suffering through the various gradients of employment, I find myself once again working a regular schedule. I hadn’t worked a 40-hour week between mid-January and early June. Add to that two commutes and the general exhaustion that comes from starting a new routine and it’s become predictably exhausting.
In addition, and with timing most strange, I’m getting a lot of clients calling to do some work with me outside of my daytime gig. So I’m doing what designers do from time to time, and going home for a night shift in an effort to fill the creative, if not financial, holes in their day-to-day.
So yes, I’m busy. And while busy-ness is generally a good thing, it has obvious drawbacks.
posted by Scott in careers, coffee, health & fitness, life, relationships.
Wed 17 Jun 2009 – 11.48
Would you believe that teenagers these days send an average of 2,772 text messages a month?! That’s an average of 80 per day! This shocking statistic comes from Nielson, via a New York Times article. I caught wind of it via Spark.
I read that and feel thoroughly old. This statistic in and of itself is bizarre, but it raises a more profound question about what are the most effective methods of communication with friends, relatives, colleagues, lovers, and anyone else.
Email is old-fashioned, they say. Ok, that’s going overboard, methinks, especially when our work days revolve around sending email. Facebook messages? That’s the same thing as email, just tied into a closed platform a la Prodigy and Compuserve back in 1993. While we may check our iPhones and Blackberries on the go, email is still a non-instant form of communication — etiquette dictates you give 24 hours before a follow-up message.
There are a number of quasi-instant forms of communication, such as Twitter, which allow us to keep in touch, but aren’t predictable enough to use for urgent correspondences. For that a good old phone call may suffice.
And of course there’s instant messenger, which is supposed to be instant. But if the party on the other end doesn’t answer, or if they are away from the keyboard, the whole endeavor is moot.
What happens when you run into those folks who simply “don’t answer calls and don’t check voicemail?” Yes, I’m serious, I know people like that. I call them, and if they don’t pick up, I email. Or text. It’s annoying.
We as twentysomethings have the dubious honour of being in-between the generations as far as communication goes. We are masters of email, texting, twitter, IM, and yes, even phone conversations. (not so much with the snail mail.) But the trouble really starts when we have to manage different people, older, younger, and similarly-aged, who communicate in all sorts of ways and can’t comprehend other methods of keeping in touch.
Wasn’t it all just easier when we would knock on your neighbor’s door?
So, how do you keep in touch. Which tools do you use, or not use?
Here’s another question to make you feel old — for how many of your close friends/family do you have their phone number memorised? Probably not many.
posted by Scott in careers, life, relationships.
Sat 23 May 2009 – 1.33
I never stated it outright, but I basically stopped doing the podcast. My initial ambition was to do a weekly show. Then bi-weekly. Then monthly. Then 10 episodes per year. And in 2008, I only produced 3 episodes. So far in 2009 I haven’t even attempted the podcast.
The reason I stopped seems rather selfish but it’s also quite practical — too much effort for virtually no feedback. If anyone out there has ever tried to produce a podcast, you know where I’m coming from. And doing the operation by myself requires me to be the producer, host, webmaster, engineer, editor, and PR guy. That’s a lot of work for something that very often gets zero comments and downloads numbering something around 12. It’s hard to stay motivated when everyone has abandoned me.
But I was just randomly listening to selections from previous episodes, and these things are funny as hell. Maybe I should start recording more conversations in my life and posting them randomly. Fuck editing, fuck bookmarks. Just conversations. No topics, no re-dos. What do you we think?
posted by Scott in podcasts, this website.
What that Job Description REALLY Means
Thu 21 May 2009 – 11.04
It’s no secret that job applications use their own tricky language. Whether hiring managers are trying to trick us, or simply trying to be as formal and vague as they can, it’s a unique code that requires deciphering.
But very often the job descriptions can mislead. Many young people, especially straight out of school, find that there exists a gap between the initial description and the true day-to-day. Obviously this leads to dissonance and ill contempt. So here, now is a list of popular job description phrases and what they truly mean.
motivated team-player — looking for someone who needs a job badly enough that they’ll put up with lots of unmotivated, annoying people from whom you’ll have to get buy-in on almost everything you do.
high achiever, driven to succeed — must be a complete brown-nose whose sole mission in life is to please and impress management.
customer-focused — can take a lot of abuse from clients AND management and still act pleasant.
resourceful, independent self-starter — since we have absolutely no time or resources to train you, we expect you to figure everything out for yourself…quickly.
attentive to details — we have strict policies and procedures and won’t hesitate to blame you for everything if you make a mistake.
flexible, enjoys multi-tasking — we are unorganized and change corporate directions daily, so you’ll need to be able to clean up our messes and do jobs that A) you weren’t told about in the interview, and B) aren’t trained to do properly – all on a moment’s notice.
agent of change — you’ll be responsible for implementing a bunch of stuff we’ve been unable to make happen with a group of people who are digging in their heels and refusing to convert.
works well under pressure — our management team considers everything urgent and is going to micro-manage you daily.
solution-oriented — we are going to give you lots of messes to clean up and expect you to figure out how to handle them without our direction and with a big smile on your face, even though we aren’t going to give you any resources or support to get it done.
via CareeRealism »
posted by Scott in careers.
Fri 01 May 2009 – 14.35
Oh how I wish that were true as a general statement, but this time it’s really only to do with the computer science and engineering field. An article in the New York Times reveals the shamefully, and underrated, short half-life of a software or hardware engineer.
According to a survey … six years after finishing college, 57% of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34%, and at 20 years — when most are still only in their early 40’s — it is down to 19%. In contrast, the figures for civil engineering are 61%, 52% and 52%. As one industry executive stated a few years ago at a stockholders’ meeting when asked about corporate downsizing, ”The half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years.”
While this may seem like a troubling trend within the computer science field, it is good news for recent graduates who are hungry to find work in this bizarre-o economy.
I have observed a similar trend in the field of graphic design, which is my own field. While there may be a number of designers in their mid-to-late twenties, the numbers dwindle as we age. Are people leaving the profession for other professions? Or is everyone simply working from home and thus hiding themselves from my surveying eyes.
Perhaps it’s like this in every field. You could argue that half the reason so many middle managers came into being in the mid 20th century is to accommodate the aging workforce who would ordinarily have worked on a farm or simply died at a younger age due to some infectious disease. That’s one theory.
posted by Scott in careers, life.
Half of Everything Goes to Rent
Tue 21 Apr 2009 – 20.08
It has long been known that twentysomethings in New York, especially those who are straight out of school and into their first job, will spent half of their wages on rent alone. That’s half to rent, and half to everything else. Turns out this practice is no longer just for the young lot. A new study reveals that a higher percentage than ever, 27%, are crossing that tragic 50% barrier.
That percentage is up 13% since 2002, with 82,159 more NYC residents throwing more than half their income into the ravenous rent hole, as compared to seven years ago.
The numbers are quite troubling, but also a bit stoic. If you’re interested in the figures, Gothamist tells the story, as do a number of other news sources.
When I was looking for my first apartment I learned of a magic formula, relating to rent and income: Your annual income must be 40x your monthly rent burden. So if you make $40,000 per year, you shouldn’t be paying more than $1000/month. Trouble is, $1000 isn’t what it used to be. In fact, that price point almost guarantees you’ll have to live in the outer boroughs and suffer the tragic commute. Even when living with roommates, an apartment in Manhattan will cost each tenant can easily cost $1500 for something that might generally be considered puny and ridiculously small.
The 40x rule comes into play when signing on to a lease, especially through a proper leasing agent. If you do not reach that magical threshold, you’ll have to find a guarantor to back you up on the lease — usually a parent with deep pockets. I’ve heard rumours that some agents require this person to earn 100x the month rent, which is pretty absurd by anyone standards. Hell, my parents don’t make $100,000/year. But the 40x rule kinda makes sense as a guideline; doing the math in reverse reveals that figure to be approximately half of you take-home pay. But this is half of overall pay, leaving an even tinier slice for … everything else!
Considering the rising cost of healthcare, food, fuel, utilities, New Yorkers are getting squeezed even harder. It’s more of a struggle than ever to afford those $14 martinis.
Since moving to Jersey City, my rent has gone down quite a bit, but so has my income. In fact, my income these days comes largely from unemployment, but I’m still not quite up to that 40x mark. Times are tough, my friends.
What percentage are you paying?
posted by Scott in careers, health & fitness, life, personal finance, real estate.
Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis
Sun 05 Apr 2009 – 21.15
This week, I was quoted in an article in Toronto’s Eye Weekly about what’s it’s like to go through the quarterlife crisis. Somehow, it seems that after our nearly-hour-long conversation, the writer extracted an awkwardly worded quote about how education is a lie and how finding a job stinks.
Among the implicit promises made to this generation of twentysomethings was that they would have work that was engaging and creatively fulfilling. A 27-year-old freelance graphic designer with a graduate degree who is struggling to find work, Prescott says “You could always say the whole premise of education is that if you study, get good grades, acquire skills, you will have more options in a ‘career and life’ point of view. If you get a degree, you don’t have to work in a factory or have to work in a farm. That’s proving to be a huge lie, because you have people coming out of school and there are just no jobs, especially in ‘middle-class’ fields.”
Ugh, did I really say that? I think you can distill the sentiment from that jumble. And no, I don’t really use those ‘inverted commas’ in every sentence. Good thing they didn’t use my last name…
posted by Scott in careers, education, life.
Higher Education Can Be A Financial Disaster
Tue 17 Mar 2009 – 23.27
In what is fast becoming a recurring meme on this blog, we have to take a look, yet again, at the absurd financial implications of paying for a university education in this day in age. This article from Thinking on the Margin focuses on a couple who both attended law school on credit, and it didn’t really work out.
Whether you’re looking at an MBA, JD, or PhD — if you’re pursuing an advanced degree for financial reasons, chances are you’re better off either going part-time or else not at all. Otherwise, you may end-up financially strapping yourself for life.
I can relate. After finishing my MA, I’ve been pretty much unemployed for three years and counting. All the while, my student loans are still present and I still have to pay every month for that “priceless” knowledge and skills. Aside from rent (and I assume a mortgage, if I ever get one), my student loan payments are the largest bill each I have to endure each month.
There is some debatement about whether or not it’s urgent to pay off that debt. Most financial advisors will tell you that your student loans are ‘good’ debt, because you education, generally speaking, is an asset that will appreciate in value. That’s sort of a perverse way to look at it, but it makes sense. Nothing is guaranteed, of course. But the flip-side of that argument is that no matter how ‘good’ a debt is, it’s still a debt. It can affect your ability to get a mortgage, to get small business financing, and as we see from the case above, can be hell on a marriage.
I fear that soon we’ll be disclosing our debts on the third date — would you want to be with someone buried in debt? After all, if you end up married, it’s now your debt too.
Not to mention that whole net worth thing. Mine will be strongly negative for the next twenty years or so (at this rate, probably more than that).
posted by Scott in careers, education, life, personal finance.
For Girls, Binge Drinking Not Sexy
Wed 11 Mar 2009 – 17.26
Finally, other men are coming around to what I’ve been saying since age 16: girls who drink aren’t attractive at all. (trust me, that’s an understatement compared to the colourful rants of my teen years.)
A recent study from two American universities concludes that women have in their heads the wrong ideas about drinking to impress a fella. Truth is we prefer you sober.
It turns out 71% of these female co-eds were vastly overestimating the amount males wanted them to drink. On average, they overestimated by one-and-a-half drinks. Over a quarter of the women thought men were more likely to buddy up with a women who drinks five or more drinks. The true answer? Men expect women to consume around 2.5 drinks. 16 percent of women thought men would be most sexually attracted to women who downed the 5+ servings of their choice poison. In actuality? Men prefer nearly half that amount.
I think that whether we admit it or not, men want a women who is graceful and elegant, even when being “one of the guys.” Where a taste of male-like bonding may be playful, too much is not a good thing. For example, we never want to carry you home — women are tough to carry because their weight is distributed different. Plus you look like a creep carrying off some helpless woman. When a women drinks too much, she becomes louder, less funny, less witty, and more of a burden than anything else. No thanks.
Head over to PopSci for the full article »
posted by Scott in health & fitness, relationships.