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This. We need to stop sugar-coating things in this world. I'm an adjunct at a major Big Ten school and I see this all time with my students. The mentality is th

by jsiarto 14y ago

This. We need to stop sugar-coating things in this world. I'm an adjunct at a major Big Ten school and I see this all time with my students. The mentality is that if I just have enough education, the jobs will be waiting (law students anyone?) -- yet these sames students make little to know effort in school to do anything other than show up (occasionally) and squeak by with their 3.0. The parents of my generation (born in 1984) have babied and protected their children to a fault. Reality is not always pleasant and life isn't fair--instead of telling our kids they can be anything, we need to give them the tools to choose marketable and worthwhile careers. Unfortunately, we can't all be astronauts and veterinarians.

debacle 14y ago
For the parents of our generation, all you really needed to do was show up and squeak by with a 3.0. School was harder, college was harder, and there were more opportunities. We need to stop pretending that there is one root cause to this problem. The real cause is the degradation in the quality of the American populace.
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  Ah, so that's why 90% of my colleagues with Ph.D.s in physics didn't get jobs as professors of physics. They just weren't of a high-enough quality. If only they'd worked 35% harder, the universities would have created physicist jobs for everyone. Yeah, that's how economics works! You might want to go back to the part about "opportunities".
teach 14y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. My wife is an associate professor at a top-10 CS school (though she's not in the CS department). I wish we could FORCE all the incoming freshmen to read this essay. And read it again every semester.
randomdata 14y ago
> The mentality is that if I just have enough education, the jobs will be waiting (law students anyone?) Anyone who has this mentality is not following their dreams, they are following the crowd. Crowd-followers rarely do find success. That is what stood out to me in the article. The people who are being written about are not really doing what they want to do, they are doing what is expected of them (go to college and then get a good job). I wonder if the results would be different if these people struck their own path?

by jsiarto 14y ago

debacle 14y ago

For the parents of our generation, all you really needed to do was show up and squeak by with a 3.0. School was harder, college was harder, and there were more opportunities. We need to stop pretending that there is one root cause to this problem. The real cause is the degradation in the quality of the American populace.

mechanical_fish 14y ago
Ah, so that's why 90% of my colleagues with Ph.D.s in physics didn't get jobs as professors of physics. They just weren't of a high-enough quality. If only they'd worked 35% harder, the universities would have created physicist jobs for everyone. Yeah, that's how economics works! You might want to go back to the part about "opportunities".

teach 14y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. My wife is an associate professor at a top-10 CS school (though she's not in the CS department). I wish we could FORCE all the incoming freshmen to read this essay. And read it again every semester.

randomdata 14y ago

> The mentality is that if I just have enough education, the jobs will be waiting (law students anyone?) Anyone who has this mentality is not following their dreams, they are following the crowd. Crowd-followers rarely do find success. That is what stood out to me in the article. The people who are being written about are not really doing what they want to do, they are doing what is expected of them (go to college and then get a good job). I wonder if the results would be different if these people struck their own path?