Tag: College

Millennials Are Now Blamed for Ruining the U.S. Economy and I Say “Good”

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Yahoo – It’s that time of year, when students prepare to head back to the classroom. For many taking the next step in higher education, the question is increasingly, “Is it worth it?” Millions of millennials have already put off settling down because of the rising costs of servicing college debts to the detriment of economic growth. Student loans are now the second-largest category of household debt in America, topping $1.4 trillion and trailing only mortgages at $9 trillion..“You do stand to see longer-term negative effects on people who can’t pay off their student loans. It hurts their credit rating, it impacts the entire half of their economic life,” Powell said in March. “As this goes on and as student loans continue to grow and become larger and larger, then it absolutely could hold back growth.”

I’m like a junkie getting his fix when the latest “millennials ruined ___” story pops up. I need it like I need air. Baby boomers take every opportunity they can get to label millennials as lazy, entitled, poor tippers, unhealthy, delusional, they blame them for killing Applebees, Office Parks, as well as ruining fine institutions like Sears. In some sick twist of irony, we’re also apparently ruining college enrollment rates.

And now millennials are tasked with ruining the United States Economy.

Good.

Millennials get blamed for everything and when we respond with “we’re broke” we get slapped with articles saying the reason we can’t afford to buy a house is because we lack discipline and eat too much avocado toast.

So now the hens have come home to roost. Hey I’m not asking for a handout. My dumbass 17-year-old self signed that life altering contract filled with soul sucking student loan debts. Thats on me. Whether that should be allowed as an option for a teenager who just got their drivers license, yet still can’t buy a pack of smokes is a different question altogether.

But when millennials complain about anything we get told we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, ignoring the fact that the generation before us literally killed social security and luxuries like “retirement” for their kids. Millennials basically just get the speech from The Departed.

Which is all fine, but when all of us 20 somethings with college degrees that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, just refuse to spend money on things like houses and cars and weddings because we literally cannot afford it; then the economy takes a hit. Then I laugh. Not because it solves anything, but because I’m a spiteful prick.

You want to see what corruption looks like? Look no further:

“From 2007 through 2017, the CPI rose by 21 percent. Over that same period, college tuition costs jumped 63 percent, school housing surged 51 percent and the price of textbooks by 88 percent.”

Textbook prices increased 88 PERCENT. How the fuck is that even possible? Ask anyone who ever went to college for anything other than law or medicine how many times they used their textbook. Almost never. Buying textbooks was the biggest scam going and I graduated years ago and now I’m learning that prices have only continued to rise?? Do yourself a favor kids;

  1. Go to state school and save your money, or better yet just punt on college and work a $30,000/year job and live like a debt-free king.
  2. If you insist on going to college and buying textbooks, don’t be a sheep. Just get the previous year’s edition on Amazon for probably 75% less than what the university is trying to sell you.

Other tidbits from this story;

“Korn Ferry puts the average starting salary for a 2018 college graduate at $50,390”

$50K out of the gates? Maybe the title of all these articles should just be focused on Communications and Journalism majors bringing down the economy because I can tell you I did not touch that salary level in my first job. Not even close.

“[Average starting salaries] up 2.8 percent from 2017, the just-released July Consumer Price Index report shows the inflation rate rose 2.9 percent over the last 12 months. Does the phrase “treading water” come to mind?”

So the minimal increases in salary that millennials are starting to earn immediately gets dwarfed by rising housing costs and inflation rates? Its definitely the avocado toast thats holding kids back goddamnit.

 

Evidence Mounts that Laptops Are Bad for Students at Lectures. You Think?

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The Verge – Do you use a laptop or tablet to take notes during school lectures or meetings? If so, you might want to reconsider pen and paper; there’s increasing evidence that using laptops during lectures decreases learning, which can result in lower grades, reports The New York Times. To study this, researchers at Princeton University and the University of California asked a group of students to take notes at a lecture using pen and paper while another group used laptops. The experiment found that the students who used a laptop did not understand the lecture as well as those who wrote their notes out by hand.

Yea, no shit! Scientists strike again. Seriously I’ve never seen a group paid more to do less than scientists. Maybe TV weathermen, who don’t even need to be right with their weather predictions to stay on my TV for two decades.

Of course laptops for students in class are bad. You know what I used to do on my laptop basically all through senior year? I downloaded a ROM and played fucking Pokemon Red Version ALL year.

Granted, I was a Journalism major, which didn’t have the most grueling classes, but still. I had a kid that sat in front of me in my math class and he would just pop in one earbud and literally just watch Netflix in class.

If college wasn’t such an amazing four years of experiences, then I’d be prettyy pissed off about all those crippling loans paying for student debt that we took on under the promise of jobs that don’t exist anymore.

College Enrollment is Falling as People Start to Wise Up

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Yahoo – “Despite aggressive efforts nationwide to boost the number of people who attend college, enrollments declined this fall for the fifth straight year as better job prospects for older potential students and a stalled pipeline of new high-school graduates were compounded by continued woes in the for-profit college sector.”

Good. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. College is the biggest scam going and is 1,000% the next bubble to burst. Now don’t get me wrong, I think college is extremely valuable if for nothing else than life skills: learning to live on your own, dealing with issues w/o your parents help and even making some money on the side to supplement your hobbies (drinking).

But that is not a skill set that is worth 200k+ (cue the kids chirping who went to trade schools). And the costs keep rising as if the colleges don’t even seem to realize this is a problem that will ultimately kill their racket. From when I was a freshman in college years ago to now, the yearly tuition at my school has gone up at least 12K. So you’re now paying 50k+ a year at some schools for degrees in fields that don’t have the supply to meet the demand. Which is why you have millennials living in their parents basements until their 30 and no one buying a house until their 40.

“The trend of prices continuing to rise faster than inflation is beginning to have more and more of an impact” on enrollments, especially among low-income and first-generation students, says Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, a nonprofit aiming to increase college attainment. He says affordability concerns are outweighing projections about the economic benefits of a college education.

Now obviously its a sliding scale. If you’re becoming a doctor or a lawyer, then yes clearly you need a college degree. And yes, of course I know a college degree has given me and my peers opportunities we just wouldn’t have been able to get without a degree. But for an English Lit major, going 200k in debt is a terrible, terrible idea. And not to be a blameless millennial, but letting a 17 year old make the decision to take on that debt for the rest of their life is an unbelievable lack of judgement on everyone’s part.

So I’m glad college enrollment is falling. Maybe when it starts to fall at 10% per year colleges will start to realize, oh shit maybe they can’t charge 65k a year for a Communications degree so I can work at the Gap.

But probably not. Higher Ed will push prices higher and higher until it explodes and no one can afford it OR everyone defaults on their loans. Should be a fun decade to watch the world burn. My kid is gonna be a plumber no doubt.

jokerburningmoney